Harrogate Herald - 8th December 1915

W H Breare letter

I had Gunner E Purchase in to see me on Wednesday. He is with the 21st Division, and belongs to the second Army Corps. He is a Regular, been five years in the Army. He came from India and landed September, 1914. after 48 hours leave he went across to the Front. He is the son of Mr and Mrs J Purchase, 2 Southville Terrace, New Park, Harrogate. Purchase is one of the finest specimens of a soldier I have ever seen. A well-made powerful fellow, he has one of those kind, open faces, indulgent in its gentleness. He hadn't met many Harrogate boys. He did see Ben Buck and I think Woodhouse, Royal Engineers, is somewhere near him. Purchase called to see Woodhouse's people. Just the kind thing he would do. Purchase has a young brother out in the trenches whose age I'd better not mention. You will remember that his brother, Corporal H Purchase, of the West Yorks Regiment, was, alas! killed in October. May good fortune attend this family, henceforth!

HH - 9th May 1917

Roll of Honour

Mr & Mrs J Purchase, 2 Southville Terrace, Ripon Road, Harrogate, have received information that their fourth son, Lance Corporal Roy Purchase, aged 19, has been wounded in the thigh, and is in hospital in France. It is two years since he went out with the West Yorks for the first time. He has been out three times, and was gassed December 19th, 1915. His brother, Private G Purchase, was killed October 3rd, 1915, in the KOYLI, after being out ten months. Another brother, Corporal Horace Purchase (West Yorks), was invalided home from France at the beginning of this year, and is going on well at a convalescent home in Surrey, while the eldest brother, Gunner Edward Purchase, RGA, has been in Salonica seventeen months, and before that was fourteen months in France, where he went on coming home from India at the outbreak at war.