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Other dates

Lonsdale Battalion events that took place on 8 April.
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

• Height restriction is reduced to 5’1” for the Border Regiment.
• Letter to Major Binning: “there will be no objection to your Company continuing to use the baths during this month, on Friday mornings, and if a 6th Company is raised there will be no objection to them attending the baths on any morning other than Tuesday or Saturday. After this month fresh arrangements will have to be made.
• Battalion Orders: Latest instructions from Headquarters state that the concentration of the 112th Infantry Brigade is still in abeyance. Orders will be issued as soon as received.

1916 (Saturday)

• Senlis: Situated in billets involved in Company training.
• A draft of 20 other ranks join the Battalion.

1917 (Sunday)

• Holnon: Work completes on shelters and position.

1918 (Monday)

• Purple Line: Battalion relieves the 2nd King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry in the right sector of No.3 Brigade.
• A Company and B Company are in the line, C Company is in support and D Company in reserve.
• Relief completes at 10.30pm with Headquarters located in the old German dug-out.
• Line is held similarly in the left sector. Right Company has four posts and 200 yards of support trench, left Company has five posts and a similar length of trench.
• Work in hand during whole tour, wiring in front of posts by night, cutting old Boche wire by day.
• Waiting in readiness for an enemy attack any hour. Day is quiet.
• Night patrols locate various enemy posts.
• Deaths: William Charles Clarke (27717 Pte.)

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 (8 April), 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.