5th East Lancashire Regiment
Sovereigns & Regimental Colours
In St Peter's Church Burnley
The Sovereigns and Regimental Colours
5th Battalion The East Lancashire Regiment (TA) 1909-1920
These were the colours of the Burnley based TA
Battalion, previously 2nd Volunteer Battalion
the East Lancashire Regiment. The colours were presented by H.M. King Edward
VII at Worsley
Park on 6th July 1909 and were laid up in St. Peter,s church Burnley, when the
4th and 5th Battalions
amalgamated to become the 4/5th Battalion in 1920
The 5th Battalion had it's headquarters in Burnley, with outstations in Darwen
and Clitheroe.
The Battalion was mobilised in August 1914 and
sailed for Egypt the following month. It then saw active sevice
in Gallipoli , May-December 1915 (where 2nd Lieutenant Albert Victor Smith,
son of the Chief Consatable of
Burnley, earned a posthumous VC), Sinai and on the Western Front March 1917
- November 1918
The Sovereigns Colour
2/5th Battalion The East Lancashire Regiment (TA), 1914-1918
This was an additional TA Battalion, raised in
Burnley in September 1914 from a nucleus
of officers and soldiers of the 5th Battalion. The 2nd/5th went to France in
February 1917
and saw much service on the Western Front until the Armistice, including the
terrible Third
battle of Ypres in October 1917 (popularly known as Passchendaele), when the
Battalion
suffered 367 casualties , and the German offensive of March 1918 , when its
losses totalled
766 men in ten days fighting. Like most "war only" battalions the
2nd/5th was presented with
just one (Sovereign's) Colour.
