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Key dates over December 1915

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Lives lost on this day: 1

27th December 1915 - Christmas holiday rail delays leaves Soldiers stranded in London

Rolling Casualty Count: 2629

1st Batt: artillery on both sides very active. HQ was shelled and parapets held by A Coy were smashed by about 50 shells.

2nd Batt:

Route march from 9,30am to 12.10, very wet .

10th Batt: St Vlaast village heavily shelled from 10,00am to 3.30pm and remains of church further damaged.

9th Batt: Embarked on board SS Ermine and taken to Helles. Batt marched through a violent thunderstorm.

SPECIAL INTERCESSION SERVICES - Canon Wilson and the Reason for Holding Them

....It is hard for us living in our peaceful Worcester, living so much as we always do, to realise that these months, nay, I may truly say these weeks and days, are the most critical that England has ever seen. It is not at all too much to say that the tremendous issues of the early months of 1916 - still unknown to us and quite incalculable - will go far to determine the welfare of every country in Europe, and even of the world for a century to come. That the rule of brute force or Barbarian cruelty should, after 2000 years, prevail throughout Christendom would be the greatest catastrophe to our enemies at it would be to us.

SOLDIERS LEAVE MARRED - holiday Curtailed by ‘Xmas Delays’

The “Morning Post” says:- “There were many of our men home from the front who were necessarily stranded in London on Christmas Day, but there were many others who need not have spent it there had not someone blundered. ...The men were eager for the welcomes of their own homes, and the music of their own children’s voices, They had earned these, many of them, by months of fighting....on Christmas day, as on Sundays, the day trains do not run....And that was not all. Christmas Day falling on a Saturday, a Sunday followed.....The waiting rooms on Christmas morning were filled with men.....were no members of Parliament who out of their charity and £400 a year could have anticipated their desire to spend Christmas at home....It was probably no lack of Christian charity, but a most un-Christian lack of imagination...it was a disgrace to the nation”

Information researched by the WWW100 team.