The Incubator, No. 2, October, 1918.

The Incubator was stated to be "the magazine of the 2nd Reserve Battalion, R.N.V.R., 63rd Royal Naval Division Reserves." As such, it is clearly related to other R.N.D. journals such as Dardenelles Dug Out Gossip and The Mudhook. Unlike those efforts, though, The Incubator was a product of the R.N.D.'s home base at Blandford.

By October, 1918, the 63rd Division was naval in name only. Four years of war, and replacements due to the inevitable attrition, meant that the majority of the rank and file were "civilian soldiers." Accoutrements, naval, pattern 1901 and Sea Service Equipment were only (not-so-fond, perhaps) memories, having been long since replaced with Web Equipment, Pattern 1908. However, some vestige must have remained as institutional memory, as the cover below illustrates. This surviving copy is from the Karkee Web Collection. It is quite delicate, and we have not yet been able to safely reproduce it for publication on KW. Our intention, though, is that eventually we will reprint it here.