Saturday, 6th February 1915

Tunstill's Company remained in training at Eversley.

Pte. Charles Smith (12380) was reported by Sgt.Edward Hunter (see 30^th October 1914) as ‘drunk and creating a disturbance in his barrack room at 9.30pm’; he would be ordered to be confined to barracks for four days. Charles Smith was a 30 year-old labourer; originally from Hull, he had enlisted in Huddersfield in September 1914.

Ptes. Patrick Conley (see 17^th January), Thomas Riding (see below) and Ernest Wilson (11751) (see below) were reported for “making a complaint in an irregular manner”; their offence was reported by Acting CQMS Thomas Doyne (see below) and Acting CSM William Henry Mears (I am, as yet, unable to make a positive identification of this man). On the orders of Col. George Rainier Crawford (see 25th January) they were all to be confined to barracks for ten days. 

Thomas Riding was 21 years old and from Darwen, where he had worked as a carter. He had enlisted in Halifax on 9^th September 1914 and had been posted to the newly-formed 10DWR nine days later. He had married Mary Almond in May 1914. Ernest Wilson was a 28 year-old labourer, originally from Bradford, but living in Keighley; he was married with two daughters and had previously served with 3^rd (territorial) Battalion. Thomas Doyne was born in Celbridge, County Kildare, and was a career soldier who had first joined the Duke of Wellington’s in 1881. Doyne served much of his time abroad in Nova Scotia, Bermuda, Barbados, South Africa, and in India rising to the rank of Sergeant on 24th June 1897. In 1899 he had married Bridget O’Hara at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Bangalore, India and had retired from the army in 1907 after 20 years service. He returned to Dublin, living at 2 Irvine Cottages, where he worked with the LNWR as a labourer. Although in his fifties and an army pensioner he joined up at the outbreak of war. He had then been an original member of 10DWR, having officially re-enlisted on 9^th September 1914.

Pte. William Johnson Simpson, serving with 12^th West Yorks, was promoted Lance Corporal; he would later be commissioned and serve with 10DWR. He had enlisted on 21^st September 1914, aged 28 (born 3^rd April 1886). He was the eldest of three surviving children of John Richard and Annie Elizabeth Simpson; three other siblings had died and his father had died in 1897. William had been working as a joiner before joining up and was still living with his widowed mother in Bishopthorpe, near York.