Penrith Herald 19th December 1914
WITH THE 2nd BORDER AT YPRES
In the course of a letter to his relatives, Private David Wigston, of
the 2nd Border Regiment, now at the front gives some particulars of the
cutting up of the 2nd Border at Ypres. Pte Wigston is a brother of Mrs
R.D. Wood, Chestnut Hill, Keswick.
Writing under the date 1st December, Pte Wigston after detailing what
life in the trenches means, says:- In some of of our trenches they have
issued sheepskin coats and provided us with fire buckets to wash in so
we have nothing to grumble about except when it rains. We are well
provided for with everythingexcept writing paper and envelopes. It is
awful to see the damage that has been done round here, big farms have
been knocked down and things are dying all over the place, furniture
smashed up and everything rummaged. Ypres a Belgian frontier city was
being shelled when we were passing through it, we are now to the south
of the war theatre and are in billets so feel better for a warm bath ,
haircut and general clean up. We expect to go into the trenches again
tonight, I do not think there is much chance of getting home for
Christmas as the Germans are receiving more reinforcements, they have
been ordered to charge through us by the 10th December.
There are not many left in our regiment that I know as we have had very
heavy casualty list at Ypres, only a little over 300 left out of 1,100.
5th December- since begining this letter we have been in the trenches
again, we were inspected by the King on 1st of December and are now in
the same billets again with 500 odd reinforcements, it is very wet
weather here.
Penrith Herald 26th December 1914
Mrs R.D. Wood Chestnut Hill, Keswick, has received a letter from her
brother Pte David Wigston of the 2nd Border Regiment, stating that he
has been wounded. He is now in hospital and is doing well, last week we
published a letter from Pte Wigston which was written in the trenches,
Pte Wigston now writes - " just a few lines to let you know that I am
keeping all right under the circumstances, we had a bayonet charge on
the 19th inst, and I received a slight bullet wound on the right side,
we were repulsed under a enfilading fire from three directions with
medium losses. We are not allowed to give the names of the places. We
joined the battalion at Ypres on the Belgian frontier, dug trenches and
stayed for three or four days on the reserve, we were relieved by the
8th division and marched twelve kilometres to be billeted with French
people at Moteron for eight days, there was only about a quarter of the
original brigade left.
Pte David Wigston 7097 2nd Border Regiment was killed in action 16th May 1915