Saturday 13th November 1915

Billets in Estaires

The Battalion received orders to re-join 23^rd Division the following day.

Pte. Barker Stott (see 15^th August 1914), one of the Keighley recruits who had been added to Tunstill’s original volunteers died in hospital in Merville. At some point (the exact date is unknown) he had suffered a seemingly innocuous injury to his hand from a rusty nail. However, he had subsequently contracted tetanus and died in hospital; he was twenty years old. He was buried at Merville Communal Cemetery.

A serious accident occurred at the 69^th Brigade bomb school, resulting in the deaths of three men and leaving twenty others wounded. One of the men killed was from 10DWR; he was Sgt.Charles McCusker (see below) and he would be buried, alongside the two men from 11^th West Yorks who were killed, at X-Farm Cemetery, La Chapelle d’Armentieres. At least one of the men wounded was also from 10DWR; Pte. Tom Bradley (see below) was evacuated to 70^th Field Ambulance but died of his injuries and would be buried at Erquinghem-Lys Churchyard Extension. It seems likely that another of the men wounded may have been Pte. Thomas Richard Raylor. His surviving service record is incomplete but it does note that he had suffered severe head wounds and was transferred, on 15^th November, from 14^th General Hospital at Wimereux to 13^th General Hospital at Boulogne.

Charles McCusker was a 34 year-old tram driver from Halifax; he was married and had one daughter. Tom Bradley was a 19 year-old woolcomber from Bradford.

Sgt. Charles McCusker