Tuesday 23rd January 1917

Front line trenches in Sanctuary Wood (I.24.b.2½.8½ to I.24.b.8½.3½)

Another freezing cold, but generally quiet, day. A large raid was carried out by 70^th Brigade further south but “enemy retaliation was very weak”.

The four new subalterns (2Lts. George Patrick Doggett, Arthur Neill, Charles George Edward White  and Stanley Reginald Wilson) who had arrived in France four days earlier (see 19^th January) now reported for duty with the Battalion.

2Lt. Stanley Reginald Wilson

Image by kind permission of Henry Bolton

CSM William Jones MM (see 6^th October 1916) left for England to be posted to the Regimental Depot in Halifax; the reason for his departure is unclear.

Battalion C.O., Lt. Col. Robert Raymer (see 2^nd January), currently in temporary command of 69^th Brigade, wrote to 23^rd Division HQ to submit and recommend an application for a commission by RSM John William Headings (see 6^th December 1916). Raymer wanted Headings to be commissioned so as to be appointed Quartermaster to 10DWR, in place of Lt. Daniel William Paris Foster (see 7^th January), who had been on sick leave in England since mid-November and had recently been declared unfit for further service.

Lt. Col. Robert Raymer

RSM John William Headings (standing), with his brothers, James Lawrence and Henry George.
(Image by kind permission of Jill Monk)

Lt. Daniel William Paris Foster

Image by kind permission of the Trustees of the DWR Museum

2Lt. Charles Archibald Milford (see 21^st January), was posted from 34^th Infantry Base Depot to No.1 Training Camp Base Depot at Etaples.

2Lt. Tom Pickles (see 29^th December 1916), formerly of Tunstill’s Company, but currently ill while on home leave from 9DWR, returned to Queen Mary’s Military Hospital, Whalley to attend a further Medical Board. The Board found that he was quite unfit for duty because of ‘severe rheumatic pain in the back, and especially in the stomal region; also from bronchial catarrh; the pain being much aggravated by the cough’. The Hospital advised him to seek hospital treatment.

Driver Harry Metcalfe, who had been one of Tunstill’s first recruits but had quickly been transferred to the ASC (see 15^th December 1914), was home on leave and was married to Annie Ethel Wooler at St Mary’s Church, Long Preston.

Dvr. Harry Metcalfe and his wife, Annie

Image by kind permission of Alan Metcalfe

Capt. William Norman Town (see 11^th January), wrote to the War Office with regard to his failure to receive any information regarding his appearance before a Medical Board which he had been due to attend the previous day. He confirmed that he had written to them with news of his current address, but “As I have so far received no orders and there is a possibility of my letter or the order having been lost in the post I thought I ought to repeat the information”.


A payment of £2 16s. 5d. was authorised, in respect of pay and allowances due to the late Pte. Wilfred Lawson Oates (see 27^th October 1916), who had been killed in action in October 1916; the payment would go to his father, Arthur.

Pte. Wilfred Lawson Oates

Lt. Hamlet Unitt Lavarack, brother of the late Lt. Adolph Keith Lavarack (see 27^th July 1916), who had been killed on 5^th July 1916, submitted the certificate declaring that his brother had left no will and that, with his mother still alive (his father had died in 1914), there was no need for letters of administration for the management of his estate.

Lt. Adolph Keith Lavarack