Tuesday 25th July 1916

Bivouac at Millencourt

In the evening new orders were received for the Battalion to move the following morning. The move had been anticipated by 2Lt. Bob Perks (see 24^th July) in a letter to his father (I am greatly indebted to Janet Hudson for her kind permission to quote from Bob Perks’ letter),

Dear Dad

Thanks so much for a parcel (July 21) which I recognised as yours before I opened it.  The razor blades were particularly welcome as I was shorter than I thought and the crisis came this morning when I had to borrow someone else’s safety!   The envelopes too were becoming very necessary though the crisis in that case was overcome for the time being by a small enclosure in Mother’s letter and a very small supply we managed to buy locally.  The magazines are in great demand in this sitting down game and I am becoming quite a lending library outside the company.

Our stay here originally thought to be a night or so seems to be lengthening into quite a pleasant little sojourn.  There is great probability of a move tomorrow but I think  even then we are not destined to go right into it just yet. 

I have been re-reading Mother’s letter today and feel very glad if as she says, she can’t realise all the horrors.  I am beginning to wonder if I did not dwell too much on them but it does me good sometimes to tell you all about it and to know you know.  I expect too if I did not tell you all about it you would want to know.

We are having quite a cheery time here.  One regiment in our Brigade held very good sports yesterday.  There were some very amusing races like a mule race etc.  I saw the Jennings twins there.  One of them is with the corps signals now.  He told me all the Jennings were going strong.  I am afraid Foster Greenwood was killed on the 15^th but I am not quite sure.  Martin’s college contemporary of our battalion died of wounds.  He was a good chap (This refers to 2Lt. Christopher Snell, see 18^th July, who, on 15^th July, had died of wounds received in action on 5^th July; like Bob’s brother, Martin Perks, Snell had been a graduate of Wadham College, Oxford).

I was feeling the effects of something I had eaten yesterday, (we are feeding very well now much too well for the exercise we take) but am quite alright today apart from now very occasional memories caused by a completely strange mess. 

Much love to both,

Bob

2Lt. Bob Perks

(Image by kind permission of Janet Hudosn)

2Lt. Christopher Snell

Ptes. Rennie Hirst (see 3^rd May), Edward Isger (see 23^rd June) and George Mitchell (see 7^th June) were appointed Lance Corporal. Ptes. William Duffy (see 17^th June 1915), John Matthewson Richard Grieves (see 2^nd January) and William Hutchinson (see 5^th July) were appointed (unpaid) Lance Corporal.

Walter Morrison, who had played such a prominent role alongside Gilbert Tunstill in the original recruitment campaign and who had continued his financial support for the Company via the Craven Comforts Fund, wrote to Geraldine Tunstill. His letter was clearly in response to news he had received from her, about the recent actions in which the Company had been engaged.

Malham Tarn

Langcliffe
Settle

25th July 1916

Dear Mrs. Tunstill

A splendid letter on a splendid theme. I found it here on my arrival from London after post time. It is a glorious record and you and he may well be proud and so may the district in which his company was raised. But the national character has shown itself nearly everywhere and amongst all classes except the conscientious objectors and a few pro-Germans. Our average soldiers are as good as the Elizabethans and the Yorkshires have come out grandly like the rest. We may well be proud of our local brigade and you will be proud of the locals who were raised by your husband and yourself in your singularly modest and efficient way of doing your bit in recruiting.

But it must be a time of terrible anxiety though I hope that the worst of the war is over.

Tennyson talks of drinking delight of battle with your peers and your husband explains it to effete people like myself who have never felt it; but I fancy that the feeling is not uncommon among the allies. We are a warlike people by nature and not like the Germans by kind; the raw recruits, fresh from England, as the men who have been under discipline in the war zone for a year.

I wonder what the Kaiser thinks now of our contemptible little army? He and Haldane have done us a gigantic service; they have restored our self-respect, and further, the army will prove to be unconscious (word unclear) of a higher moral tone in all departments of English life as unconscious modest heroes. Pray use the enclosed cheque £100 for repairing damages among the heroes in whom you take a special interest; damages in health, damages to clothing; I hope the canteen flourishes.

Yours truly

W. Morrison

Pte. Edward Wood of 10DWR, though not of Tunstill’s Company died of wounds (presumably suffered at some point in the actions of the previous three weeks) at no.8 General Hospital. He was buried at Bois-Guillaume Communal Cemetery, Rouen.

Six new subalterns arrived in France, en route to join 10DWR as replacements for the officers lost in the recent engagements.

2Lt. Ernest George Costello was 32 years old (born 16^th June 1884). Before the war he had been working as a chartered accountant and had also served four years (1909-13) in the territorial army, with the Honourable Artillery Company. He had attested in December 1915, having previously been “recommended for a commission in the ASC by the President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants”; having heard nothing further on this he had formally applied for a commission and, having completed his officer training, had been posted to 11^th (Reserve) Battalion DWR, based at Brocton Camp, Staffs. On 6^th May at the Parish Church, Streatham, he had married Margaret Charlotte Curtis.

2Lt. Stanley Currington, was 24 years old (born 2^nd November 1891). He was the eldest son of John Thomas Currington who ran a decoraring business in Tottenham; before the war Stanley had been working as a solicitor’s clerk. He had been commissioned Second Lieutenant on 29^th June 1915.

2Lt. David Lewis Evans was 22 years old (born 14^th August 1893), the son of a Welsh non-conformist minister and a graduate of University College of Wales, Aberystwyth.

2Lt. Howard Thurston Hodgkinson was 25 years old (born 19^th October 1890). Before the war he had been a farmer growing hops near Evesham, Worcestershire. In October 1912 he had joined the territorial army, serving with the 8^th Battalion, Worcestershire Regiment. On the outbreak of war he had been called up for service and promoted Lance Corporal. He had served with the 2/8^th Battalion Worcestershire Regiment, in England, until November 1915 when he was granted a commission.

2Lt. Frederick William Millward was 19 years old (born 21^st November 1896). Shortly after the outbreak of war he had enlisted with King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and had been promoted Lance Corporal in December 1914. In July 1915 he had applied for a commission and was posted to 11DWR with effect from 7^th August. However, on hearing about Millward’s application, his old Headmaster, Charles Brittain, Normanton Grammar School, had written to the War Office, questioning Millward’s suitability for appointment to a commission. Writing on 21^st August 1915, Brittain wrote:

Dear Sir

I understand that F.W. Millward, who joined 2^nd/4^th KOYLI in December last as a Private either has received or is about to receive a Commission in His Majesty’s Army.

I protest against the appointment. Millward left school in December last in extremely suspicious circumstances, which I have since reported to his C.O. (Col. Hird). I also informed Colonel Hird that in the opinion of the staff of this school, Millward was quite unfit in any way to become an officer. I myself flatly declined to sign his application form, as I had told Colonel Hird I should. In spite of this, to my great surprise, he is apparently to be appointed.

I am perfectly willing to be quite open about the circumstances of his leaving school if requested and I feel most strongly that my letter to Colonel Hird ought not to have been ignored.

Having received such a strongly-word letter, the War Office wrote to Mr. Brittain asking for details of his objection. In response, writing on 28^th August 1915 and marking his letter as ‘private and confidential’, Brittain wrote:

Dear Sir

Millward passed matriculation in July 1914 and returned to this school in September last as a scholarship pupil. Early in the term rumours kept coming to me that he was the father of an illegitimate child. Knowing how lying tales are spread, I at first ignored these stories, but after being several times pointedly asked why I did not take action to protect the reputation of the school, I asked Mr. R.C. Williamson, of Green and Williamson, Solicitors, Wakefield, to look into the matter. This he did, and found that there had been a child born to a girl who had lived in Millward’s father’s house. The father is a lower-grade railway man, who is apparently more often than not “on the club”. He had “befriended” the girl and given her a home – on his wage, a small one.

My solicitor told me he had enough evidence to secure the girl a verdict in any police court if she prosecuted Millward junior, but all of them denied that Millward was father of the child. Nevertheless when the Governors of this school suggested to Millward senior that it would perhaps be as well if the son left the school, he at once withdrew him and the boy enlisted. He was thus not expelled from school and we could not formally prove his guilt.

At the same time I consider him by no means a fit person to be an Officer, in spite of considerable intellectual gifts. I have no animus against him, but I do feel that his appointment is derogatory to the dignity and importance of Commissioned Rank and prejudicial to recruiting in this area where his unsavoury antecedents are notorious.

The whole staff of the school agree. We have over 100 Old Boys in the Army (over 30% of the whole) and Millward is the last in our opinion who should have received a Commission. I do not know who signed him up for “moral conduct”, but I fear it was someone who did not know him very well.

Having considered the circumstances and noted that Millward’s “moral conduct” had been certified by Mr. John F. Sanderson, J.P., a War Office official noted on file that, “The case is one of suspicion only; nothing is proved or has been. I do not propose to take any action in this case”. This decision was then communicated to Brittain in a letter dated 11^th September.

2Lt. John Keighley Snowden was aged 24 (born 16^th January 1892). He was the third child of the novelist and journalist James Keighley Snowden and his wife Agnes. He had applied for and been granted a commission in August 1915.

Pte. Andrew Aaron Jackson, who would later be commissioned and serve with 10DWR (see 6^th June), serving with 27^th Battalion Royal Fusiliers at Portobello, near Edinburgh, was admitted to 2^nd Scottish General Hospital, Craigleath, with a puncture wound to the armpit, suffered as a result of an accident.