Hood Battalion, Royal Naval Division, Printed War Record, c.1919

The Royal Naval Division was raised in August 1914, mostly from Royal Marines and naval reservists. Its battalions took the names of admirals, and Hood was one of them. The poet Rupert Brooke served in the Hood as a sub-lieutenant and died on his way to Gallipoli in April 1915. Bernard Freyberg won the Victoria Cross leading the battalion at Beaucourt-sur-Ancre on 13 November 1916.

The sheet sets out the battalion’s war entry by entry, from Antwerp and Gallipoli to the Somme, Passchendaele and the advance of 1918. It ends with the return to Dover in May 1919 and an inspection by the Prince of Wales on Horse Guards Parade. At the head is the battalion badge, a Cornish chough on an anchor over the scrolls ‘Steady’ and ‘Hood’. Below the title are Brooke’s lines beginning “If I should die, think only this of me”.

Printed in black within a blue and grey ruled border, with the imprint ‘Gale & Polden, Ltd., Aldershot. 576-s.’ It names 13 November as Regimental Day, in memory of Beaucourt, and so was printed in or after 1919. Light foxing and a faint tide mark to the lower margin. In a broad dark-stained wooden frame.