Harrogate Herald - 7th March 1917
Roll of Honour
Lance Corporal H Bateman, son of Mrs A Lund, 17
Grove Park View, Harrogate, was wounded by a piece of shrapnel going
through his right shoulder on February 13th, and is an inmate of the
Edenbridge Hospital, Kent, where an effort will be made to remove
the shrapnel. The following letter to his mother gives details of
the : My dear Mother, I have just received your welcome letter and
postal order, and thanks very much. I shall be all right now. I can
send out for a few things. It was last Tuesday, February 13th, at 4
o'clock in the morning, that we made an attack on the Germans, and I
was in charge of a dozen men with bombs and bayonets. we got into
the German front line, and I had just got a German prisoner, and
marched him back to the officer in charge, when I got wounded in the
right shoulder, and it became useless for the time being. I have a
large piece of shrapnel just below the shoulder, and the doctor is
trying to get my cold a little better before they operate on me.
Well, I hope you are all well at home. Please write to my brothers
for me, as it hurts to write too much. With best love to you and
Sis.
Lance Corporal Bateman has two half-brothers with
the colours - Private J Lund in France and Private H Lund, who is in
training.
Harrogate Herald - 18th April 1917
Roll of Honour
Lance Corporal Harry Bateman, a native of Harrogate, who spent
several years of his life in the town, whose mother, Mrs A Lund,
resides in 17 Grove Park View, Harrogate, has been wounded. It
appears he afterwards went to British Columbia, for the Victoria
Daily Times says : Mrs Whittall, of 2250 Thistle Street, has
received a letter from Captain (Miss) Isabel M Arnott, Commissioner
of Field Comforts in connection with the Canadian Red Cross, which
relates the fact that Lance Corporal H Bateman is a patient in Ward
19 at Fort Pitt Military Hospital, Chatham, Kent. He was wounded
while serving in France with the 47th Battalion on the 14th
February, and arrived at the hospital two days later. Before coming
to British Columbia four years ago Bateman was an able seaman on one
of His Majesty's battleships, but an attack of appendicitis and
subsequently an operation left him in such a weak state of health
that it was necessary for him to be invalided out of the service,
much to the young man's disgust, for he considered the sea to be his
home. When war broke out, with the presence of ships of war almost
within a stone's throw from home, he immediately joined the
Shearwater, and was afterwards detailed for service on the British
Columbia submarine. It was too slow for young Bateman, patrolling
the Pacific Coast, with little prospect of action. It was the
determining factor in changing his view of the junior service, for
he left the rolling main and joined the 88th Overseas Battalion, and
went to England with that unit, afterwards transferring to the 47th,
with whom he has been at the Front for some time, and until wounded
in the right shoulder last month. Miss Arnott's letter states that
so far the doctor has been unable to take out the shrapnel, and this
has been more or less irritated by a cough and cold on the chest.
She states, however, that he hopes to be able to remove the
fragments of shell, when rapid recovery can be looked for, and the
patient in a position to write to his friends himself.
