Accrington Pals: The 11th (Service) Battalion (Accrington) East Lancashire Regiment

A History of the Battalion Raised from Accrington, Blackburn, Burnley and Chorley in World War One

William Bennett Turner

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9780850523607
• eBook ISBN: 9781473811621
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World War I
• Index: History

Follow the footsteps of the Pals in their journey from Lancashire to their training camps in England and Wales and to the villages and battlefields of France. A comprehensive account, with maps and pictures, of a Pals Battalion's service throughout the war.

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

1. Come back this afternoon

2. And we be brethren

3. Croeso i Gymru! Welcome to Wales!

4. Some Battalion! Some Colonel

5. An eastern interlude

6. We captured Serre three times a day

7. God help the sinner

8. The Aftermath

Epilogue

Appendix

1. Personae

2. Correspondent’s Reports

3. Report on Operations

4. Battle Report 12th Y.& L. July 1st

5. Peltzer letter

6. Appreciation messages

7. Casualty lists

8. Hometowns of July 1st casualties

9. Total Battalion casualties 1916–1918

Nominal roll

Decorations

Officers Monthly Army List

Name index

Photo postscript

Selected Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Martin Middlebrook

I’ve been there, a most striking place, a sad place — Serre! The front line trench from which the 11th East Lancashires attacked on the first day of the battle of the Somme is still there, a grassy zig-zag, clearly a trench, just on the edge of a wood up a farm track. The 11th East Lancashires were, of course, the Accrington Pals. Unfortunately, the place where their old front line trench is to be found is now called the Sheffield Memorial Park. But the Sheffield unit did not attack from this stretch of front line. Their sector was a short distance to the north, but post 1918 Sheffield established their Memorial Park nearer the track up which the visitors would have to come. Accrington must have been asleep and made no protest.

In many ways the Accrington Pals were typical of Kitchener’s New Army of volunteers in 1914, but that local enthusiasm seems to have had a harder time in getting its Pals Battalion accepted by the War Office. Bill Turner’s book will describe the difficulties. In the post-war period, Accrington could not seem to stir itself to provide any memorial at the place where the Pals suffered so terribly on the Somme.

An Accrington man has produced a different type of memorial, a well researched history of the Pals which deserves wide circulation and support, not only in Accrington but further afield. I congratulate Bill Turner and most willingly commend his work.

Introduction

Accrington, East Lancashire, in the high hot summer of 1914 was a town of 45,525 people. A town famous for textile machinery, bricks and its football team. Howard and Bulloughs, makers of textile machinery, sold and installed thousands of machines, world-wide, every year. Seven collieries and thirty-two cotton mills completed the industrial basis of the town’s economy.

Accrington was a prosperous town. The Borough Treasurer presented ‘the most gratifying report on our financial position in thirty years an excellent state of affairs.’¹ In contrast the Medical Officer of Health spoke of general mortality and infant mortality rates higher than the national average with ‘too many preventable deaths.’² In a ‘prosperous’ town there were many poor, the margin separating working people from want and hunger desperately narrow. Accrington, as other industrial towns in Britain in 1914, had its bad housing and poverty but its parks and open spaces, along with easy access to open countryside, helped to make it a comparatively pleasant town. It had a considerable civic pride in its good reputation and achievements.

On June 27th, 1914, one of the cotton mills closed for six weeks because of lack of orders, putting five hundred men and women out of work. The closure came as no surprise. Orders for cotton cloth weaving had been falling for many months as part of a general decline in the British cotton industry. Other mills announced the extension to two weeks of the annual one weeks, unpaid holiday. The news added to the cotton workers’ growing fears about the future for themselves and the industry.

Engineering workers in the town were also restless for a different reason. In early June, 1914 simmering unrest by the skilled employees about low wages at Howard and Bulloughs culminated with a formal request for a ten per cent increase in wages.³ Saturday June 27th arrived with no reply from the employers. Feelings ran high, nothing it seemed could prevent a strike. The employees decided on a final dead-line of July 1st.

Mr Tom Bullough, Chairman of Directors of Howard & Bulloughs, a family firm founded in 1856. A.O.&T.

An artist’s view of Messrs. Howard and, Bulloughs Ltd, Globe Works, Accrington, as featured in a 1914 advertisement. Notwithstanding some artistic licence the works was large enough to employ over 4,000 men and boys. A.O.&T.

Groups of engineers from Howard and Bulloughs discuss the strike outside Accrington Market Hall. A.O.&T.

Meanwhile, on Sunday June 28th, whilst East Lancashire enjoyed the hottest day of the year, in Sarajevo, Bosnia, the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, Archduke Franz Ferdinand along with his wife died, the victims of an assassination plot. Balkan quarrels meant little to most in Accrington so the news received but passing interest the following day. At the Empire Picture Palace, the week’s film, ‘A King in Name Alone,’ coincidentally shared its opening night with the news, the film was proclaimed as a ‘strong drama set in South Eastern Europe showing the secret springs of intrigue and plot to overthrow a dynasty.’ The real-life attempt to overthrow a dynasty gave the film a measure of publicity.⁴ Concern, however, centered more on Wednesday July 1st.

The day dawned bright and full of promise, yet in the early afternoon the hot weather broke with a tremendous thunderstorm. Floodwaters swirled into the Howard and Bulloughs machine-shop and stopped production. At 5.30 p.m. six hundred skilled engineers, their final dead-line ignored, walked out on strike. The strike had bitter beginnings. Everyday following when the works opened and closed, mounted police stood by as crowds of hostile strikers jeered and jostled non-strikers. One week later the works closed. Almost 4,000 semi-skilled and unskilled men and boys were prevented from working, ‘locked out’ by the closure. July had begun badly for Accrington and district.

Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, heir to the Austrian throne from 1889, with his wife Sophia and children. B.C.P.L.

Men queue up outside the wages office at Howard and Bulloughs to draw their last wage. A.O.&T.

On July 18th, one week before the annual holiday, the six hundred skilled engineers collected their first strike pay of £1 each and 1,100 labourers ten shillings each from their respective Trade Unions. Three thousand not in a Trade U...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents