CASTLETON HISTORICAL SOCIETY A TALK BY TIM KNEBEL

‘Faithful in Difficulties’ – The Lives of the “Leadswingers”, creators of the First World War trench magazine of the 3rd West Riding Field Ambulance Service, 1915-1919

19th February

‘Faithful in Difficulties’ (In Arduis Fidelis) was their regimental motto. In between saving lives on the First World War battlefields of Flanders, including at the bloody battles of the Somme and Passchendaele, a small band of young Royal Army Medical Corps servicemen from Sheffield, with shared artistic and literary interests, came together to produce a trench magazine chronicling “the lighter side of war”. Delightfully illustrated, ‘The Leadswinger’ was packed with humorous articles, witty cartoons, imaginative short stories and poems but the contributors hid behind pen names, concealing their true identities. The men behind the magazine will be unmasked to reveal the remarkable characters at its heart, including the dashing doctor and VC hero whose post-war life would later be blighted by opium addiction, and the eccentric violinist turned cartoonist who would go on to inspire and mentor a young Quentin Blake and help change the face of illustration as we know it.