Friday 8th February 1918

In billets between Crocetta and Biadene.

Another fine day.

Capts. Dick Bolton MC (see 5^th January) and Paul James Sainsbury (see 7^th January) departed on two weeks’ leave in Italy. They would spend some time on the Italian Riviera, at the resort towns of Rapallo and Ruta, and would also visit Milan, as evident from photographs and mementoes kept by Dick Bolton. (Images by kind permission of Henry Bolton).

Ptes. Henry Grimshaw (see 21^st October 1917), George Allen Holroyd (see 17^th October 1916) and Ernest Townsend (see 23^rd August 1917) departed on two weeks’ leave to England.

Sgt. Lionel Vickers (see 5^th January) and Pte. Frank Dunn (see 29^th October 1917) were reported by, respectively, Sgt. Joseph Bell (see 20^th September 1917; it is not known when he had been promoted) and by Sgts. Joseph Maddison MM (see 8^th January) and Herbert Wheyland (see below) for “loss by neglect of kit”; on the orders of Maj. Edward Borrow DSO (see 22^nd January), commanding ‘A’ Company in the absence of Capt. Bolton (see above) they were to pay for the lost items.
Sgt. Herbert Wheyland had previously served with 2DWR, but, in the absence of a surviving service record I am unable to establish the date and details of his transfer to 10DWR or any further details of his military career.

L.Sgt. Thomas Bulcock (see 1^st December 1917), serving in France with 8DWR, was transferred to 2DWR. 

Pte. Hubert Crabtree (see 2^nd April 1917), serving in France with 8DWR, was transferred to 1^st/6^thDWR.

Ptes. Matthew Henry Jubb (see 30^th January) and Richard Marsden (see 30^th January), serving with 3DWR at North Shields, were posted back to France. They were initially due to join 8DWR, but would instead be re-posted to 1^st/4^th DWR. 

Pte. Daniel Brennan (see 26^th December 1917), who had been in England since having been wounded in October 1916, appeared before an Army Medical Board which recommended that he be discharged from the Army as no longer physically fit for service.

A payment of £2 12s. 2d. was authorised, being the amount due in pay and allowances to the late Pte. Thomas William Jones (see 20^th September 1917), who had been killed in action on 20^th September 1917; the payment would go to his mother, Harriet.

The weekly edition of the Craven Herald published news of the deaths of the two local men killed in the sinking of the troopship Aragon. Memorial services had already beeh held for both Cpl. John Henry Hitchin (see 3^rd February) and Cpl. Harry Wilkinson of the ASC; he was the brother of James Wilkinson jnr. (see 3^rd February).

LONG PRESTON SOLDIER' S FATE – A MILITARY MEDAL HERO

The letters 'R.I.P.', meaning so much to those near and dear to the dead, have once again to be added to the name of a Long Preston soldier - Lance Corporal John Hitchin, of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, youngest son of Mr. and Mrs. John Hitchin, Prospect House, who received official information by telegram from the Records Office at Perth that Lance Corporal John Hitchin "was missing, believed drowned, 30th December 1917." A letter was received by them on Saturday confirming the telegram.

Before joining the Army he was employed in the Settle Branch of the Bank of Liverpool. It will be remembered by many who knew him that he was wounded in the leg whilst fighting in the Arras district in May last year. Whilst acting as messenger he was buried to the neck by shell burst and suffered internal injury, but carried out his task for which he was awarded the Military Medal. After being invalided home he was sent to a convalescent camp at Ballykinlar, near Newcastle, in Ireland. He was on his last home leave in November, and then proceeded to the Ripon Camp, and from there started for the East, the last letter received from him being dated 23rd December, and probably sent from some port of call in the Mediterranean. It is supposed, and almost a certainty, that he was one amongst the many on the ill-fated 'Aragon', torpedoed in sight of Egypt on 30th December.

On Sunday night a memorial service was held in the Long Preston Parish Church, when the local Volunteers were present in uniform, and the church was completely filled by relatives and sympathisers. The Vicar, Rev. R. Shipman, in his sermon, said he thought Lance Corporal John Hitchin was the first to join Mr. Tunstill's Company when recruiting at the beginning of the war. He tried to make good and rose to the opportunity when he won the Military Medal, which was not an easy matter. In his last letter to his father he had said if he did not come back they would know he was trying to do his duty. They could picture him on that boat from which 800 lives were lost, brave to the last. The Dead March was played on the organ, and the Last Post sounded. The flag on the Church tower was at half-mast.

L.Cpl. John Henry Hitchin MM

BOLTON-BY-BOWLAND CORPORAL SUPPOSED DROWNED

On Saturday morning last Mr. J. W. Wilkinson, of the Coach and Horses Hotel, received word that his eldest brother, Corporal H. T. Wilkinson, was missing, supposed drowned on December 30th, and that word to that effect had been received from the Headquarters of the Army Service Corps. Private Wilkinson joined the A.S.C. soon after the outbreak of war and had his first leave last October. He returned for Alexandria at the end of November, and was probably, unfortunately, on the 'Aragon'. Corporal Wilkinson was a very popular lad and many friends will be very sorry at the sad news. He leaves a widow and one child, and was 36 years of age.

A memorial service was held in the Bolton-by-Bowland Church on Sunday morning for Corporal H. T. Wilkinson and Private Dawson Parkinson. The Rector, in referring to the loss said:- "Death, after all, is the common lot of everyone, but to each one death is the entrance into a newer fuller life. The sadness is not the death, but the incompleteness and unsatisfactoriness of our lives. God meant each life to be perfect, therefore He must have some method of completing elsewhere that which is imperfect here. So we shall leave that which is imperfect to enter that which is perfect, and to those who realise what death really means; the entrance into possession, into fuller powers, and wider life, is but the lifting of a latch which opens the door into the bright light beyond. This is what those of whom we are thinking today are experiencing. They both fought for their country - one became a prisoner of war, with all its hardships, the other lost his life on a transport. Now they are at rest." The Dead March was then played by the organist.

Cpl. Harry Wilkinson

There was also a report regarding the ‘adoption’ by the villagers of Gisburn of a prisoner of war in Germany to be supported by donations from the village, the previous recipient having died. The man selected was Pte. John Preston, of 2DWR, who had been taken prisoner during the Battle of Arras in the Spring of 1917; he was the younger brother of Cpl. Joseph Edward Preston (see 29th March 1917), who had been one of Tunstill’s original recruits and had been killed in October 1916.

GISBURN - PRISONER OF WAR

The prisoner of war newly adopted by the village in place of Pte. Parkinson is Pte. John Preston, of the Duke of Wellington's Regiment, who is now in camp at Gustrow in Mecklenburg, Germany, and whose home is in Caton, near Lancaster. The sum of £2 13s. has been sent to Halifax for the month's parcels for him, and it is hoped to hear very noon that they are being safely received. The balance sheet of the fund from September, 1917, when the Knitting Guild's first gift of £4 was sent to Halifax for Pte. Parkinson, to Jan. 31st, 1918, shows the receipts to have been £22 14s. 11d., and the expenditure £19 18s. 2½d., leaving a balance in hand of £4 16s. 8½d.