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Other dates

Lonsdale Battalion events that took place on 23 March.
For events that took place elsewhere, see our sister project The Great War On This Day

1915 (Tuesday)

Events preceding the Lonsdales' arrival in France

• General Equipment Indent: 2000 dummy cartridges.

1916 (Thursday)

• Hénencourt: 17th Highland Light Infantry relieve the Lonsdales.
• Battalion billets in Dernancourt leaving one company as garrison at Becourt Wood Defences.
• Lt-Col. Machell: “Last night a beastly rifle grenade fell in the middle of a party of our men who were putting out wire. Pitch dark night and a chance shot, as they had no idea anyone was out. It got five. One of my best Sergeants killed dead and another so badly hurt that he died before we could get him back over our parapet. Both personal friends. Harrison, the Captain, is splendid. I was anxious not to have anyone outside, and with another man was laboriously dragging in the Sergeant, when he, Harrison, took him on his back and walked in with him....We have been extremely 'fortunate,' and I believe we are supposed to have done very well all along....so if anything goes wrong at any time we shall have something to our credit in the past.

1917 (Friday)

• Nesle: Parades and marches to points west of Rouy, digging strong points there.

1918 (Saturday)

• Battalion situated in Divisional Reserve along 'Canal Bank.'
• Two companies on range, one is bathing and another on working party duty.

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 (23 March), 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 Please do not publish these events without prior permission from the Lowther Estate.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.