Tuesday 5th September 1916

Billets south-east of Bailleul

The weather was again vey wet and a quiet day was spent cleaning kit and equipment and making ready for a further move, to billets in Eperlecques, to be made next day. Further British artillery activity was noted overnight.

Cpl. John William Wardman (see 5^th August) was promoted Sergeant.

Pte. John Thomas Brady (see 17^th July) was reported (by Cpl. Heaton and L.Cpl. Kay) as having been “absent from roll call 7.30pm until reporting at 9.30pm”; on the orders of Lt. Dick Bolton (see 4^th September), he was to be confined to barracks for seven days.

Capt. John Atkinson (see 21^st August), left the Battalion, having been taken ill, suffering from trench fever.

Enquiries continued regarding 2Lt Roland Herbert Wyndham Brinsley-Richards (see 29^th August) who was officially reported ‘missing in action’ following the attack on Munster Alley. A statement was taken, at no.3 Canadian General Hospital, Boulogne, from Pte. John Edmund Popplewell, who was a member of ‘D’ Company. Accoridng to Popplewell,

“Lt. Brinsley-Richards went up with a bombing party out of our Munster Trench. I was with a machine gun section close by and saw him start. I didn’t see him hit, but word was passed down the line. It was in no-man’s land near the German trench. The other machine gun section behind him must have passed him as they went on and took the German trench, and that bit of it we have never given up since”.
Pte.Popplewell was subsequently transferred to the Tank Corps.

Lt. Roland Herbert Wyndham Brinsley-Richards

Luther McKechnie was killed in action whilst serving as a fitter with “A” Battery, 156^th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery near Montauban on the Somme. He was the younger brother of Sarah Tilbrook (nee McKechnie) whose husband, L. Cpl. Raymond Douglas Tilbrook (see 20^th December 1915) had been among the first men of Tunstill’s Company to have been killed in action. Luther McKechnie is buried at Dartmoor Cemetery, Becordel-Becourt.

Pte. Robert Ellis Clayton (see 11^th July), who had been in England since having been wounded in July, was discharged from Epsom War Hospital; he would have ten days’ leave before reporting to 83^rd Training Reserve Battalion, based at Gateshead.

Sgt. Edward Hunter (see 11^th August), serving with 11DWR at Brocton Camp, Staffs. having been in England since having been wounded in March, was formally discharged from the Army as no longer physically fit for service on account of nephritis; he was awarded an Army pension of £1 9s. per week, to be reviewed after six months.

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