Thursday 7th September 1916

Billets in and around Eperlecques

The next three days, in good weather, were spent in musketry practice ‘on the miniature range’, where each Company fired, on average, three hundred rounds, and in associated training. In addition, “Attention has also been paid to cleanliness and improvement as far as possible to general bearing; short route marches and physical training has also been indulged in”.

Pte. James Young McDonald (see 2^nd September), who had been wounded five days previously, was evacuated to England from hospital in Boulogne. On arrival in England he would be admitted to 2^nd Western General Hospital in Manchester.

An Army Medical Board meeting at the Kitchener Hospital in Brighton reported on the case of Capt. George Reginald Charles Heale MC (see 20^th August) who had been evacuated to England for treatment to the boils to his neck which had been troubling him for the previous few weeks. The Board found that, “about the beginning of August he developed boils on the back of the neck which improved under treatment but relapsed on 14^th August and formed one large suppurating sore in the nature of a carbuncle. He was admitted to this hospital on 20^th August with an open suppurating sore which has now nearly healed but there is still a good deal of thickening and stiffness of the neck”. He was declared unfit for any service for one month, on the expiry of which he was to be re-examined.

Capt. George Reginald Charles Heale

  

2Lt. Philip Howard Morris and 2Lt. Fred Helliwell Baume (see 3^rd September), who had arrived in France a few days earlier, reported for duty with 10DWR; Morris would join Tunstill’s ‘A’ Company.