Description
Object description
An outstanding collection of two ms diaries (167pp and 128pp, November 1916 - December 1917 only) and 370 ms and ts letters (circa 900 folios) to his family in London covering his service on the Western Front as a junior officer in the 18th Battalion King's Royal Rifle Corps (122nd Brigade, 41st Division) from May 1916 up to the attack at Flers during the Somme offensive in September 1916; in various staff appointments in the Division and its component infantry brigades, mainly in the Ypres Salient, from October 1916 - July 1917, including preparations for the Battles of Messines Ridge and Third Ypres (Passchendaele) (August - September 1917); and as an instructor in trench mortars with the British Military Mission to the United States (November 1917 - April 1918). Together with a portrait photograph of Yoxall (late 1917), and a photocopy of a ts letter to his daughter about his journey home in SS PORT CHAMBERS with a description of the voyage across the Atlantic (March 1943). The collection is very useful for a young civilian in uniform's attitude to the war and Army, and for comments on trench conditions, morale, the staff and the American war effort.
Content description
An outstanding collection of two ms diaries (167pp and 128pp, November 1916 - December 1917 only) and 370 ms and ts letters (circa 900 folios) to his family in London covering his service on the Western Front as a junior officer in the 18th Battalion King's Royal Rifle Corps (122nd Brigade, 41st Division) from May 1916 up to the attack at Flers during the Somme offensive in September 1916; in various staff appointments in the Division and its component infantry brigades, mainly in the Ypres Salient, from October 1916 - July 1917, including preparations for the Battles of Messines Ridge and Third Ypres (Passchendaele) (August - September 1917); and as an instructor in trench mortars with the British Military Mission to the United States (November 1917 - April 1918). Together with a portrait photograph of Yoxall (late 1917), and a photocopy of a ts letter to his daughter about his journey home in SS PORT CHAMBERS with a description of the voyage across the Atlantic (March 1943). The collection is very useful for a young civilian in uniform's attitude to the war and Army, and for comments on trench conditions, morale, the staff and the American war effort.
History note
Cataloguer RWAS