February 22, 2019
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Sailors in the WW1 trenches
Thomas Morrison from Tobergill Street in Belfast died on this day serving in WW1 with the Royal Naval Division on the Somme. He had previously served in the Dardanelles. From the Royal Marine Light Infantry, he was typical of the thousands of sailors who served as infantry. It is a complex story in which RN personnel kept their customs alive in hostile environments many of which were far from the sea.
At the outbreak of World War 1 the newly-mobilised Royal Navy had too many men, and too few crew places or other duties for them. This was a situation which Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, soon took advantage of at a time when the army’s recruitment had not yet delivered the numbers needed for the land war in Europe.
These unused sailors were formed into battalions, joined with the Royal Marine Light Infantry (RMLI) and Royal Marine Artillery and thus formed the Royal Naval Division (RND). The RND was dubbed “Winston’s Little Army”.
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