BERTIE Colledge was a favourite son of Cross Roads and he became equally popular with his army comrades.
His commanding officer declared him one of the most cheerful and good-natured men in the gun battery where he served.
But in the same letter Lieutenant Simm had to inform Bertie’s parents, Lees couple Henry and Margaret Colledge, that their son had died due to enemy action.
Bertie was born in 1895 in Cross Roads, and when he joined the army in 1915 he was a printer working at T Harrison & Sons in Bingley.
The Keighley News said Bertie, a promising cricketer and billiard player, was well built, athletic and of high character, and a “general favourite” in his home village.
In 1916 Bombardier Colledge was posted to France with the British Expeditionary Force and in the summer of the following year he was wounded in the foot by shrapnel.
Following another wounding and a bout of trench fever, Bertie returned to the front line where he was killed in April 1918 by an enemy shell while manning his gun battery.
Three of Bertie’s four brothers, William, John and George, survived their time fighting in the war. All are named on the war memorial in the bowling club building in Cross Roads Pack.
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