December 1915

A touching story revolves around when the Battery were at rest during December 1915. They were stationed at St Quentin sur Lys and whilst there they made friends with a local barmaid called Rachel Caron. She adopted them and they her. She helped mend their uniforms and sew buttons for them as well as running errands and generally helping the men. At reunions after the war, the Battery always remembered her fondly with affection.

When Harry “Oker” Goldstraw went back to France several years after the war he was deeply upset to find that she had died in 1917 at the age of 21. The cause of her death was never found out by the Battery.

Quite fittingly, Harry discovered that the flowers on her grave were left in a vase made from an 18 pounder shell casing.