21 January

Lonsdale Battalion events that took place on 21 January.
For events that took place elsewhere, see 21 January on The Great War wiki.

1915 (Thursday)

French take woods near the farm of Beauséjour, but lose ground in the Bois-le-Prêtre.
Further Austrian attack at the Kirlibaba Pass repulsed.
Lieut-Gen. Erich von Falkenhayn succeeded as German Minister for War by Lieut-Gen. Wild von Hohenborn (see 30 October, 1916). Von Falkenhayn remains Chief of the General Staff (see 29 August, 1916).
British SS Durward sunk by submarine near Maas lightship.
H.M. Ambassador at Washington announces that SS Dacia, if captured, will be placed in a Prize Court.^{[note 1]}

↑ The Dacia, a vessel of the Hamburg-Amerika line, had been lying at Port Arthur, Texas, since the outbreak of war. With the permission of the United States Government, she was bought by an American citizen of German origin, Breitung by name, who purposed to send her to Bremen with a cargo of cotton shipped by American citizens. The destination, however, was afterwards changed to Rotterdam. The point at issue was the validity of the transference to neutrals of vessels belonging to a belligerent. Cotton not being treated as contraband at this time, the British Government offered, if the ship were seized, to purchase the cargo or have it forwarded without charge to Rotterdam.

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 (21 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 Please do not publish these events without prior permission from the Lowther Estate.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.