Tuesday 4th July 1916

Becourt Wood

Heavy downpours continued throughout the day, and the Battalion remained in their bivouacs in and around Becourt Wood. The War Diary, in its usual understated terms, described conditions as ‘not comfortable’. Meanwhile attempts by 11^th West Yorks and 9^th Yorks to advance the British line towards Contalmaison met with only limited success, with constant bombing attacks by both sides throughout the day.

At 6.45 pm orders were received for the Battalion to be readied to make an assault on the German lines at dawn on Wednesday 5^th July.

Pte. James Pickering (see 10^th June), serving with 11DWR at Brocton Camp, Staffs., was reported as “absent off special pass”; he would be “apprehended by Civil Power at Sheffield on 7^th July”. He would forfeit four days’ pay, but incur no further punishment.

L.Sgt. Mark Allan Stanley Wood, (see 4^th  July) who had been serving with 16^th West Yorkshires, having arrived in England, onboard the hospital ship St. David, was admitted to Salisbury Infirmary, suffering from nephritis (inflammation of the kidney). He would later be commissioned and serve with 10DWR.

Pte. Edgar Frederick Foster, serving with 1^st/4^th Dukes, was killed in action on the Somme. His body was originally buried at Paisley Hillside Cemetery, on the south side of Thiepval Wood, but he was re-interred (in 1920) at Connaught Cemetery, Thiepval. He was the third son (of nine children) of Lt. Daniel William Paris Foster (see 23rd December 1915) Quartermaster, 10DWR. Daniel Foster’s second son, Pte. Lawrence Richard Foster, had been killed in action on 24^th August 1914, while serving with 2DWR; he is buried at Hautrage Military Cemetery, west of Mons.