Claim: The Durham Light Infantry would send 22 battalions overseas and lose 12006 other ranks during the course of the war, and the regiment's territorial components formed duplicate second and third line battalions of progressively lower fitness men.
Evidence: expanded to 42 battalions, comprising two Regular, two Militia, 17 Territorial (1st, 2nd and 3rd line, some never completed) and 21 service and other types (some short lived), with 22 seeing active service overseas – on the Western Front (at Ypres, Loos, Arras, Messines, Cambrai, the Somme and Passchendaele), in Italy, Egypt, Salonika and India. During the First World War, the D.L.I. The regiment earned 59 battle honours and won six Victoria Crosses, but at the cost of 12,006 dead NCOs and other ranks.