Thursday 18th November 1915

Billeted in huts near Rue Marle

There was heavy German shelling of Rue Marle and the southern areas of Armentieres, but it was reported that “A great number of the shells failed to explode”. However, at least one man from Tunstill’s Company was wounded in the shelling. Pte. Edmund Peacock had enlisted on 9^th September 1914 and had been one of the contingent of Ilkley volunteers who had been posted to serve with Tunstill’s original recruits. Edmund had been just nineteen when he signed up and had been working as a motor mechanic; his family lived in Nelson, Lancs, where Edmund had been born and it is unclear how Edmund came to enlist in Ilkley, although he may have been living and working in that area.

At 5pm the Battalion relieved 8^th Yorkshires in the same positions that they had occupied a month earlier (see 16^th October); as on the previous tour Battalion HQ was situated at Farm du Biez.

 

When the Battalion went into the trenches J.B. Priestley did not go with them; he had been transferred, temporarily, to work as a clerk at III Corps HQ. Despite the release from the rigours of trench life (see 7^th November) he later recalled that, “Though safe and dry for once, I hated this job and this place, and longed to get back to the men I knew, trenches, shellfire and all”.

A travel warrant was issued to allow Joshua Richmond, brother of Pte. Fred Richmond (see 17^th November), to travel to France to visit Fred who was dangerously ill in hospital in Boulogne.

Ellis Rigby signed his attestation papers in Halifax, but was placed on the Army Reserve, rather than immediately entering service. He was the younger brother (he was 21) of Pte. Thomas Rigby, who had been one of Tunstill’s original recruits (see 18^th September 1914). Like his elder brother, Ellis had been living on the family farm at Lawson’s House, Sawley, but he had been working as a sheet metal worker.