Walter HOLMES

14 May 1915

EARBY NEWS – Recruiting

For months recruiting has been almost dormant in the Earby district, but a marked alteration has been brought about, partly by the recruiting campaign of last week, when an urgent call for men was given expression to and more pertinently by German barbarity as demonstrated in the sinking of the ‘Lusitania’. This act of wonton destruction of unarmed and innocent lives has been a great incentive to recruiting in Earby, as well as in other parts of the country.

It is computed that about 120 young men have left the town, the majority for active service on the field, although a number have left for Government work at Barrow and in other places. Popular ‘send-offs’ were given to batches of seventy recruits who left on Monday, and about forty who departed on Tuesday afternoon. Weavers temporarily deserted their looms on both days, and flocked to the station to witness the departure of Earby’s latest additions to the defence of the realm.

On Tuesday morning a crowd of about two thousand fold assembled at the station, where the Earby Brass Band turned out and played patriotic airs upon the departure, along with others by the same train of a contingent of Earby Ambulance workers for the Mill Bank Military Hospital, the same destination as that of the seventeen Barnoldswick ambulance men who left by the evening train on the same day. These men have enlisted in the Home Hospital Reserve at Royal Army Medical Corps rate of pay, and include:–

Privates George S. Reeves, Norman Wilson, Neville Watson, Eddie Binns, John R. Smith. Morville Smith, Stanley Starkie, John W. Raine, Bailey Watson, Ernest Hall, Richard S. Thompson, Christopher Clark, Ellison Petty, Walter Holmes, William Watson, Harry Wallbank, Ernest Pickles and Joseph Stacey.

Other recruits have left towards the close of the week, but not in such great numbers as on the first two workdays.

04 October 1918

Kelbrook Man Killed While Tending the Wounded

Pte. Walter Holmes, R.A.M.C., younger son of Mr. and Mrs. Matthew H. Holmes, 10, Colne Road, Kelbrook, is reported killed in action on Sept. 18th. A letter from the chaplain states that he and five others were busily engaged in attending the wounded when an enemy shell burst among them. The writer pays a high tribute to the courage and devotion of Pte. Holmes:– “He was a very gallant son, and the whole unit mourn his death, while they feel proud of his heroism.” Pte. Holmes, who was 23 years of age, joined up in May, 1915, being one of the first batch of Earby ambulance men sent out. The first two years of his service abroad were spent in Malta, before being transferred to France in December last. He was a promising vocalist, and a member of the United Methodist choir, Kelbrook.