Wednesday 26th July 1916

Bivouac at Millencourt

The men were up early, with tents struck and ready to be loaded by 6 am and officers instructed to see their kit ready for loading by 7.30. The men were ordered to wear their steel helmets and carry their caps in their packs. At 8.20 the Battalion moved off, marching by Company, headed by Tunstill’s Men, and with one minute between companies as far as Albert. From Albert to the chateau at Becourt, where they were due to arrive at 11 am, the men marched by platoons. At Becourt Chateau they were met by their guides who directed them to their positions in trenches north-west of Becourt Wood, in what had been the area of the British front line on 1^st July.

Around this time (though the exact date has not been established) Pte. Leonard Fox (see 13^th January 1915) was permanently transferred from the Battalion to join 255^th Tunnelling Company, Royal Engineers.


Cpl. Fred Hopkinson (see 20^th December 1914) was admitted, sick (details unknown), to Keighley War Hospital; in the absence of a surviving service record I am unable to establish when, or under what circumstances, he had returned to England having been posted to France with 10DWR in August 1915.

Pte. Fred Dyson (see 24^th July), who had been at 34^th Infantry Base Depot at Etaples for the previous week, awaiting posting to 2DWR, was promoted Acting Lance Corporal and attached instead to 23^rd Northumberland Fusiliers. This Battalion (widely known as 4^th Tyneside Scottish) had been devastated during their attack on the village of La Boiselle on 1^st July; the Battalion War Diary reported that, on 2^nd July, “roll call was taken and only about 100 men answered their names”. The Battalion was in now in process of being rebuilt and Dyson was one of more than 300 men who joined the Battalion in late July. He would later be commissioned and serve with 10DWR.

Capt. William Norman Town, who would later serve with 10DWR, was admitted to St. Andrew’s Hospital, Malta, having suffered an attack of malaria. He was then attached to 12^th Battalion, Cheshire Regiment. Town was 39 years old. He had first been commissioned into 3^rd (Territorial) Battalion West Ridings in 1894 and had served nine years before resigning his commission in 1903, by which time he was a Captain and Instructor of Musketry. Prior to the outbreak of war he had been running a paper manufacturing business in Keighley; he was unmarried. Following the outbreak of war he was commissioned Captain with 9DWR in September 1914. He had gone to the Dardanelles in July 1915 as a Staff Captain with 32^nd Infantry Brigade, but had been invalided home in September 1915, having contracted dysentery at Suvla Bay. After recovering, he served with 11DWR in England until March 1916 when he was considered fit for a return to active service and was posted to Salonika; whilst there he had suffered two bouts of diarrhoea before contracting malaria.