Page 12 - Armistice 100: A Yorkshire Post Picture Past Special

YORKSHIRE POST NOSTALGIA TUESDAY NOVEMBER 06 2018
Armistice 100
COMMEMORATING THE CENTENARY OF THE END OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR
The 5th Battalion Green Howards on duty at Scarborough Castle after the 1914 bombardment.
Sandbags across Eastborough in Scarborough.
DEATHS AND
DESTRUCTION
ON EAST COAST
WORDS BY ALEX WOOD
Bomb damage at the Grand Hotel in Scarborough.
T H E Y O R K S H I R E P O S T 12 P I C T U R E P A S T S P E C I A L
As daylight broke on December 16, 1914, people in three East Coast towns awoke to what appeared to be the sound of violent thunder raging overhead.
Until then the residents of unarmed seaside towns had no reason to fear enemy attack, 400 miles away from the battlefields of France. But now the
lines had become irreversibly blurred. Just after 8am, German naval guns
poured over 1,500 shells into Hartlepool and
Scarborough and then Whitby. Two-and- a-half hours later as the attackers sailed off to celebrate, 137 civilians, including many women and children, were dead and nearly 600 were wounded.
The Scarborough Evening News reported that many residents were still in bed when the first direct attack on British soil in the First World War began. “The real character of the visitation was quickly realised as debris began to fall about and shells burst with destructive effect in all parts of the town,” it added.
A turret of the Royal Hotel in the town was blown away and part of the seaward