6 May

Apr

1 April

May

Jun

1 June

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

1

2

3

4

Other dates

Lonsdale Battalion events that took place on 6 May.
For events that took place elsewhere, see our sister project The Great War On This Day

1915 (Thursday)

Events preceding the Lonsdales' arrival in France

• General Mackinnon, (Western Command) to Lord Lonsdale: "I take the opportunity of expressing to you my very high appreciation of your patriotic action in raising the battalion, and of congratulating you on the success which has attended your efforts."
• Letter from Lt-Col. Machell: "You will think me unreasonable about the rations for Saturday, but it is one of those things that is impossible – we draw on 1/9d per head here & have to live on it – it is not possible to calculate the value of the various ‘ingredients’ of the tea meal & pay for them – But it is quite easy as it is – we have breakfast here, dinner in the train, & take tea sugar milk, cheese etc, asking you to have the bread bought locally & all ready, because it is bulky – then on Sunday we get no 1/9 & simply draw the usual army ration and the 4d per man grocery ration.
  The Battalion is being paid today....There is the usual excitement, of course, & they tell me we shall have a job to get down Botchergate on Saturday morning – No detail yet about hour of departure but it will be 2 trains – The 1st probably taking heavy baggage & 1 Company, The other kitbags etc. & 2 Companies. I wish Lord Lonsdale could have seen D Company too. I am so glad all are doing so well....I think all is straight here – It is lucky I don’t want to go away myself! [Capt.] Clart has been North & gathers that our Scotch friends are not wonderful. I wish they were – it would lift us along to get with good people."
• Enlistments to E Company: William Hume (19471) / A. Lynn (19472) / J. Dalton (19473).

1916 (Saturday)

• Contay Wood: Battalion in isolation camp (measles) involved in Divisional and Brigade manoeuvres, training and small working parties. Training continues for those who are able during the whole period of isolation.
• A draft of 50 other ranks join the Battalion.
• 2nd Lieutenant Brown of C Company leaves the battalion and returns to England.

1917 (Sunday)

• Offoy: Church Parade at 9.55am; recreation during afternoon.

1918 (Monday)

• Berles-au-Bois: Usual company training during forenoon; recreation during afternoon.

References

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 (6 May), 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.