23rd London Regiment 1798-1919

The 23rd Battalion, The London Regiment, which came into being on 1 April 1908 with the creation of the Territorial Force, was the lineal descendant of the Newington Surrey Volunteers, formed in 1799 as one of the corps of the new volunteers. During the Great War it had two active service battalions, 1/23rd, the original unit, and its second line, 2/23rd. There was also a third line, 3/23rd, but this unit served as a reserve battalion and did not go overseas. Apart from four pages on the 3/23rd this book is concerned entirely with the two active battalions. At the end there is a Roll of Honour which includes all those who died without distinguishing battalion. There is no list of Honours and Awards. 1/23rd London went to France in March 1915 with 142nd Brigade, 47th London Division with which it remained throughout the war. Its first offensive operation was an attack on the German line at Givenchy on 25/26 May; the objective was seized but the cost was considerable – 237 killed and 262 wounded. Other major actions included Loos, Somme (581 casualties at High Wood), and Messines. The 2/23rd, raised in August 1914, had a more varied war. It went to France in June 1916 with the 181st Brigade 60th Division and spent the next four months in the Roclincourt sector (north of Arras). In November 1916 the division was transferred to the Macedonian front and there the battalion spent about six months holding a section of the line before the division was again moved, this time to Palestine, in June 1917. For the next year the battalion fought a much more active war against the Turks as part of the EEF under Allenby, but in May 1918 seven of the division’s battalions, including 2/23rd, were transferred back to France where the German offensive was still in progress. In July the battalion joined 21st Brigade in the reconstituted 30th Division, its last change. This history is more concise than most with not a great deal of detail to expand on a straightforward factual account