A JOURNALIST and historian has been on a First World War battlefield pilgrimage.

Peter Rhodes made the journey almost a century after his grandfather fought in the conflict.

Grandad John Willie Smith was a joiner in Lothersdale.

Despite the loss of part of a finger in a sawmill accident several years earlier, he and a friend eagerly volunteered when the army recruiting band came to the village in December 1914.

His damaged hand meant John Willie was posted to a second-line battalion, the 2nd/6th Duke of Wellington’s Regiment (West Riding).

And it wasn't until February 1917, after endless training and watching for Zeppelins in England, that he and his colleagues eventually set sail for Le Havre.

"By then grandad was wearing a single black button on his uniform signifying the loss of his younger brother Alvin who – in the space of a few months – had joined up and been killed in the Battle of the Somme," said Mr Rhodes.

The second-line battalions – including John Willie's, which made up the 62nd (West Riding) Division – were involved in two huge battles, at Cambrai in 1917 and in the Second Battle of the Marne the following year.

As British tanks rumbled forward at dawn on November 20, 1917, the 62nd Division went over the top in the push for Cambrai.

"We caught Jerry napping and he got the wind up good and proper," John Willie wrote in his diary.

"It was a lovely morning for the attack, rather foggy."

By the time the day was over, the Yorkshire lads had advanced a record distance for any British infantry division at that stage in the war.

But the Germans later counter-attacked, retaking much of the land they had lost.

John Willie survived the war, married and had two children, one of whom was Mr Rhodes' mother.

* Mr Rhodes is the author of a compilation of war memories, For a Shilling a Day, which is published by Bank House Books and is available from Amazon.