Harrogate Herald - 2nd May 1917

W H Breare letter

To Private Rex Botting : Private D Y Wake would like your address. If you send it to the Herald Office, Harrogate, I will forward.

Still going strong : So says Private D G Wake, of the Lewis Gun Section, in a letter to Mr W H Breare thanking him for the Herald. I said in my last letter to you, he writes, it has been the source of many hour's enjoyment for me. We are still going strong somewhere in France. I have been out of the trenches about a week, but we are expecting being moved back again any time. However, it is not so bad in the shell holes just now, seeing that the weather is fairly decent. By the way, could you get me the address of Private Rex Botting, as I should like to write to him. Hoping it will be no trouble to you, and wishing you paper every success.

Harrogate Herald - 22nd August 1917

Driver Rex Botting writes : 

Since writing you last, some enormous happenings have taken place out here, of which, no doubt, you are aware. Somehow I am of the opinion that these things will be the deciding points of this colossal conflict. There is not the shadow of doubt that the morale of the Hun armies is daily growing worse. Little wonder, when they have been subjected to an intense and most demoralising fire for some weeks past, which must have filled their very souls with unspeakable terror. However, the rain has been a considerable asset to Fritz, and in all probability saved him from annihilation. Nevertheless, we shall get him again, and very soon, I think. He looks like getting stumped. We have been tremendously busy of late, laying railway tracks everywhere, overcoming obstacles which in pre-war days would have seemed impossible. Doubtless this is the indomitable determination to crush Prussianism that helps our gallant boys to undertake steamily impossible tasks with such a light heart and unconquerable spirits. I receive the precious Herald as regularly

…………………………………….. to complete in the library

Harrogate Herald - 10th April 1918

W H Breare letter

Driver Rex Botting, MT, son of Mr and Mrs T Botting (the father works at Stokes and Peel's), looked in the other day whilst on leave. He has not a Harrogate man, not even a Yorkshireman, with him. About a month ago he met Savage, who used to drive for Mr Herbert Frankling, surgeon, whose name you will at once recognise as that of a very good friend, as he is, indeed, of so many of us. Botting, I pleased to say, brought his wife with him – a clever little woman who has given me a splendid idea. Her husband could not have arrived home when coming on leave without having to stop a night in Leeds but for his wife, who sent to Leeds her bike, and the husband came expeditiously home on that. Now, there is s tip for some of our other Harrogate and district soldiers. Before joining the Army, Botting drove for Dr Thompson, who before the war lived at Beech Lodge, Low Harrogate. The doctor is in the Army now.