BORDER REGIMENT IN THE GREAT WAR

Before the Great War the Border Regiment, recruited from the Lakeland counties of Cumberland and Westmoreland, consisted of two Regular and two Territorial battalions, plus the Regimental Depot. During the war this was increased to a total of thirteen battalions by the raising of volunteer service battalions. This history skilfully tells the story of all 13 battalions as ‘one large united family’. The regiment saw service in France from 1914, while the 1st battalion was at Gallipoli the following year. In 1916, six of the regiment’s battalions took part in the battle of the Somme. And In 1917, the regiment fought in the battle of Arras, at Bullecourt, and at the Battle of Messines. Six of its battalions took part in the third battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) while other battalions fought on the Salonika front in Macedonia and in Italy. In this excellent and tightly written history, as the regiment’s Colonel, Maj.Gen. E.G. Sinclair MacLagan writes in his preface the author ‘ has recorded the doings of the different Battalions in six separate theatres of war, and has merged them into one consecutive narrative’. lllustrated by 14 photographic plates and seven maps.