Editing Accrington (section)

===Accrington Pals===
{{further|Recruitment to the British Army during World War I}}

One well-known association the town has is with the '[[Accrington Pals]]', the nickname given to the smallest home town [[battalion]] of volunteers formed to fight in the [[World War I|First World War]]. The [[Pals battalion]]s were a peculiarity of the 1914-18 war: [[Horatio Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener of Khartoum|Lord Kitchener]], the [[Secretary of State for War]], believed that it would help recruitment if friends and work-mates from the same town were able to join up and fight together. Strictly speaking, the 'Accrington Pals' battalion is properly known as the '11th [[East Lancashire Regiment]]': the nickname is a little misleading, since of the four 250-strong companies that made up the original battalion only one was composed of men from Accrington. The rest volunteered from other east [[Lancashire]] towns such as [[Burnley]], [[Blackburn]] and [[Chorley]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.pals.org.uk/pals_e.htm|title=The Accrington Pals|first=Andrew C|last=Jackson|year=2009|access-date=14 April 2013}}</ref>

The Pals' first day of action, 1 July 1916, took place in [[Serre-lès-Puisieux|Serre]], near [[Montauban-de-Picardie|Montauban]] in the north of France.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ww1battlefields.co.uk/somme/serre.html |title=Serre|publisher=World War I Battlefields|access-date=2 January 2021}}</ref> It was part of the 'Big Push' (later known as the [[Battle of the Somme (1916)|Battle of the Somme]]) that was intended to force the [[German Army (German Empire)|German Army]] into a retreat from the [[Western Front (World War I)|Western Front]], a line they had held since late 1914. The German defences in Serre were supposed to have been obliterated by sustained, heavy, British shelling during the preceding week; however, as the battalion advanced it met with fierce resistance. 235 men were killed and a further 350 wounded – more than half of the battalion – within half an hour. Similarly, desperate losses were suffered elsewhere on the front, [[First day on the Somme|in a disastrous day]] for the British Army (approximately 19,000 British soldiers were killed in a single day).

Later in the year, the East Lancashire Regiment was rebuilt with new volunteers – in all, 865 Accrington men were killed during World War I. All of these names are recorded on a war memorial, an imposing white stone cenotaph, which stands in Oak Hill Park in the south of the town. The [[cenotaph]] also lists the names of 173 local fatalities from [[World War II]]. The trenches from which the Accrington Pals advanced on 1 July 1916 are still visible in John Copse west of the village of Serre, and there is a memorial there made of Accrington brick.

After the war and until 1986, Accrington Corporation buses were painted in the regimental colours of red and blue with gold lining. The mudguards were painted black as a sign of mourning.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Maconie |first1=Stuart |title=Hope and Glory: A People's History of Modern Britain |date=10 May 2012 }}</ref>