Tuesday 7th September 1915

Wallon Cappell

On 9 am on what would turn to be another very hot day, which was described as “very bad for marching”, the Battalion began a march of a further fourteen miles, through Hazebrouck, to new, and rather less salubrious, rat-infested billets in scattered farms between Vieux Berquin and Oultersteene. The War Diary somewhat obliquely described the new billets as, ‘very different’.

Lt. Robert Stewart Skinner Ingram (see 6^th September), again commented on the difficulties of the march,

“Tuesday, we covered 14 miles. Heat worse than ever. This the Brigade seemed to feel more than the 21 miles. The weight which had to be carried can scarcely be realised ... Very fortunately for me it does not worry me really after the first two or three miles. So after marching about 35 miles in two days, there we are in Flanders, just where we have wanted to be for months”.

Sgt. Herbert Henry Hoddinott (see 12th February), L.Cpl. Harry Clark (see 2^nd August) and Pte. Willis Ryal (see below) were all transferred from 10DWR to 11^th (Reserve) Battalion Duke of Wellington’s, none of them having gone to France with the Battalion. Clark was still under treatment for syphilis, having spent nine days in hospital in August, and would be admitted to hospital in Lichfield the following day for a further eight days’ treatment. Willis Ryal, a member of Tunstill’s Company (having been one of the Keighley recruits added to the original volunteers), had enlisted in Keighley on 22^nd September 1914. He had been working as a collier at the time he enlisted, although he had previously worked as a platelayer on the railways, and had been lodging with a family in Cudworth. He had been taken ill during training, suffering from “V.D.H.” (valvular disease of the heart) and specifically from “aortic regurgitation”.