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The Lonsdale Battalion...On This Day

Lonsdale Battalion on this day... is a daily listing of movements, actions, events and political involvements of the Lonsdale Battalion that took place this day between 1914–1918. (This information refreshes daily.)

On this day in history (1 June)

1916 (Thursday)

Battalion in Divisional Reserve at Bouzincourt providing working parties for the Royal Engineers.

1917 (Friday)

Villers Brettoneaux: Reveille at 3am. The Battalion (less one Company) to commence entraining at 4.45am. Trains leave at 5.45am, the route taking them to Steenbecque^[a] via Abbeville, Etaples, Boulogne, Calais and Hazebrouck. Arrives at Steenbecque at 4pm.
Commences to march to the Neuf Berquin / Doulieu area at 5pm, via Merville. Arrives at 11pm.

1918 (Saturday)

The cadre^[b] moved from Buigny (Gamaches)^[c] and Montchelet to Pende with the American 1st Battalion, 328 Infantry Brigade.
1 Company Cadre proceeds to Sellenelle to 320 American Machine Gun Battalion, relieving the 2/7th Lancashire Regiment coy cadre.
1 Company Cadre proceeds to Estreboeuf to 320 American Machine Gun Company.
Training continues primarily in musketry, Lewis machine gun and gas.

Notes

↑ In various other areas of the site where the Battalion War Diary has been referenced this Commune in France is spelt the Dutch way: Steenbeke or Steenbeeke. To avoid confusion, this is the same place in the Nord Department of northern France. I have used the French spelling here as this is what's been used in the war diary for this day's entry.
↑ The Battalion war diary states that at midnight on 9/10 May, 1918, the 5th Border Regiment and 11th Border Regiment were amalgamated. After amalgamation a training cadre of ten officers and 51 other ranks was formed and retained the Lonsdale title of the 11th Battalion the Border Regiment, which continued as a training cadre until total disbandment on 31 July, 1918. The remaining cadre then joined the 1/5th Border Regiment and the Lonsdale Battalion ceased to exist.
↑ The village of Buigny les Gamaches is in the Somme departement near the coast and near Montchelet mentioned. Pende is up the coast west of Abbeville. There are several other Buigny's in France, so the diarist was trying to make the place clearer to the reader.

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 (Borderman/Main page), 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.

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