Thursday 22nd June 1916

Billets at Enquin-les-Mines

Training continued. Having been notified that they would have as little as six hours’ notice of their next move,  all surplus stores, baggage and kit were despatched to the railway station at Berguette in preparation for the move. Meanwhile the opportunity was taken for the men to bathe. Ptes. Charles Lockton (see 10^th March) and Patrick Conley (see 27^th April) were reported by Sgt. Edward Smith (11769) (see below) as, “absent off bathing parade”; on the orders of 2Lt. Christopher Snell (see 5^th May) both were to be confined to barracks for five days.

Edward Smith was a 34 year-old coal miner; originally from Staffordshire, he had been living in Leeds with his wife and their two children.

Brig. Genl. T.S. Lambert, commanding 69^th Brigade, formally confirmed the sentence of the Field General Court Martial held the previous day in the case of Pte. Tom Darwin (see 22^nd June).

Ptes. Fred Brook, Tom Crowther, Albert Ellis and Harold Schofield Hanson were posted to France and would join 10DWR. Fred Brook was 22 years old and from Huddersfield. Tom Crowther was a 37 year-old iron turner from Lockwood, Huddersfield; he was a widower (his wife, Alice, had died in February 1915) with one daughter. He had enlisted in September 1914 and had served in France with 9DWR from September 1915 until being evacuated to England (cause unknown) in March 1916). Albert Ellis was a 37 year-old mason’s labourer from Sowerby Bridge. Harold Schofield Hanson was a 22 year-old textile worker from Huddersfield.

It was noted that 2Lt. William Neville Dawson (see 1^st June), who had been reported as being unfit to continue as a platoon officer, had not yet reported at the War Office, as previously instructed, in order to resign his commission. It seems that the earlier order had not yet been acted upon as Dawson had remained with the Battalion.

2Lt. Arthur Poynder Garratt (see 12^th December 1915), serving with 9^th Battalion Duke of Wellington’s, was “accidentally injured whilst wrestling at Amiens”. 

Pte. Edwin Everingham Ison (see 30^th May), was discharged from hospital having been treated for three weeks at a variety of locations having been taken ill while serving with 1^st Battalion, West Yorkshires.

Edward Everingham Ison, pictured whilst serving with 10DWR

(Image by kind permission of Henry Bolton)