The 4th Battalion Duke of Wellington’s (W.R.) Regt, was under the command of Lieut.-Colonel H. S. Atkinson, T.D., of Cleckheaton, and Major E. P. Chambers, of Brighouse, was second in command. Capt. H. A. S. Stanton, of the Royal Scots Regt., was Adjutant. Though the regular army had recently been reorganised on a four-company basis, a similar change had not yet been made in the Territorial Force, so that the Battalion consisted of eight companies as follows:—
| A Company (Halifax) | commanded by | Capt. V. A. Milligan. |
| B Company (Halifax) | „ | Capt. D. B. Winter. |
| C Company (Halifax) | „ | Capt. D. V. Fleming. |
| D Company (Brighouse) | „ | Capt. R. E. Sugden. |
| E Company (Cleckheaton) | „ | Capt. J. Walker. |
| F Company (Halifax) | „ | Lieut. E. P. Learoyd. |
| G Company (Elland) | „ | Capt. R. H. Goldthorp. |
| H Company (Sowerby Bridge) | „ | Capt. W. A. Laxton. |
All the four companies from the out-lying districts were well up to strength, but the Halifax companies were weak.
On July 26th, the Battalion went to camp at Marske-by-the-Sea for its annual period of training. The time was one of intense anxiety and excitement. On July 28th, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Three days later general mobilisation was ordered by Russia, which produced an immediate ultimatum from Berlin. The next day mobilisation was ordered in both France and Germany; the latter, as is now well known, had been mobilising and concentrating secretly on its French and Belgian frontiers for some days. On August 2nd, the German armies entered Luxembourg, and violated French territory without any declaration of war. Two days later Britain sent its ultimatum to Germany and as, on the same day, German troops entered Belgian territory, war broke out between the two countries at midnight, August 4/5th. Such was the atmosphere in which the Battalion carried out its training at Marske.
The camp should have lasted a fortnight, but it broke up at the end of a week. The Special Service Section of 100 other ranks, under the command of Capt. R. E. Sugden, with Lieut. H. N. Waller as his second in command, was the first to leave. Orders for it to proceed at once to Grimsby arrived during the church parade on Sunday, August 2nd, and it left the same day. It was employed guarding the Admiralty Wireless Station at Waltham, and the water and electricity works. On August 3rd, the men of the Battalion returned to their homes, where they waited in hourly expectation of orders to mobilise. These came on the evening of the following day, and the same night the Battalion was concentrated at Halifax, the men sleeping in the Secondary Schools in Prescott Street. The Battalion was about 650 strong. Scarcely a man had failed to report.
About 1-30 p.m. on August 5th, the Battalion[1] marched down Horton Street to the Railway Station, and there took train for Hull, its allotted station. There was no public send-off. War had come so suddenly that people seemed hardly to realise what was happening. On arrival most of the men were billeted in a big concert hall in the town, the remainder occupying a Working Boys’ Club in one of the poorer quarters, and buildings near the docks. At Hull the men were variously employed. Guards were provided on the docks and at the Naval Signal Station. Working parties were sent out to dig trenches at Sutton, part of the new system of coast defences which was being prepared. Perhaps the most congenial duty was the rounding up of a number of Germans in the district; these were searched—some of them were found to be in possession of revolvers—and were then marched off to S.S. “Borodino,” one of the new Wilson liners, on board of which they were confined. The guard on the vessel was found by the Battalion and this was considered to be a good job.
During these first days of war the ration question was extremely difficult. The carefully planned pre-war scheme had broken down the very first day. The Battalion had no transport, and neither the Quarter Master nor the transport personnel had accompanied it to Hull. Taxis had to be requisitioned to take the place of transport vehicles; food had to be obtained as and where it could be found. Great credit was due to R.Q.M.S. F. J. Cooke and his staff for the way in which they pulled the Battalion through the difficulty. At this time the men were armed with the C.L.L.E. rifle and were fairly well equipped; difficulties of equipment only became serious when drafts began to arrive. About 100 National Reservists joined the Battalion at Hull.
On August 11th, the Battalion was relieved by a Special Reserve Battalion of Lancashire Fusiliers and moved by water to Immingham, where it was stationed at the docks. Here it had its first experience of war conditions. There were no proper billets. The officers all slept on the floor of a granary, a part of the same building doing duty as a Battalion Mess. The men were even worse off, having nothing better than a number of sheds with concrete floors. At Immingham the Special Service Section and the transport personnel rejoined. There, too, the whole of the 2nd West Riding Infantry Brigade, except one battalion, was concentrated. A further draft of National Reservists also joined.
Only two days were spent at Immingham, and then the Battalion marched to Great Coates, where it remained for nearly five weeks. This was the beginning of the long period of intensive training which preceded its departure overseas. The men were billeted in barns, granaries and stables, thus getting an early taste of what was to become their normal mode of life for long periods in France. Training consisted mostly of route marches, and battalion and company schemes. Great attention was paid to musketry. Newly-gazetted officers began to arrive, and further drafts of men brought the Battalion up to full strength before it left Great Coates, though a good many National Reservists were rejected at the medical examination. The weather was perfect. Days of glorious sunshine followed one another with monotonous regularity.
On September 15th, the Battalion went under canvas in Riby Park, where training continued for another month. At first there had been few volunteers for service overseas. Little information was available as to the conditions of service, and few men had yet realised the greatness of the crisis. But when the situation was properly understood they responded to the call well. The Battalion became definitely a foreign service unit. All officers and other ranks who had not volunteered for general service left it, and joined the 2/4th Battalion Duke of Wellington’s Regt., which was being formed at Halifax. About the middle of October, the whole Battalion moved to the neighbourhood of Marsden, in the Colne Valley, to fire the General Musketry Course. Several ranges were used by different companies, but the shooting was much interfered with by the atrocious weather which was experienced there. Here most of the men were inoculated, and leave was plentiful.