The Staff of 3rd Battalion The Lancashire Fusiliers, first inspection in Malta in 1899. From left to right: Major Deane, Lieutenant and Adjutant Thone, Commanding Officer Major Flemming and Lieutenant and Quartermaster Mr Dunne.
Some acts of supreme courage take place in such extraordinary circumstances that they are unlikely ever to be repeated. That was the case in the early morning of 25 April 1915 when six gallant men of 1st Battalion The Lancashire Fusiliers were awarded the Victoria Cross during the landings at W Beach on Cape Helles at the beginning of the campaign against Turkish forces in Gallipoli. Ever afterwards this exceptional event was immortalised as ‘the six VCs before breakfast’ and later the beach in question was renamed ‘Lancashire Landing’.
During the first wave of the landings the 1st Battalion was met by withering fire from hidden machine guns, which caused a great number of casualties – eleven officers and 350 men killed or wounded. The survivors, however, rushed up the beach to cut barbed wire entanglements and, despite continuing enemy fire, were able to take the beach and the Turkish positions on the cliffs above it. The recipients of the Victoria Cross were elected by their fellow Fusiliers as having displayed the greatest courage during their assault and their names were gazetted in two citations, on 24 August 1915 and 13 March 1917: those of Captain Cuthbert Bromley, Corporal John Grimshaw, Private William Keneally, Sergeant Alfred Richards, Sergeant Frank Stubbs and Captain Richard Willis.
The regiment was also represented in the Gallipoli campaign by four Territorial battalions which served together in 125th Brigade and fought at the Second Battle of Krithia in May 1915. These were all from the regimental area: 1/5th Battalion from Bury, Radcliffe and Heywood; 1/6th Battalion from Rochdale, Middleton and Todmorden; 1/7th Battalion from Salford; and 1/8th Battalion, also from Salford. Altogether 1816 Lancashire Fusiliers died at Gallipoli and every year in April, on ‘Gallipoli Sunday’, a service of commemoration and remembrance is held in the Church of St Mary the Virgin in Bury, Lancashire, the regimental town.
To commemorate Bury’s casualties of the First World War a memorial was unveiled outside Wellington Barracks in April 1922. Built of Portland stone it was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, who was also responsible for the Cenotaph in Whitehall in London and whose father and great-uncle had served in the regiment. In 2009 it was moved to the town centre outside the new regimental museum. The Wellington Barracks site on the Bolton Road was redeveloped at the same time and the only remaining building associated with the regiment is the Castle Armoury, which was built on the site of Bury Castle in 1868 as a drill hall for the use of the town’s volunteers and later for the Territorial Army.
The other Lancashire town with a close regimental connection is Salford where four ‘pals battalions’ were raised in September 1914 as part of the drive to recruit men from the same localities or workplaces. These were 1st Salford Pals (15th Lancashire Fusiliers), 2nd Salford Pals (16th Lancashire Fusiliers), 3rd Salford Pals (19th Lancashire Fusiliers) and 4th Salford Pals (20th Lancashire Fusiliers). Three of those battalions were in action together on the first day of the Somme, 1 July 1916, in the attack on Thiepval Ridge, and, of twenty-four officers and 650 men from the 1st Salford Pals who went into the attack, twenty-one officers and 449 men had become casualties by the end of the day, either killed, wounded or missing. Their sacrifice is commemorated on the Salford cenotaph, a memorial in Portland stone surmounted by the sphinx of the Lancashire Fusiliers with the word ‘Egypt’, which was unveiled in April 1922.
The Staff of 3rd Battalion The Lancashire Fusiliers, first inspection in Malta in 1899. From left to right: Major Deane, Lieutenant and Adjutant Thone, Commanding Officer Major Flemming and Lieutenant and Quartermaster Mr Dunne.
Among the more famous Lancashire Fusiliers who served in the regiment during the First World War was J.R.R. Tolkien, the future author of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Although born in South Africa, Tolkien had been brought up and educated in England, at King Edward’s School in Birmingham and at Exeter College, Oxford. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Tolkien did not rush to enlist in the British Army immediately after the outbreak of war in August 1914. Instead he completed his studies at Oxford and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 11th Lancashire Fusiliers in 1915. With them he saw action at the Battle of the Somme, acting as Signals Officer during the fighting at Ovillers-la-Boisselle where he witnessed what he called ‘the animal horror of active service’.
Towards the end of the battle he contracted trench fever, a debilitating and potentially fatal condition transmitted by lice in the verminous trenches, and had to be invalided home. While convalescing he started writing ‘The Book of Lost Tales’, which eventually became The Silmarillion, and it is likely that the imagery of the ‘Dead Marshes’ in The Lord of the Rings was inspired by his experiences on the Western Front. In spring 1918, while still in hospital, Tolkien received news that 11th Lancashire Fusiliers had been virtually wiped out during the fighting on the River Aisne. In the foreword to The Lord of the Rings he wrote: ‘By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead’. During the course of the war The Lancashire Fusiliers suffered some 13,000 casualties.
Curiously for a regiment so intimately connected to the county of Lancashire, it was raised in Exeter on 20 November 1688 by Sir Richard Peyton, a West Country landowner, for service in the forces loyal to the newly arrived Prince William of Orange. In 1751 it was numbered 20th (or XXth) Regiment of Foot and in 1782 received the territorial designation of East Devonshire and a second battalion was added in 1858. During this period the regiment was seldom out of the thick of the action. As Bligh’s Regiment it served under the Duke of Cumberland at the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745 and a year later at the Battle of Culloden, which ended the Jacobite uprising.
During the subsequent Seven Years War, on 1 August 1759, the 20th was one of the six British infantry battalions (plus two Hanoverian) which defeated a superior French force of cavalry, a feat unparalleled in warfare at the time. The Battle of Minden occupies an honoured place in the history of the British Army. Not only did the attacking infantry regiments display steadiness and discipline while facing successive heavy cavalry charges but they triumphed in spite of being given the wrong orders. As a result, all six infantry regiments received ‘Minden’ as a battle honour and every year Minden Day was commemorated with special parades when the officers and soldiers wore roses in their caps or bonnets. The custom was a reminder that their predecessors plucked wild roses and placed them in their hats as a means of identification before they went into the attack. In the course of the Peninsula campaign against the forces of Napoleonic France the 20th fought in all the major battles under the overall command of the Duke of Wellington. It also fought in the Crimean War and the 2nd Battalion was one of the British infantry battalions which fought at the disastrous Battle of Spion Kop during the Boer War.
Colour Party, 3rd Battalion The Lancashire Fusiliers, 1900. From left to right: Sergeant Inskip, 2nd Lieutenant Olive, Sergeant Richardson, 2nd Lieutenant Tanner, Sergeant Kingston.
Regimental Sergeant Major Barrett of The Lancashire Fusiliers, around 1922. His RSM’s badge is on his lower left sleeve and amongst his medals is a Military Cross.
By 1873 the 20th had moved into Wellington Barracks in Bury which had been designated the 17th Infantry Brigade Depot as part of a national scheme to house infantry regiments in specific locations. As a result The 20th East Devonshire Regiment was renamed The Lancashire Fusiliers, becoming the county regiment of central Lancashire and embracing the four battalions of The Royal Lancashire Militia. At the end of the Boer War the regiment was awarded a primrose-yellow hackle as an honour for its service to the Crown. The Lancashire Fusiliers retained its individuality until 1968 when it amalgamated with England’s other fusilier regiments – The Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, The Royal Warwickshire Fusiliers and The Royal Fusiliers (London Regiment) – to form the new Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, becoming its short-lived 4th Battalion, which was disbanded in 1970.
Carried on the Regimental Colour
Dettingen, Minden, Egmont-op-Zee, Egypt, Maida, Vimiera, Corunna, Vittoria, Pyrenees, Orthes, Toulouse, Peninsula, Alma, Inkerman, Sevastopol, Lucknow, Khartoum, Relief of Ladysmith, South Africa 1899–1902
Those in bold carried on the Queen’s Colour
Le Cateau, Retreat from Mons, Marne 1914, Aisne 1914, 18, Armentières 1914, Ypres 1915, 17, 18, St. Julien, Bellewaarde, Somme 1916, 18, Albert 1916, 18, Bazentin, Delville Wood, Pozières, Ginchy, Flers-Courcelette, Morval, Thiepval, Le Transloy, Ancre Heights, Ancre 1916, 18, Arras 1917, 18, Scarpe 1917, 18, Arleux, Messines 1917, Pilckem, Langemarck 1917, Menin Road, Polygon Wood, Broodseinde, Poelcappelle, Passchendaele, Cambrai 1917, 18, St. Quentin, Bapaume 1918, Rosières, Lys, Estaires, Hazebrouck, Bailleul, Kemmel, Béthune, Scherpenberg, Amiens, Drocourt-Quéant, Hindenburg Line, Èpéhy, Canal du Nord, St. Quentin Canal, Courtrai, Selle, Sambre, France and Flanders 1914–18, Doiran 1917, Macedonia 1915–18, Helles, Landing at Helles, Krithia, Suvla, Landing at Suvla, Scimitar Hill, Gallipoli 1915, Rumani, Egypt 1915–17
Those in bold carried on the Queen’s Colour
Defence of Escaut, St. Omer-La Bassée, Caen, North-West Europe 1940, 44, Medjez el Bab, Oued Zarga, North Africa 1942–43, Adrano, Sicily 1943, Termoli, Trigno, Sangro, Cassino II, Trasimene Line, Monte Ceco, Monte Spaduro, Senio, Argenta Gap, Italy 1943–45, Malta 1941–42, Rathedaung, Htizwe, Kohima, Naga Village, Chindits 1944, Burma 1943–45
Captain (Temporary Major) Cuthbert Bromley, 1st Battalion, First World War, 1915
Sergeant Frank Edward Stubbs, 1st Battalion, First World War, 1915
Lance-Corporal (later Lieutenant-Colonel) John Elisha Grimshaw, 1st Battalion, First World War, 1915
Captain (later Major) Richard Raymond Willis, 1st Battalion, First World War, 1915
Sergeant Alfred Joseph Richards, 1st Battalion, First World War, 1915
Private (later Lance Sergeant) William Stephen Keneally, 1st Battalion, First World War, 1915
Private John Lynn, 2nd Battalion, First World War, 1915
Private (later Corporal) James Hutchinson, 2/5th Battalion, First World War, 1916
Captain (Temporary Lieutenant Colonel) Bertram Best-Dunkley, 2/5th Battalion, First World War, 1917
Sergeant Joseph Lister, 1st Battalion, First World War, 1917
Second Lieutenant Bernard Matthew Cassidy, 2nd Battalion, First World War, 1918
Temporary Second Lieutenant John Schofield, 2/5th Battalion, First World War, 1918
Lance Corporal Joel Halliwell, 11th Battalion, First World War, 1918
Lance Sergeant (later Lieutenant) Edward Benn Smith, 1/5th Battalion, First World War
Acting Sergeant Harold John Colley, 10th Battalion, First World War, 1918
Private Frank Lester, 10th Battalion, First World War, 1918
Sergeant (later Regimental Sergeant Major) James Clarke, 15th Battalion, First World War, 1918
Acting Lieutenant Colonel James Neville Marshall, Irish Guards, Commanding 16th Battalion, First World War, 1918
Fusilier (later Lance Corporal) Francis Arthur Jefferson, 2nd Battalion, Second World War, 1944
