The 7th Battalion garrisoned the
Sudan and fought through the Gallipoli campaign. It recruited its
strength at Suez, and then helped to clear the Sinai Peninsula of the
Turks. Finally it served for two and a half years in Flanders. It
translated its motto, "We never sleep" into its daily life.
This volume will be a useful supplement to any general history of the
War. It is based on the diary of a Regimental Officer, who won
considerable distinction in the field, and whose eyes missed little of
consequence. It is of even more value as evidence of what men of
essentially civilian habits and traditions can achieve as soldiers. The
numbers of the 7th Manchesters were never fully up to strength after
April, 1915, and for many months at a time while in the East they fell
to vanishing point. Yet from the day in September, 1914, when the
original first-line Battalion sailed from Southampton for Port Sudan in
the "Grantully Castle," each successive draft was of the same mould. The
men came from the same neighbourhood, were of the same capacity, and had
been bred with the same ideas. Their devotion was founded on a sense of
duty. They were personally utterly remote from what is called
militarism, and saw little fascination in its pomp. The survivors are
now absorbed once more in the undramatic industry of Lancashire. There
is nothing to indicate to an observer that they have ever left it. The
last time you saw your tramway conductor may have been as a bomber in
"the western birdcage" on Cape Helles; your fellow passenger may have
last talked to you as your "runner," when you tramped along the
duckboards from Windy Corner to Givenchy.
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