The Lusitania Battle-Cry

Tuesday 22nd June 1915: News has reached us of three Lutonians at the front: Private F. Halsey, 2478 Royal Army Medical Corps, Private A. Halsey, 19616, 2nd Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment of Brunswick Street and Private H. Halsey, 8296, 2nd Battalion, Bedfordshire Regiment, of 6 New Town Street.

Private F. Halsey has been through some lively times of late and tells us of a fine charge by the Liverpool Scottish(1) whose battle-cry, as might have been expected of Liverpool men, was “Remember the Lusitania”(2). The damage done to the German ranks is briefly summed up in the statement that after British soldiers had spent three nights burying German dead, many of the enemy were still lying waiting to be put in their graves.

Source: Luton News 1st July 1915

(1) 1st/10th Battalion, King’s (Liverpool) Regiment – part of 9th Infantry Brigade, 3rd Division

(2) RMS Lusitania was a liner sunk by a U-Boat off the coast of Ireland on 7th May 1915. Liverpool was her home port. She was on her way from New York to Liverpool at the time. Today the incident tends to be remembered because 128 Americans died, the remaining 1,070 passengers and crew being largely overlooked. Mercifully, 764 were saved.