Carlo Magnoni (1871- 1961), assistant to H.C. Fehr on the Leeds War Memorial, and the sculptor of this memorial after the designs of Sir Mark Sykes who died in the flu epidemic of 1919. The Waggoners Reserve was formed by Sykes before the war as a Territorial Force drawn from agricultural workers in the Yorkshire Wolds as an investment in distributions of food and materiel in any armed conflict. He himself spent the war as a Government Advisor on the Middle East. The iconography of the memorial is as crude and hilariously misjudged as any Raemaeker's cartoon. The Hunnish Hordes chased away by a sturdy Tommy at the Battle of the Marne (not shown here) is worth finding.

The Monument's Inscription reads,

'LT. COL: SIR MARK SYKES. BART: M.P.
DESIGNED THIS MONUMENT AND SET IT UP AS A REMEMBRANCE OF THE GALLANT
SERVICES RENDERED IN THE GREAT WAR. 1914-1919 / BY THE WAGGONER'S RESERVE A
CORPS OF 1000 DRIVERS RAISED BY HIM ON THE YORKSHIRE WOLD FARMS IN THE YEAR
1912 THOMAS SCOTT FOREMAN. CARLO MAGNONI SCULPTOR. ALFRED BARR MASON'.

Several verses by Sykes in the local dialect are also inscribed, e.g.

These steanes a noble tale do tell
Of what men did when war befell
And in that fourteen harvest-tide
The call for lads went far and wide
To help to save the world fro' wrong
To shield the weak and bind the strong.

 

The article reproduced above is from the magazine COURIER, date unknown c1958, and the essay is characteristic of the dull conservatism of the magazine over the decade and beyond.