Halfback Harry Potter was born on 24 November 1884 at 18a West Squire Lane, Girlington, one of ten children of William and Mary Potter.
Harry was a City reserve between 1906 and ‘10. He was a part-time player and worked as a dyers labourer. A regular with the reserves, Harry played in the West Riding Cup Final on 14 April 1906, when a mainly reserve side defeated Heckmondwike 1-0 in front of 1,500 at Upper Armley. It was only the second trophy of any kind City had won at the time.
Harry married Sarah Mayhew on 12 January 1907. Breaking into the first eleven of the rapidly emerging first team was a tall order. Harry decided to try his luck with Lincoln City and arrived at Sincil Bank in 1910.
However, he never made an appearance for Lincoln’s first team. Throughout his time with Lincoln Harry kept his family home in Bradford at 22 Agar Street, Girlington. He must have trained locally and travelled on matchdays as he was employed by the Fur Fabric Company of Carlisle Road.
During the Great War Harry enlisted with the West Yorkshire Regiment at Bradford - service number 205175. On 16 April 1917 he was transferred to the 2/4th battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment – service number 235304. The battalion had been part of the advance on the Hindenburg Line and had suffered casualties as a result. Harry was one of the reinforcements needed to bring the battalion back up to strength following the action.
After a summer on the Somme the battalion moved to the Ypres sector in August. The following month they were involved in the Battle of Polygon Wood where they suffered very heavy casualties. The battalion was withdrawn to the Avion sector and then into reserve at Flesquieres. On 30 November the Germans launched a major attack intending to regain ground lost during the Battle of Cambrai. The battalion was thrust into the action at Bourlon Wood. On 30 January due to continuing casualties the battalion was merged with the 1/4th and became known as the 4th.
At 5am on 21 March 1918 the German’s launched their final all or nothing offensive of the war. Sixty-four divisions advanced on a 54 mile front. Harry’s battalion were in reserve between Mory and Vraucourt. As a huge enemy barrage fell on the forward troops, all the Lincolns could do was wait for the inevitable call to arms. An impromptu football match broke out – would it be too fanciful to suggest that the football mad Harry Potter would have been involved? Playing his final game while the barrage raged at the front? Finally, at 11am the waiting was over and the 4th battalion was ordered forward to mount a counter attack against the advancing Germans.
At what became known as the Battle of St. Quentin the Lincolns found themselves heavily outnumbered. They were forced into a gradual withdrawal to a line of trenches in front of the Vraucourt road. There throughout the afternoon they fought off repeated attacks and it was an exhausted battalion that was relieved that night. They had suffered 75% casualties and yet – outnumbered and often surrounded – they had held the line.
During the night the battalion took up position NNW of Vraucourt. 22 March followed a similar pattern to the previous day. Constant attacks saw the Germans manage to pierce the right flank of the battalion during the afternoon. As one officer put it they were ‘facing all ways’. By the evening they were under fire from front and rear. At 6pm the battalion fell back onto a position east of Mory, covering Vraucourt. For ninety minutes they held out, until one final push from the enemy broke through. The Lincoln’s moved to high ground covering the village of Mory. The fighting raged on into the night. The German advance was checked, but at a fearful cost. Sometime during that tumultuous day of 22 March 1918 Harry Potter was killed.
Due to the chaotic conditions during the days surrounding Harry’s death his body was never found. The Germans had advanced into Mory and in the resulting attack and counter attack many others shared Harry’s fate.
Sadly, Harry has no known grave and is thus commemorated among the 35,000 names on the Arras Memorial in the Faubourg-d’Amiens Cemetery in the town of Arras. The sacrifice at Arras proved to be the beginning of the end of ‘the war to end all wars’. Little compensation for the wife and eight-year-old daughter Hilda Harry left behind in Bradford.
Today Paris bound Eurostar trains flash through the old battlefields at speeds that would have defied the imagination of the combatants. Among the scattered villages and pyramid shaped slag heaps, neat clusters of white headstones mark the last resting place of British troops who fought and died in that terrible conflict. Somewhere among them is Harry.
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The village of Mory was eventually abandoned as the German advance pressed forward once again. However, thanks to countless similar actions all along the 54-mile front the German advance was finally halted and would eventually be thrown back in a series of spectacular victories that took the Allies all the way to the German frontier.
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