Saturday 14th April 1917

Scottish Camp, south-west of Brandhoek

At 7.40pm the Battalion left their billets to relieve 8^th Yorks and Lancs in the front line trenches in the Hill 60 sub-sector, opposite the Caterpillar, south of the railway cutting. The main body of the Battalion met their guides at 9pm near Kruistraat, south-west of Ypres and the detachment who had been based for the previous three days at Zillebeke Bund (see 11^th April) were guided in directly from there. On arrival, two Companies, ‘A’ under Capt. Dick Bolton (see 10^th March) and ‘C’ under Capt. Alfred Percy Harrison (see 11^th April) went into the front line from the railway cutting south west to I.34.b.7.8. ‘B’ Company was in close support in the sunken road at I.28.d.3.3 and ‘D’ Company was held in reserve with two platoons at Railway Dugouts (I.28.d.9.9) and two at what was known as SP9 (I.28.a.6.4). The relief was not completed until 3.15 am on 15^th.

Pte. Richard Marsden (see 19^th November 1916) reported sick, suffering from influenza. He would be treated first at no.10 Casualty Clearing Station, before being transferred, via 133^rd Field Ambulance, to no.32 Stationery Hospital at Wimereux.

Pte. Edwin Wood (see 14^th February), who was in England having been wounded, was married, in Halifax, to Amy Lumb.

After spending the previous seven weeks at 3^rd London General Hospital, Wandsworth being treated for a corneal ulcer to his left eye, Pte. Frederick William Wilman (see 22^nd February) was discharged. He was allowed ten days leave, on the completion of which he would report to 3DWR at Tynemouth.

Frank Hird, Church Army Commissioner, Third Army and elder brother of Lt. Frederick Hird (see 19^th October 1916) who had been killed at Munster Alley in 1916, wrote to the War Office regarding the administration of his late brother’s estate. No payment of Frederick Hird’s outstanding pay and allowances had yet  been made due to the uncertainty over Hird’s marital status. Frank Hird now told the War Office,

“My late brother, Lt. Frederick Hird, was divorced by his wife in 1914, before he entered the Army … The address in his papers is that of my own house which, after his divorce, was my brother’s home in England, and which he asked permission to put down in the War Office papers as his address. He also told me that he had entered his name upon his enlistment in the Coldstream Guards in August 1914, as unmarried, he then being divorced … Since he died intestate, I am his heir and the only surviving member of his family”.