total 16 battalions of the Gloucestershire Regiment saw active service in France and Flanders, Italy, Gallipoli, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia and Salonika. Regular Army The 1st Battalion was deployed to France in August 1914 and saw action on the Western Front. It suffered its first casualties at Landrecies on 26 August 1914 during the retreat from Mons, and sustained further losses in September during the First Battle of the Aisne. The battalion entered the First Battle of Ypres on 19 October 1914 with 26 officers and 970 other ranks, played a pivotal role in the defence of Langemarck, was called upon several times to counter-attack against enemy breakthroughs and, by the time of its relief four weeks later, had been reduced to 2 officers and 100 other ranks. In December 1914, it fought in the Defence of Festubert, and the next month in the Defence of Givenchy. Later in 1915, the battalion saw action in the Battle of Aubers Ridge and the Battle of Loos, and it was active during the Somme offensive in 1916 during the Battles of Bazentin and Pozières, and in an attack on High Wood. Early in 1917, the 1st Division moved south of the Somme, and the 1st Battalion participated in the advance to the Hindenburg Line. In July, the division was allocated to Operation Hush, a planned seaborne invasion that was later cancelled, and the only significant action the 1st Battalion saw in 1917 was in November, on the last day of the Second Battle of Passchendaele. On 18 April 1918, during the Battle of Béthune, an engagement in the Battle of the Lys, the battalion earned high praise and 33 awards for gallantry when it repulsed an attack by four enemy regiments that had turned the Glosters' flank and, in echoes of the Battle of Alexandria, forced them to fight back to back. The battalion saw action again in September and October on the Hindenburg Line in the Battles of Épehy and St Quentin Canal. The 1st Battalion saw its last action of the war on 4 November 1918 in the Battle of the Sambre, where it helped capture Catillon and the crossing over the Sambre canal, some from the scene of its first casualties over four years previously. The 2nd Battalion returned from Tianjin in November 1914 and landed in France the next month as part of the 81st Brigade in the 27th