Corporal Reginald William Veitch

Prince of Wales’s Own (West Yorkshire) Regiment, Service no. 2493 & 305602

Born: 8^th November 1891.  Died: 23^rd August 1955.

Story

Reginald was the son of Kippax Infants’ School Headmaster, Joseph Gibson Veitch (1861-1936) and Clara Shuttleworth (1863-1925), who was the headmistress of Wheldon Lane Girls’ School, Castleford. Reginald was educated at the King’s School, Pontefract, before qualifying from St. John’s Teacher Training College in Battersea in 1913. He studied further at London University and studied biology at Cambridge and Leeds.

In 1910, Reginald joined the 10th Middlesex Regiment. Reginald travelled extensively, and was in Germany just before the First World War broke out in 1914. He would be in Spain at the outbreak of the Spanish Revolution, and in Norway before it was invaded, as well as visiting France, Italy, Belgium, Luxemburg, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

As a Private during the First World War, Reginald served in France and Belgium with the West Yorkshire Regiment. He wrote a letter home to his father which was printed in the Yorkshire Evening Post on 15^th October 1915:

Where Death loses all its terrors

Vivid story of trench life

A vivid description of life in the trenches is given in a letter Private R.W. Veitch has written to his father, Mr. Veitch, headmaster of the Kippax Council School, near Leeds.  He says – “I often think you must have rather false impressions of our state of mind in the trenches.  No doubt it is dreadful, but really it is not anything like so trying as you might think.  One soon gets used to it, and treats everything as a matter of course.  It does not do to let your mind dwell on what might happen, and generally one’s thoughts are anywhere but in the trenches.

“Then perhaps you might think we feel very bad when we see a friend go under, but here again familiarity comes in.  At homes a death seems a very serious thing, but out here it is very different.  You naturally feel sorry, but it is more for the fellow’s people than for himself.  There is no doubt that although you see death in its most horrible forms, it loses all its terrors for you.

“There is as much difference in the sounds of the bursting of the various kinds of shells as there is in the different notes of a piano.  I don’t mean in volume, but in tone.  The sound of a gun fired is quite different from the bursting of a shell.  The various kinds of guns make different reports, from the long roar of the big ’13 inchers’ to the piercing crackle of the quick firers.  We machine gunners can always easily distinguish a distant German machine gun from our own, or a Vickers from a Maxim gun.  Then from the report of a rifle, you can always tell whether it is fired in your direction, even if you do not hear the bullet.  A rifle fired in four directions at close quarter has a distinctive piercing crack which nearly deafens you, while one fired in your direction at long range has a peculiar hollow sound which is quite unmistakable.  Again a trench mortar or aeroplane bomb is not difficult to identify.”

Reginald William Veitch was promoted to Corporal, and was wounded on the Somme, but thereafter became Chief Musketry Instructor at the Northern Command Depot. He had a reputation as a rifle shot, and held the National Rifle Association Bisley Medal, as well as being captain of both the West Yorkshire and Northern Command rifle teams. After the War, Reginald succeeded his father as headmaster of Kippax Infant (Elementary) School, after his father retired to Bridlington.  In 1924, he joined the Castleford Photographic Society, winning the championship plaque on his first attempt. In the same year, Reginald was appointed head of the Garforth Parochial School, and then Allerton Bywater School in 1928. For some time, Reginald was oral examiner for County Minor Scholarships, and head of the Evening Institutes at Garforth and Allerton Bywater, and was one of the founders of the Garforth and District Head Teachers’ Association, being president several times.

In 1933, Reginald bought a budgerigar, and 22 years later was keeping 200 birds at home, including ornamental pheasants and parakeets. He bred birds in his extensive aviaries, and sold them all over the country, with many bird societies visiting his gardens in the summer. He was President of the Castleford Cage Bird Society and was a member of the Avicultural Society and a Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society. Reginald was also interested in carpentry and cabinet making. He made the chairman’s bell-stand and lectern used at the Marylebone Rotary Club.

He was 42 years-old and living at the White House, Garforth when he married Agnes Maud Foyl at St Paul’s church in York on 7th August 1934.  Agnes herself was a school teacher, and the daughter of Rev. Henry Messeena Foyl (1874-1955), the rector of St. Paul’s, and chaplain to the Lord Mayor of York. Agnes’s father also officiated the wedding. The couple would later move to Redbridge, Church Lane, Garforth, and from 1936 he was the teachers’ representative to the Primary Schools Managers, for which he never missed a committee meeting. Reginald also represented the Castleford Executive on the Yorkshire Council for Further Education.

During the Second World War, Reginald was in charge of the evacuation office in Garforth and was a member of the Home Guard, as weapons training and machine gun officer to the 12th Battalion Home Guard, and chief instructor at the York Sector Weapons Training School.  He was awarded the M.B.E. in 1944 principally for his bomb disposal work, and retired from the military with the honorary rank of captain in 1945.

On 21st December 1951 he wrote in the Allerton Bywater County School log: ‘I have today resigned my position as Headmaster of the School after twenty three and a half years.  Reginald W. Veitch MBE B.SC (VS) LCO, MRST.FRHS’. 

On 30th August 1953, Reginald was visited at home by Raymond Kilburn who was asking for advice about keeping birds, and bought some bird seed. Kilburn repeated a similar visit on 12th September, after which, Reginald noticed 19 birds worth £38 had gone missing. Kilburn was also found to have stolen birds from John Wroe, and eggs from Peter Richards, both of Lidgett Lane, Garforth. Kilburn pleaded guilty to theft to all the charges and was sentenced.

Reginald passed away aged 63, and bequeathed £6,097 6s 2d to his wife Agnes, who worked as a teacher at Garforth School. Agnes passed away 28^th January 1987.

Below: Corporal Reginald William Veitch (seated centre), Headmaster at Kippax Council School:

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