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The Accrington Pals (11th Battalion, East Lancashire Regiment) is probably the best remembered of the battalions raised in the early months of the First World War in response to Lord Kitchener's call for a volunteer army. Groups of friends from all walks of life in Accrington and its neighboring towns enlisted together to form a battalion with a distinctively local identity. In its first major action, the battalion suffered devastating losses in the attack on Serre on 1st July 1916, the opening day of the Battle of the Somme.
