Description:A studio portrait of Beatrice and Percy Procter with their children Reginald and Geoffrey. The photograph was taken while Percy Procter was either on leave from the Western Front in France or about to be sent to France. He was initially posted to the Scottish Rifles as a private and probably saw active service in the trenches in France or Belgium between 1916 and 1918. Percy was later posted to the Labour Corps in France, a regiment for men no longer fit enough for front line service.
The men of the Labour Corps undertook any labouring task required of them. They built and repaired roads, railways and defences, laid electricity, moved stores and buried the dead. Some Companies were used in forestry or quarrying work or to guard prisoners of war. Other Companies looked after services in the towns and camps where the front line soldiers went for rest when not at the Front. In France and Belgium the men of the Labour Corps often worked unarmed within the range of German guns. A Company would often work for weeks or even months at a time in the most dangerous conditions with only one day’s rest in every seven.
Percy returned and was a shopkeeper in Stoke-on-Trent after the war. Percy had what now would probably be termed post traumatic stress disorder: he suffered nightmares and would never talk about his time in France and sometimes found it difficult to sleep indoors.
At the time of this photograph Percy and Beatrice Procter and their children were probably living at 7, Shelton New Road, Stoke-on-Trent.