Preston Pals

The Preston Pals was a group of men from the Preston area in Lancashire, who volunteered to fight in France during World War I at the Battle of the Somme. In the autumn of 1914, “Pals” Battalions represented the flower of British youth; who where willing to fight for their country. By the winter of 1916, their deeds were written in blood across the muddy battlefields of France.

Badges

The cap badge of Preston Pals was that of Loyal North Lancashire, . . ..

• Loyal North Lancashire Badge
  Loyal North Lancashire Badge

Formation

Soon after the outbreak of war between Great Britain and Germany on 4 August 1914, Earl Kitchener, the War Minister, laid plans to raise a new army of 70 Infantry Divisions. On 24 August, the Earl of Derby made the suggestion to Kitchener that men might be more willing to enlist in his new army if they could be assured of fighting alongside their own friends, neighbours and workmates.

Kitchener gave his blessing to the scheme, and sanctioned the raising by local councils, or even individuals, of what became known as Pals, or Commercial Battalions. These new battalions were aligned with existing city or county regiments, and in some large towns several battalions were formed as tram-drivers, cotton brokers, warehousemen and office clerks exchanged their uniforms, aprons and pin-striped suits for the khaki military uniforms, and took up the challenge of overthrowing the Kaiser and his vast armies which were then occupying Belgium and threatening to conquer France.

The war, it was thought at the time, ‘would be over by Christmas’, and nobody wanted to miss out on the action. The novelty of exchanging a work bench or office desk for the thrill of serving one’s King and country was too much to resist, and young men by the thousands enlisted to serve in the ‘Pals’ Battalions. Uncontrolled patriotism guaranteed the success of Kitchener’s scheme, and intercommunity rivalry led to towns and county districts seeking to recruit more ‘Pals’ than their neighbours.

The raising of the Preston ‘Pals’ was the idea of Mr. Cyril Cartmell, son of the Mayor of Preston, Councillor (later Sir) Harry Cartmell. On 31 August 1914, Cyril Cartmell placed the following advertisement in The Lancashire Daily Post:

‘It is proposed to form a Company of young businessmen, clerks, etc., to be drawn from Preston and the surrounding districts, and be attached, if practicable, to a battalion of the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment. Will those who would like to join apply here any afternoon or evening this week – the earlier the better.

Town Hall, Preston Cyril Cartmell 31st August, 1914’

Within two days, 250 local men had volunteered for service, and the ‘Preston Businessmen and Clerks’ Company’ of the 7th (Service) Battalion, Loyal North Lancashire Regiment was formed. Three other companies making up the battalion were filled by ‘Pals’ from Blackpool, Kirkham and the Fylde, and Chorley.

The men were medically examined at the Public Hall, and on Monday 7 September, the ‘Pals’ paraded before an enthusiastic and patriotic crowd in the Market Place before marching along Fishergate to the railway station and leaving the town for their training.

Departure

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Preston Pals - Preston Flag Market

Within less than a week, the young men in the Preston Pals Battalion had left office desks and warehouses in Preston to become part of Kitchener’s new army which was due to leave Preston on 7 September 1914.

Many of these ‘Pals’ never returned to Preston Station at the end of the war.

Raising a vast army of 70 Infantry Divisions (well over one-and-a-quarter million men in 1914) is something which can be done in a few weeks; but equipping and training it to meet a ruthless and highly-professional enemy is a different matter. Kitchener and the British war-lords were in no doubt that it would take twelve months, possibly much longer, before the ‘Pals’ Battalions could be expected to take their place alongside regular and territorial troops. The Preston ‘Pals’ did their training at Tidworth, Bulford and Swindon before crossing over to Boulogne on 17 July 1915. Once in France, training for trench warfare and gas attacks continued for a further two months. In September 1915, exactly twelve months after their formation, the Preston ‘Pals’ took a minor part in the Battle of Loos, and received their first casualties. The dreadful reality of the war was made clear to local people as the Preston Guardian and Lancashire Daily Post reported the losses. The soldier’s obituary was usually accompanied by details of his school and church associations, the firm he worked for before enlistment, and the football or cricket teams he had played with. Everybody knew these lads, and personal family grief was combined with a more general local sympathy because the men had fought under the particular identity of the town.

To understand the Battle of the Somme, fought in the district east of Albert and south of Arras, one must first understand the position of the contesting armies on the Western Front in 1916. Following the opening battles soon after the outbreak of war, both the Allies and the Germans found themselves firmly lodged in a deadlock of trench warfare. Long lines of trench barriers stretched across France and Flanders from the Swiss border to the Channel coast. Allied attempts to break through in 1915 had failed, largely because of the shortage of men and ammunition. Everything, it was confidently forecast, would change in the summer of 1916. By that time, Kitchener’s new army would be in France in great numbers – the ‘Big Push’ would be underway, and soon the defeated Germans would be back in their homeland.

Following a massive seven-day artillery bombardment, 18 British Infantry Divisions attacked the Germans along a 15-mile front on the morning of 1 July 1916. The troops, many of them consisting of ‘Pals’ Battalions, were convinced that it would be a ‘walk-over’. Never had Britain put such a vast army into the field; never had such a patriotic force faced a battle with such confidence. Yet, within minutes of coming out of their trenches, the ‘Pals’ Battalions walked into a hail of machine-gun and sniper’s fire. The dead lay strewn across ‘No Man’s Land’ as many British soldiers failed to advance even a few yards from their own lines. At the end of that fateful day, the flower of the British nation had all but perished, and Kitchener’s army, two years in the making, had been broken in a few hours. By nightfall on the 1 July 1916, the British Army had suffered 60,000 casualties, one-third of them killed. Within a few days, news of the Somme disaster was obvious in Britain as whole communities received notification of the local men who had been killed, wounded or captured in the battle. In some small towns, every family was touched by the tragedy. Husbands, sons, brothers and nephews had fallen in action, and newspapers carried page after page of photographs of ‘Pals’ who had made the ultimate sacrifice. The town of Accrington, for instance, learnt the sad news that 235 officers and men had been killed, and at least another 350 wounded, within the short space of twenty minutes. These men had belonged to the Accrington and Blackburn ‘Pals’ who formed the 11th Battalion of the East Lancashire Regiment.

The 7th Battalion of the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment was in the ‘Order of Battle’ for the first day of the Somme. The battalion was to take part in an assault against the German lines in late afternoon, but, by this time, the complete failure of the earlier fighting brought about a cancellation of further attacks that day. Thus, the Preston ‘Pals’, to some extent at least, escaped the horror of the 1 July 1916.

In spite of the infamous losses on the first day of the Somme, the British offensive was pressed on as more and more infantry battalions were thrown into the attack. Allied gains were made, but only at sacrificial cost. The Preston ‘Pals’ were engaged in the Somme battle for the whole of July 1916, and they took part in the desperate fighting around High Wood, Delville Wood, Fricourt, and Guillemont. By mid-July, only 480 riflemen out of an original strength of 900 remained. During August and September, 1916, the Battalion served in the Flanders sector, only to return to the Somme again as the battle entered its final phase. By the time the Battle of the Somme ended, in mid-November 1916, the 7th Battalion of the Loyals retained little of its former identity. Many of the original ‘Pals’ had joined other units, and casualties had been replaced by new drafts from the UK. Following further heavy casualties in the Flanders campaigns of 1917, the battalion was officially disbanded in February 1918. After the Battle of the Somme, what remained of many other ‘Pals’ Battalions were either disbanded or reformed with men who came from differing residential districts. No way was the Government going to allow another disaster of Somme proportions to provide particular towns and districts with news of such heavy losses in a comparatively short space of time. In any event, compulsory military service had been introduced in 1916, and no longer was it necessary to encourage recruitment by offering service inducements to volunteers.

It would be outside the scope of this article to give complete details of the Preston ‘Pals’ losses and record of service in France, but a few names and facts help to give us a guide to the character of the men who formed the Company. The first officer to be killed in action, in February, 1916, was Lieutenant Maurice Bannister, son of the vicar of St George’s Church; and another well-known Preston father who lost his son was Alderman Hugh Rain (“Will Onda”, the cinema proprietor), Corporal Frank Wood, of Connaught Road, Broadgate, was the first member of Orchard Methodist Church to become a casualty in the war. He had formerly worked for Merigold Brothers in the Old Vicarage. Lieutenant Harold Fazackerly, of Ashton, won the Military Cross and Bar before being killed in action in August, 1916; and Lieutenant Horace J. Lancaster, of Penwortham, also won the Military Cross. One of the last (quite possibly the last) surviving members of the Preston ‘Pals’ who served in France was James Collier Nickeas. He died, last year, 1986, in a Barrow hospital, aged 93. His father once ran the ‘Alexandra’ ballroom and cinema in Walker Street, Preston.

War Memorial

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Preston Station, site of Preston Pal Memorial

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Preston Pals - Plaque

The unveiling and dedication of the war memorial, raised up in 1926 to commemorate Preston’s dead in the Great War. There is a certain poignancy in the fact that the Cenotaph overlooks the spot where the Preston ‘Pals’ first paraded in the Market Place in 1914. (Acknowledgements: In the preparation of this article, ‘Old Soldier’ is grateful for the facilities offered by the Harris Reference Library, the Lancashire Evening Post, and Mr Dennis Holborn who kindly provided the postcard of Lord Kitchener.)

Needs Editing Answers to Correspondents My husband’s grandfather is buried on the Somme and we often visit his grave. Last summer, we also visited the World War I memorial commemorating the gallant Accrington Pals. Nearby is a plaque commemorating the Chorley Pals. These were groups of soldiers who enlisted together. What other towns had Pals? In particular, was there a group of Preston Pals and, if so, is there a memorial to them? AT THE outbreak of World War I, Britain’s professional army was small by comparison with those of its enemies, Germany and Austria. Britain mobilized its reserve forces, the Territorial Army, but needed much greater numbers of recruits if it was to expand quickly. The government used Kitchener’s famous “Your Country Needs You” campaign to whip up a sense of patriotic zeal and encourage the men of whole towns to volunteer to join up together, to form the Pals battalions. Any town of suitable size would have felt left out had it not raised its own Pals battalion, and the men of the industrial and mining towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire were particularly enthusiastic. The men of Preston answered the call of duty as the Preston Pals, forming in September 1914 and disbanding in February 1918. However, this method of recruitment wasn’t restricted to towns. Some groups of employees, such as postmen, also formed Pals battalions, as did professionals such as banking. There were at least two battalions of the Middlesex Regiment that were made up of professional footballers who had volunteered as Pals. The larger private and public schools also had their own Pals battalions, and there was even a Church Lads Brigade Pals Battalion. The use of Pals battalions had an enormous impact on the communities they came from. If a Pals battalion suffered heavy casualties, it would affect virtually every family in the area. The Accrington Pals are particularly remembered for this reason, as it was the smallest town in England to raise a Pals battalion, and suffered major losses in 31st Division’s fight for the village of Serre, part of the Battle of the Somme. After joining up, the Pals battalions were absorbed into the administrative structure of the regular Army regiments that recruited in the local area. The Accrington Pals became B Company of the 11th Battalion East Lancashire Regiment. The Chorley Pals became Y Company of the same battalion, which is why their memorials are so close together. In the case of the Preston Pals, they became the 7th Battalion of the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, which recruited mainly from Preston, Chorley, Bolton and Wigan, and had its regimental depot at Fulwood Barracks, Preston. The 7th Battalion suffered horrific losses at Bazentin-le-Petit, northern France, during the Battle of the Somme in July 1916. There is a Commonwealth War Graves site at the Bazentin-le-Petit Communal Cemetery, but no specific memorial to the Pals. The Loyal North Lancashire Regiment was formed in 1881 from the 47th and 81st Regiments of Foot, and remained in service until 1970 when it amalgamated with the Lancashire Regiment (Prince of Wales’ Volunteers) to form the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment. Its last active service was in Iraq in 2003. In 2006, the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment merged with the King’s Own Royal Border Regiment and the King’s Regiment to form the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment. The 1st Battalion is serving in Iraq once again, while the 2nd Battalion is preparing for a two-year tour of duty in Cyprus, which starts later this year. The Regimental Museum is at Fulwood Barracks and is open to visitors from Tuesday to Thursday each week, from 10am to 4pm. Bob Cubitt, Northampton.

See also

• Recruitment to the British army during WW I
• List of Pals battalions

External links

• History of the Pals Battalions (BBC)
• Preston Pals
• The Accrington Pals
• The Chorley Pals
• One Soldiers War Diary - Percy Allsup, Chorley Pals
• 4 Brothers in War - All survived - The Allsup Brothers