Grimsby Chums
Encyclopedia
The Grimsby Chums was a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 First World War
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 Pals battalion
Pals battalion
The Pals battalions of World War I were specially constituted units of the British Army comprising men who had enlisted together in local recruiting drives, with the promise that they would be able to serve alongside their friends, neighbours and work colleagues , rather than being arbitrarily...

 of Kitchener's Army
Kitchener's Army
The New Army, often referred to as Kitchener's Army or, disparagingly, Kitchener's Mob, was an all-volunteer army formed in the United Kingdom following the outbreak of hostilities in the First World War...

 raised in and around the town of Grimsby
Grimsby
Grimsby is a seaport on the Humber Estuary in Lincolnshire, England. It has been the administrative centre of the unitary authority area of North East Lincolnshire since 1996...

 in Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...

. When the battalion
Battalion
A battalion is a military unit of around 300–1,200 soldiers usually consisting of between two and seven companies and typically commanded by either a Lieutenant Colonel or a Colonel...

 was taken over by the British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...

 it was officially named the 10th Battalion, The Lincolnshire Regiment. It was the only 'pals battalion' to be called 'chums'.

When the call came from Lord Kitchener for volunteers, the headmaster of Wintringham Grammar School
Wintringham School
Oasis Academy Wintringham is a secondary school on Weelsby Avenue in Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, England. It is just the A16 Peaks Parkway just south-west of the A46 crossroads next to the Lisle Marsden CE in Wellow and on the Grimsby/Cleethorpes boundary...

 in Grimsby decided to raise a 250-strong company of former pupils which would be offered to one of the local Territorial battalions. When other Grimsby men expressed a wish to join, the process was handed over to the town council which set about recruiting sufficient men to form an entire battalion. Men were accepted from neighbouring towns such as Boston, Louth
Louth, Lincolnshire
Louth is a market town and civil parish within the East Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England.-Geography:Known as the "capital of the Lincolnshire Wolds", it is situated where the ancient trackway Barton Street crosses the River Lud, and has a total resident population of 15,930.The Greenwich...

 and Scunthorpe
Scunthorpe
Scunthorpe is a town within North Lincolnshire, England. It is the administrative centre of the North Lincolnshire unitary authority, and had an estimated total resident population of 72,514 in 2010. A predominantly industrial town, Scunthorpe, the United Kingdom's largest steel processing centre,...

. In order to complete the battalion, a group was sent from Wakefield
Wakefield
Wakefield is the main settlement and administrative centre of the City of Wakefield, a metropolitan district of West Yorkshire, England. Located by the River Calder on the eastern edge of the Pennines, the urban area is and had a population of 76,886 in 2001....

 in Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...

.

The Grimsby Chums joined the 101st Brigade of the British 34th Division
British 34th Division
The British 34th Division was a New Army division formed in April 1915 as part of the K4 Army Group. The division landed in France on January 1916 and spent the duration of the First World War in action on the Western Front....

 where they were joined by the two battalions of the Edinburgh City Pals. The division moved to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 in January 1916 and first saw action in the Battle of the Somme
Battle of the Somme (1916)
The Battle of the Somme , also known as the Somme Offensive, took place during the First World War between 1 July and 14 November 1916 in the Somme department of France, on both banks of the river of the same name...

. On 1 July 1916, the first day on the Somme
First day on the Somme
The first day on the Somme, 1 July 1916, was the opening day of the Battle of Albert, which was the first phase of the British and French offensive that became known as the Battle of the Somme...

, the Grimsby Chums were in the first wave attacking the fortified village of La Boisselle, just south of the Albert-Bapaume
Bapaume
Bapaume is a commune and the seat of a canton in the Pas-de-Calais department in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of France.-Geography:A farming and light industrial town located 10 miles south of Arras at the junction of the A1 autoroute and the N17 and N30 national roads its location is...

 road. To aid their attack, a massive mine, known as the Lochnagar mine
Lochnagar mine
The Lochnagar mine was an explosive-packed mine created by the Royal Engineer tunnelling companies, located south of the village of La Boisselle in the Somme département of France, which was detonated at 7:28 am on 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme...

, was detonated beneath the German trenches at 7.28 am, two minutes before Zero hour. At 7.30 am, the Grimsby Chums rushed forward to occupy the crater
Subsidence crater
A subsidence crater is a hole or depression left on the surface of an area which has had an underground explosion. Many such craters are present at the Nevada Test Site, which is no longer in use for nuclear testing....

. Here many were trapped for the rest of the day, harassed by both German and British artillery.

A few of the Grimsby Chums made it into the German trenches. The only officer to make it was 2nd Lieutenant Harold P. Hendin who led five men to the German reserve trench (the third trench in the front-line system) and, gathering stragglers as the day progressed, he held off a series of German counter-attacks before having to retire. In total the Grimsby Chums suffered 502 casualties on 1 July; 15 officers and 487 other ranks
Other Ranks
Other Ranks in the British Army, Royal Marines and Royal Air Force are those personnel who are not commissioned officers. In the Royal Navy, these personnel are called ratings...

. Only 2 of the officers came back unwounded, and only about 100 men.

In February 1918 the battalion moved to the 103rd Brigade, 34th Division, formerly the Tyneside Irish Brigade
Tyneside Irish Brigade
The Tyneside Irish Brigade was a British First World War infantry brigade of Kitchener's Army, raised in 1914. Officially numbered the 103rd Brigade, it contained four Pals battalions from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, largely made up of men of Irish extraction...

but now devoid of its Tyneside Irish battalions.

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