The Need for Socks

From the Chelmsford Chronicle, 24th March 1916.

SOCKS FOR ESSEX SOLDIERS.

The Hon. Mrs. Alwyne Greville, writing from the Essex County Red Cross and Essex Regt. Comfort Fund Depôt, 84 High Street, Chelmsford, says that last month over 1,300 pairs of socks were sent out to the Front, and now she is requiring urgently 2,000 pairs for the 10th Batt., the 1/5th Essex, and the Divisional Ammunition Column.  Any socks sent to the above address will be most gratefully accepted.

From the Burnley News, 25th March 1916.

IN NEED OF SOCKS.

Several letters from members of the Accrington and Burnley Howitzer Brigade have been received this week, stating that as they wrote one of their batteries was going into action.  One of the writers states that the "Howitzer" men are badly in need of socks, and that there is scarcely a good pair of socks left in the whole brigade.  It is surely only necessary to mention this need, to secure that they receive all they want.  It is one of the glories of the war that our women folk of all ages have never wearied in making comforts for the boys fighting our battles.  

[These appeals for socks - and an earlier appeal published a few days previously in the Western Times - suggest that the need for socks was genuine, and not being catered for by the War Office.  Sir Edward Ward, who had been in charge of co-ordinating the supply of 'comforts' since October, doesn't seem to have caught up yet with it.]