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Key dates over October 1914

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Lives lost on this day: 0

8th October 1914 - The need to supply shirts, socks and jackets

2nd Batt: Still entrenched north of Soupir under enemy fire. Major Sweetman, Cptns Gascoyne-Williams & Grimley, Lts Gilson & McClellan, and Lts Riscoe and Sheppard joined the Battalion.

3rd Batt: In billets at Le Plessier.

The Worcester Relief Fund: £3560, including £50 sent by Mr Stanley Baldwin for the Belgian Refugees Fund;

Work for Women Fund: Lord Deerhurst said they had sent up for a grant for material to make shirts and other necessaries, and so provide work for women. In the Worcs Territorial Forces alone were required 1600 shirts, 1600 pairs of socks, 8000 cholera belts, 8000 woollen sleeping caps, and 8000 knitted jackets. The War Office were to supply all those. They had written to the Central Fund asking if the War Office could given them the material, and their working parties make them locally. Lord Deerhurst had tried to get shirts from the tradespeople of Worcester and other places but it was quite impossible to get shirts which were wearable. Ordinary ready-made shirts would not stand up the rough washing they would get at the front.

Pte E Williams, ‘C’ Company, 3rd Worcs Regt, writes: “I would like to give the good people of the Birmingham and Worcester districts our heartfelt thanks and gratitude for the way they are treating us out here. We are receiving all kinds of comforts – tobacco, pipes,cigarettes, socks, and no end of small ‘necessares’ every week. They are shared out between each company and placed on the ground, when all names are put in a cap and shaken up, and each man, as his name is drawn, selects the article he is mostly in need of. I have already received tobacco, socks, postcards, and pencil, and feel very grateful for them, I can assure you.”

Information researched by Sue Redding