2 February

Lonsdale Battalion events that took place on 2 February.
For events that took place elsewhere, see our sister project The Great War On This Day

1915 (Tuesday)

Letter from Marie Fox of Carlisle: "I beg to offer you my services as French Teacher to your men ... I could arrange to come during the day. Having coached many officers & men for the Army it would give me great pleasure to continue my work." ^[1]^[2]
H.C. Wortley (17394) of A Company and G.B. Robinson (15468) of C Company are discharged on medical grounds.^[3]
John Armstrong (17352) of D Company is appointed Lance Corporal in A Company, responsible for Battalion Transport.^[3]
Enlistments to E Company: W.G. Harding (17565), G. Studholme (17566), R.W. Wilkinson (17567), J. Smith (17568), J. Sinclair (17569), Ernest Graham (17570), G.C. Hopkins (17571).^[3]

Aveluy: In reserve at providing fatigue duty for the Royal Engineers.
Tribute letter written by Lt-Col. P. W Machell to Mrs McQuire, son of Private Isaac Henry McQuire (15261), on 25 January: "Dear Madam, I write from the trenches to beg you to accept the assurance of my deepest sympathy in your sorrow. Your son was greatly liked, and his death is regretted by the whole Battalion. He was not willing to accept promotion, but he was a natural leader always cheerful, and carrying others with him in his desire to do his best all the time, and he did lead, without perhaps knowing it himself. I hope it may be some little consolation to know how much we all valued your boy, and how deeply his death is felt by us all." ^[4]
Letter written by Rev. Basil Aston to Mrs. McKenzie, wife of Private J. McKenzie, who was wounded at the time Private McQuire was killed: "Dear Mrs. McKenzie, Your husband is, I am thankful to say, a little better today, and not quite as bad as we feared, though quite bad enough. His right arm is badly smashed at the wrist, and an operation was performed this morning. I fear he can never have the full use of his right arm again; but I hope now the arm can be saved. He has a bad wound on the leg, also. On the whole, considering his injuries, he has had a good day, and has felt relieved since the operation. He sends his best love to you and the children. I will write again. With all sympathy, yours very sincerely." ^[5]

Battalion is situated in the R1 Sub-Sector of the line.
Two patrols are sent out and discover active enemy. The Commanding Officer visits the posts.

Battalion situated in the field is relieved during the night by the 1st Dorsets; relief is complete by 11.30pm.
Moves to Boezinge - Bosinge Camp - involved in general cleaning up and parade for foot treatment.

Sources: Various sources contemporary to the war have been used to compile the Lonsdale Battalion on this day... (hover to read more)

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 (2 February), 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.