Personally, I feel I cannot end these few lines without expressing my intense gratitude to all my old comrades of the battalion. R. W. R. BARNES, _Major-General_. LIVERPOOL, _July, 1920_. PREFACE Shortly after the Armistice Colonel Fletcher wrote to me asking if I would undertake to write a history of the battalion. All through the war I had cherished a vague idea of doing something of the kind, and with this view had devoted considerable care to the War Diary and to the preservation of other records. I was, therefore, only too pleased to accede to my old Commanding Officer's request, though I felt that I should experience--as, indeed, I have done--some considerable difficulty in dealing with periods during which I was away from the battalion. These cover the time from January, 1915, to March, 1916; the action of the battalion in the third battle of Ypres; and the major portion of the second battle of Cambrai, for which I have had to rely on information which has been readily supplied by those who were present. The work of compilation has, I must admit, been arduous to a degree, and an active business life has necessitated the whole work being written in my evenings and at week-ends. To this fact, I think, the unevenness of the book may fairly be attributed, written as it had to be at odd times, bit by bit, and in the varying states of mind in which I found myself after my day's work at the office. It has, however, been a labour of love, and if the book does in any way fulfil the objects for which I mainly wrote it--first, to perpetuate the memory of our gallant comrades who laid down their lives for their country; and, secondly, to aid those who survived to recall to their recollection our days of service, and to hand down to their descendants some written record of their lives during those great years--I shall feel that my labours have been amply repaid.