6th Battalion South Lancashire Regiment July 1915

The official war diary for the 6^th Battalion South Lancashire Regiment is held at the National Archive in Kew, UK. It is available for public viewing as are many other regimental war diaries. If you have a relative you would like to know more about and you know their battalion or regiment it would be worth you checking the National Archive catalogue to see if that regiment’s war diary exists. War diaries list the day to day happenings in the regiment – where they were deployed, the skirmishes and battles they were involved in, weather conditions, day to day problems like interruptions in the supply chain and also the casualties the battalion suffered each day.

As you will know by now the above named battalion is Basil’s battalion and I thought it would be interesting to let you know the sorts of conditions and events he would have borne witness to between July 1915 and his death in April 1916.

July 1915

After basic training, the Prince of Wales volunteers had sailed on the 13^th June from Avonmouth on the HMT Ausonia (a Cunard ship that had been commandeered as a troop ship, it would later be sunk by a German U-boat in May 1918). The battalion landed at Mudros on the Isle of Lemnos (a Greek island in the northern Aegean sea) on the 2^nd July. The men were involved in the unloading of the ship before going into bivouacs on the slopes of a hill overlooking Mudros. They killed time here for a few days and were charged with getting ready to move out a.s.a.p. during the night of the 5^th July. However, at the 11^th hour the order was cancelled and the men did not move out until the following evening.

7^th July – the battalion arrived at West Beach on the Gallipoli peninsula at 2.00am. The Gallipoli campaign had been underway since April 1915 so Basil would have been landing in a region where battles had already been undertaken.

8-10^th July – the battalion men were involved in marches to various trenches where they received instruction and were employed in fatigues to the various regiments already based there.

11^th – 17^th July – the battalion moved up to the front trenches taking over from the 1^st Lancashire Fusilliers who had already been engaged there for some time. The front line trenches were subjected to heavy bombardment by the Turkish troops, but the 6^th battalion was not sent into any engagements during this time. The war diary lists that the battalion suffered six casualties. On the 17^th the men were stood down and transferred out of the trenches west to Gully Beach where they rested.

19^th July – the battalion was moved up the Gallipoli peninsula towards the front line trenches and relieved the 126^th Brigade, 42^nd Division at Krithia Gully ravine. There were no specific engagements made by the battalion while it occupied Krithia Gully although the men were subject to enemy fire and suffered the loss of two men.

28^th July – the battalion was relieved by the Lancashire Fusilliers and moved back to rest lines. Whilst in the rest lines they were subject to “…a good deal of annoying shelling.”

31^st July – the battalion was gathered at Y Beach on the Gallipoli peninsula and moved back to Mudros in two groups.

Map source - Wikipedia 'Landing at Cape Helles'

Moving up from beach positions the terrain changes a lot to rock strewn, dusty scrubland with a lot of ravines and gullies. Digging trenches to augment some of the natural cover was difficult and arduous. Equipment and supplies all had to be moved by men and donkeys. The postmortem of the aftermath of the entire Gallipoli and Mesopotamia campaign flagged up that the various army divisions were ill equipped for the entire engagement. It’s no wonder that it culminated in defeat and abandonment.

From Basil’s perspective I would love to know what a naïve 17 year old who had never left Salford would have made of such a dramatic change in his circumstances. Sadly we’ll never know what his first impressions were.

Acknowledgements – all credit goes to Stephen Nulty who transcribed the battalion’s war diary and www.prescott-rollofhonour.info where the transcription is lodged.