A tailor’s bill (T McBride & Son, 62 Pall Mall, London) made out to Wheatley for the purchase of his military uniform with receipt attached. Also, a printed leave pass completed and signed by Wheatley as Commanding Officer, dated 25 October 1916, and stamped “A” Battery 290th BDE. R.F.A. together with 3 sheets of RFA embossed notepaper marked Warren Heath, Ipswich. In his memoirs (Vol.II), The Time Has Come: Officer and Temporary Gentleman, Wheatley recounts: ‘On the Colonel’s recommendation I had gone down with Whittingham to Wilkinson in Pall Mall and a tailor named McBride, where we bought our kit and uniform. Gregson went to his own Saville Row tailor and Davis to a cheap man in the city. Of course, we just took what we were given. Compared with the glory of my full, light-coloured breeches in after years and my lovely tunics, it was a poor drab outfit with which McBride supplied me. The quality was good enough and the style true to that which regulations laid down in the year 1914; but in those days very little civilian imagination had been brought to bear in the tailoring of officer’s uniforms. Our khaki shirts were dark, our Bedford-cord breeches narrow and drab coloured, with nothing of the full cut about them that smart officers required in later years ………… But whatever the shortcomings of that first uniform, I was intensely proud of it and immensely vain’ The 290th Brigade, RFA (Royal Field Artillery) was part of the 2nd Line artillery units of the 58th (2/1st London) Division. It was formed as a reserve/second-line unit to support the 1st Line (1/1st London) Division, which had already been sent overseas. On 15 May 1915 one-sixth of the Brigade went to Warren Heath, Ipswich, where it underwent training and preparation for active service (despite having no artillery and no horses until November). In August 1916 he left Ipswich for Heytesbury on the edge of Salisbury Plain for final training and mobilization. Finally, the 290th Brigade left for France on 20 January 1917 where it joined the British forces on the Western Front - Wheatley had become ill and would not follow until 8 August 1917. Wheatley would, in May 1918, return home after suffering from gas poisoning.