Of Immingham, the Battalion has only confused memories of concrete
floors as sleeping places, of endless tours of sentry-go, of its first
experience of strict army rations, and of countless rumours to which
unnecessary credence was given, since the troops had not yet learnt the
tainted source from which such stories rise. Early one morning there
was a particularly strong report of a great battle in the North Sea,
and an officer asked a recruit just coming off duty if he had heard
any firing in the night. “I’m very sorry, sir, it was me!” was the
unexpected reply: “I let it off by accident.”
After about a week the battalion moved into billets at the pleasant
and hospitable village of Healing, near Grimsby. Here they spent a
happy and healthy month, and on Sept. 15th moved into camp in Riby
Park, about four miles further inland. The weather was glorious and
the physique of the battalion improved out of all knowledge. Faces and
arms turned brown, packs and equipment felt lighter, and the marches
over the Lincolnshire downs insensibly grew longer. During all this
time both officers and men had been continually welcoming friends
among the new recruits who came to take the places of those unfit for
active service, under age, or whose circumstances prevented them from
volunteering for work overseas. And when a cold wet spell at the end of
October brought on a welcome move from tents into the warmer shelter of
schools and other billets in Doncaster, it was a strong battalion of
fit men, ready to go anywhere, that marched to the station.
At Doncaster the battalion settled down for the winter and made a vast
number of firm friendships among the inhabitants, who had viewed the
arrival of troops with some apprehension. The Christmas dinner, served
in all the company billets, was a huge success, though there were
already many who were sore that they were not yet in the trenches and
feared that the war would be finished without them!
All this time progressive training had gone on. At Healing the
battalion was alone in the village, and battalion and company drill
were the usual order of the day. Riby was a Brigade camp, and the
presence of the 4th, 5th and 7th Duke of Wellington’s and a battery of
Artillery gave an added rivalry to the quest of military efficiency
and to endurance in long marches. The harvest was now in and field
manœuvres became possible, and the battalion received its initiation
in trench digging. There was a good deal of musketry instruction
and a little firing on an indifferent range. The signallers under
Lieut. A. Slingsby and the machine-gunners under Lieut. B. R. Brewin
improved enormously along their special lines; while the cyclists under
2nd Lieut. “Pedaller” Palmer tested their wind and muscles up the
gradients of Swallow Downs. The Brigade was inspected at Brocklesby by
Major-General Plumer, who was, in a few months’ time, to welcome them
to his own particular salient of Ypres.
At Doncaster musketry practice was more seriously undertaken and,
when the Cantley ranges overflowed, parties proceeded to all parts
of Yorkshire. The field days, under the eye of Major-Gen. Baldock,
commanding the Division, with an added force of Artillery, Royal
Engineers and Divisional Cavalry, were on a larger scale, and the
continual battles of Marr and Rossington Bridge taught officers to
handle men, men to acquire something of an eye for country, and
outposts to keep alert with eye and ear--particularly necessary if
Lieut. Anthony Slingsby and his Scouts were on the opposing side. And
if the night operations caused an annoying interference with more
romantic engagements, they taught lessons in finding the way at night
that proved valuable later on.
In the later stages trenches were dug, and one battalion relieved
another in their occupation by night; billeting schemes were carried
out in the surrounding villages, and the constant alarms of raids or
invasion, which on one occasion brought the brigade scurrying back to
billets from a field day, lent a feeling of reality to the training.
About the same time the Machine Gun Section acquired for a few weeks an
armoured motor-car of enormous dimensions, with which, after spreading
terror and confusion among the children of the neighbourhood, they
proceeded to patrol the East Coast from the Humber to Flamborough
Head, to reassure the inhabitants who had been startled by the raid
on Scarborough. As a fighting machine the vehicle might be open to
criticism, but it possessed two Vickers guns and thus enabled the
section to familiarize themselves with these weapons. It was a lucky
chance, for they next met this gun when a number were dumped upon them,
without further instruction, in the unspeakable trenches of Ypres,
to make of them what use they could. The machine was finally handed
over to a battalion of desolate cyclists, who, in their overflowing
gratitude, addressed the second-lieutenant in charge as “Major” and
took the whole outfit off his thankful hands without a murmur.
In December, 1914, the battalion had been reorganized upon a
four-company, instead of the old eight-company system. The two Skipton
companies (A and B) became A company: the two Keighley companies (D
and E) became D company: Guiseley and Settle (C and F) united to form
the new C company, and Bingley and Haworth (G and H) became B company.
About the same time the cyclists left the battalion to form part of the
new divisional cycling company. The battalion had got nicely settled
into its new dispositions when in April it received the long deferred
order to go overseas.