13 January

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Other dates

Lonsdale Battalion events that took place on 13 January.
For events that took place elsewhere, see 13 January on The Great War wiki.

1915 (Wednesday)

• Lt-Col. Machell to E Company: "I hear that some of the recruits E Company have been wearing the same shirt for a fortnight. Please see that full allowance of shirts, socks etc. for all recruits is drawn from the Quartermaster’s Stores as soon as possible."
• Letter from the Local Government Board: "The accommodation provided for the military at Blackhall Farm is not of a satisfactory nature... The men at the farm sleep in a number of loose boxes which differ somewhat in size and construction. None of them are efficiently ventilated, some have very imperfect means of ventilation and others no means of ventilation with the exception of the door which is probably closed in the night. Some 6 or 7 men generally occupy each loose box. I roughly measured two of them and found that the entire space available for each man in one loose box was about 200 cubic ft, while in the other it only amounted to about 160 cubic ft. I think that the conditions at Blackhall Farm are such as to be prejudicial to the health of the men and that no time should be lost in providing more suitable accommodation either by the erection of huts or otherwise."
• Progress report on huts: C Company arrived from Kendal 5th instant and is accommodated in four huts 90’ x 20’ just completed. New Latrines will be ready this week. Drying rooms for 3 Companies will be ready in about 10 days. Ablution rooms for 2 Companies within 1 week. Officers’ mess nearing completion. A second block of officers’ quarters nearing completion.
• Deprivation of Lance Corporal stripes: O’Toole (13882) and G. Lister (13740)
• Punishments: H. Weightman (15276) and G. Tomlinson (13447) are given 7 days’ detention.

1916 (Thursday)

• Battalion situated in the F1 sector near Aveluy. One man is wounded.
• Quote: "McKerrow (Lieut.) was out with a small patrol, bumped into sniper—all Germans started to shoot—McKerrow told the men to crawl, and got back with corporal and two men. Two other men were missing; they lost their way, keeping too much to the right, climbed carefully over what they thought was our parapet, and found good steps inside, trenches 12 feet deep, all well walled up, and the floors boarded, clean and dry. One said to the other, These ain’t our [?] trenches! - saw a fine dug-out, and wanted to throw a bomb in, and the German wire had been so awful to get through they knew they wouldn’t be able to. They just had time to skip up on top of the parapet when 40 men passed within a yard of them. They got through the wire with some noise, the Germans firing as the wire rattled, but got back safely." – Lt-Col. P. W. Machell

1917 (Saturday)

• Battalion in billets at Courcelles supplying working parties when carrying in trenches.
• One Company remains at Colincamp for working party, one Company in trenches O.P. dugouts.
• Deaths: Walter Ousby (27995 Pte.)

1918 (Sunday)

• Battalion situated at Tournehem. Church services.

Notes

References

Acknowledgements

Various sources contemporary to the war have been used to compile The Lonsdale Battalion On This Day. The majority of the events shown on this day (13 January), including any supplementary notes, enlistments and statistical data etc., have been primarily sourced from the Lonsdale Battalion War Diary (November 1915 to June 1918), Record of the XIth (Service) Battalion (Lonsdale) and abridged material from Timeline and Chronology of the Lonsdale Battalion (September 1914 - May 1915), which are sourced from the original DLONS/L/13/13 Lowther Estate Archives. Events from that chronology are reproduced here with kind permission of Jim Lowther (2016). They are identified and referenced separately by their unique DLONS numbers. Please do not publish these events without prior permission from the Lowther Estate. All casualty names, numbers, ranks, date of deaths and places of burial/commemoration have been sourced from Soldiers Died in the Great War 1914-19, Volume 39, The Border Regiment and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database respectively.