The Public Schools Battalion in the Great War

Founded in August 1914 with the principle that recruiting would be restricted to public school old boys, the volunteers gathered at Hurst Park racecourse in a spirit of youthful enthusiasm. A more somber mood soon set in. Despite many of the original volunteers leaving to take commissions in other regiments the battalion, now officially the 7th Middlesex, remained an elite until its disbandment in 1917.The climax of the Battalions war came on 1 July 1916. Close to the Hawthorn Redoubt Crater are