A third consecutive wet day. Training continued.
Pte. Fred Slater
was (see 16th January) was
reported absent from parade at 6.15am; he was ordered to be confined to
barracks for seven days on the orders of Capt. Alfred Percy Harrison (see 30th March). The report had been submitted by Sgt. John Scott (see 4th October 1916) and Cpl.
George Wallace Fricker (see 24th March).
Pte. Herbert Newton
(see 22nd March) was
reported by Sgt. Harry Waddington (see 24th March) as having
been “unshaven on parade”; on the orders of Capt. Harrison he was to be
confined to barracks for five days.
Pte. John Jackson
(19555) (see 17th July 1916)
was reported as absent from “6.15pm special parade”; he was reported by Cpl. Joseph Rawnsley (see below) and Sgt. Thomas
Edmund Troop (see 2nd
February) and, on the orders of Capt. Edgar Stanton (see 21st
March), he was ordered to be confined to barracks for two days.
Joseph Rawnsley
was an original member of the Battalion; he was a 39 year-old wire drawer from
Halifax, married with two children.
Cpl. Frank Christelow
(see 19th January) who had
joined the Battalion in June 1916 and had been a member of the Orderly Room
staff, departed for England to begin his officer training.
Brig Genl. Lambert
(see 30th March), in a
letter home to his wife, confirmed the arrival of the commemorative shield
which he had asked her to have made ready for the winners of the Brigade
competitions. “The shield arrived safely and seems to be much admired though
personally I regretted that the engraver had treated my name as the most
important feature whereas it might well have been in smaller type than say some
of our battles! However it is quite a success. Thank you very much for all the
trouble you took about it. I sent an officer over with it to try to get the
name of the winning battalion, the 11th, engraved at Bailleul, but
after a long drive he came back to say that there appeared to be no engraver
nearer than Paris! So the finishing touches will have to wait til later. I
think the idea of the salver on a wooden plaque is rather successful. I am
going to present it on Monday.”
(I am greatly indebted
to Juliet Lambert for her generosity in allowing me access to Brig. Genl.
Lambert’s diary and letters).
Capt. Adrian O’Donnell
Pereira (see 21st March),
currently serving with 3DWR at North Shields, wrote to the War Office to
explain the reasons behind his decision to withdrew his application for a
permanent commission in the Indian Army.
“I have the honour to inform you that my reasons for asking
that my application for a permanent regular commission in the Indian Army to be
cancelled are as under.
1. It is four months since I sent in my application and
owing to altered circumstances during that time I no longer desire a permanent
regular commission in the Indian Army.
2. It is more than two months since I have been passed fit
for general service and I presume that I have not been sent to France on
account of being on the waiting list for the Indian Army.
 |
| Capt. Adrian O'Donnell Pereira |
Pte. Joseph Chandler
(see 3rd March), who had
been reported as a having deserted four weeks’ previously while serving with 3DWR
at North Shields, reported back to his Battalion and was placed in the guard
room to await trial by District Court Martial.
Pte. Jacob Sweeting
(see 14th February) was reported
absent without leave from 83rd Training Reserve, based at Gateshead.
Pte. Alfred Ernest Pass
(known as ‘Alf’), serving in France as a motor transport driver with the ASC,
attached to O Corps Signals Company, Royal Engineers, was posted back to
England to begin an officer training course. He would later serve with 10DWR.
Alf Pass was 21 years old (born 25th June 1895); he was the second
of three sons of Alfred Shakespeare Pass and his wife, Ada May. Alfred snr. was
a ‘music dealer’ and the family lived in Barrow-in-Furness. Alfred jnr. had
been working as a shop assistant and warehouseman before enlisting in May 1915;
he had been posted to the Army Service Corps and had gone out to France on 21st
November 1915. He had spent two short periods in hospital in France, in April
and August 1916 (cause unknown).
Unlike every other month to date, the Brigade War Diary does
not give a list of casualties for the month and the Battalion list only a
single casualty – the death from broncho-pneumonia of Pte. Arthur Slingsby (see 25th
March).
The official cumulative casualty figures for the Battalion
since arriving in France thus remained as:
Killed 157
Accidentally killed 4
Died of wounds 7
Wounded 772
Accidentally wounded 49
Missing 116
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