Monday, 25th January 1915

Tunstill’s Men, along with the whole Battalion moved to the Eversley area for three weeks’ battalion training. The move clearly provoked a degree of apprehension and unrest, as reported in a letter home by Priestley:

“I am told that Eversley is a very desolate spot and, as the work is very hard, we look like ‘going through it’ …  The whole battalion has come this time and we are living all over the place. Finchampstead and Cressley are adjoining hamlets, one can barely call them villages for there are houses merely scattered here and there, and only a couple of shops for both places. We are living as we can; some in stables and haylofts, barns, coach houses etc, some in a school, and others, including myself, in empty houses. But we are not all together, as at Camberley, but scattered all over the place. God knows how we are going to get anything to eat! They gave us breakfast this morning in barracks, then we walked the 12 to 14 miles here”.

Jonathan Kendall Smith, who had signed up in Ilkley and joined Tunstill’s Company along with the other Ilkley volunteers, died at Connaught Hospital from pneumonia. He was the fourth member of the Company to die in training. He was 26 years old and before enlisting had worked as a farm servant for a number of families in the Ilkley area. He was one of six children of Jonathan and Emma Smith who had farmed land near Askwith; after his father’s death, his mother had kept up the family farm.

Robert Singleton, who had been examined on 20^th January, was formally discharged from the Army on account of his having flat feet, which left him unfit to march any distance. However, Robert Singleton would subsequently re-join the Army. Although the details of his subsequent service have not been established, he is known to have been on active service in Greece in November 1916, from where he wrote a letter home which was subsequently reported in the Craven Herald.

Pte. Arthur Walton (see 30^th December 1914) was reported by Sgt. Henry Carrodus (I am, as yet, unable to make a positive identification of this man) and Pte. Owen (unidentified) as having been ‘drunk in town about 9pm’; on the orders of Col. George Rainier Crawford (see 22^nd January), he would be confined to barracks for 14 days.