Most people are familiar with the football match which took place between the British and the Germans in No Man’s Land at Christmas time 1914. But sport, including football and cricket, was not unusual on the Western Front in the First World War and one particular game featured lads from Skipton and Settle.

IT was a cricket match like no other. The spectators were war-weary troops and dog-fighting pilots, the pitch was surrounded by trenches and a ditch, was close to the firing line and the backdrop was a burnt out and ruined farm.

The date was June 17, 1915, and the game was between two Yorkshire teams, one made up of men from Settle and Guiseley and the other from Skipton.

All had one thing in common - they were soldiers serving in the 6th Battalion Duke of Wellington's Regiment and determined to win.

When the overs were completed, Skipton A company had been hammered, scraping just 22 runs with C company hitting an impressive 97.

Lance Corporal Jack Morphet, of Settle, was outstanding scoring 12 runs and taking six wickets, his colleague Private H Claughton taking two for five runs.

Their prowess on that day was noted by young Lieutenant Nicholas Geldard, whose family still live at Cappleside in Rathmell. He managed to knock a modest three.

The game was reported in the Craven Herald on June 25 of that year by "a Lance Corporal who is at the front". He doesn't get a name in the paper but he vividly describes the scene.

He says: "It was dotted here and there with shell holes and during the progress of the game shells were bursting not far away on both right and left.

"The game was keenly followed by men of the companies concerned, with aeroplanes hovering over and around - an old game in a new setting."

Jack Morphet and his team mate on that day, Lance Corporal Arthur Parker, had been members of Settle cricket team in 1914 and posed in a winning for a photograph taken in 1914 in front of the Settle club pavilion. Jack was not to see the war out. Shortly after the memorable match he was to died in Flanders.

That long ago game, which revealed so much of the spirit of the men who endured the horrors of trench warfare, is to be commemorated on June 12 at Settle Cricket Club with a game between Skipton and Settle. Jack's great-great nephew John Morphet will be at the match and will bring Jack's cricketing memorabilia.

Jack's colleague, Nicholas Geldard, who was 25 when he joined up, kept a diary throughout the war during which he was wounded twice and was awarded the Military Cross and the Distinguished Service Order. His two sisters, Elizabeth and Sarah, and his future wife Olga Wilson, all served during the conflict.

He describes the scene of the cricket match in his diary. "There was a shell hole within 20 yards of the wicket and trenches dug 30 yards away but the chief bunker was the ditch around the field about six to ten feet wide in parts and not 40 yards from the pitch.

"We had continual stoppages to fish the ball out. One smack landed over the ditch into the bombardment afore mentioned and went into a cellar opening.

"It was full of water and had a dead horse or a cow in so that movement made the stench horrible. I was nearly sick. We lost the ball. However, we managed to beat them. We made 97 and they 22."

The next day the troops were back in the trenches which were very crowded. Nicholas writes in his diary : "I could hardly get enough room for all my men to stand up at once. The dug-out accommodation was poor. Mac and I shared a dug-out. It had been the signallers' and was well away from the trenches. Unfortunately, when it rained the roof had not enough slope and buckets-full of water fell into the middle."

On the bright side they had a dining room and space for a "real table". Chairs were a barrel and a heap of sand bags."

It is thanks to Mr and Mrs C Weston, of Cappleside, we have been able to use out-takes from Nicholas's diary.

Kate Croll, who along with Janette Talbot, is helping to curate the Chronicles of Courage exhibition at The Folly, Settle, as part of the Craven and the First World War project, said: "We hoped to hold the cricket match last year to mark the 100 years but it was not possible but 101 years is better than not commemorating it all."

The photograph of the 13 men posing in front of bell-tents when training with the territorial before the war includes six of the man who played in the 1915 cricket match - Jack Morphet, Charles Parker, Fred Close, John Cardus, Charles Peachey and Arthur Parker.

The group called themselves the Lucky 13 but not so lucky were Charles Peachey, Jack Morphet, William Brassington, John Jackson and John Hepworth who were killed in the conflict.