Universities at War

Born 8 December 1893 in Upper Denby, near Huddersfield, Moore was the son of Matthew Crooks Moore, a mason, and Hannah (née Hardcastle). His father died in 1898, and so Moore and his younger brother William were brought up by his widowed mother, who is recorded in both the 1901 and 1911 censuses as a cloth mender in a worsted mill works. Her father had been a weaver in nearby Kirkburton. Moore attended Bede College 1913-1915, but is recorded in the 1915 Annual Report as having already entered military service, and did not complete his studies. He joined 1/8^th DLI as Private 2339, and in December 1914 the battalion was based at Sunderland Road Schools in Gateshead. Going to France on 19 April 1915 with the battalion, Moore survived their baptism of fire at Gravenstafel Ridge, during which the unit was reduced to between half and quarter strength, but was killed in action soon after, on 14 May 1915. The battalion had been urgently ordered up into the GHQ Line east of Potijze near Ypres to support some cavalry regiments which had been “blown out” of their trenches by shell fire, and their trenches lost to German infantry. The GHQ Line at this time stretched from Potijze Wood to a railway station on the Ypres to Roeselare line near Hell Fire Corner. A counter-attack begun at 2 p.m. retook these trenches, but it was not until another DLI battalion re-dug the degraded trenches on the night of 13-14 May that the position again became tenable, and 8 DLI then moved up into these trenches after 2 a.m. on 14 May. Major Veitch in his battalion history records that the artillery fire that day was lighter than it had been as the battalion had moved up to Potijze, and that Moore was the only man killed that day. The battalion was ordered back to Camp C, Brielen, two days later. Moore is commemorated on the Bede College 1914-1918 Cross, Plaque, and Roll of Honour, and at Denby Dale, Huddersfield.