page_title: Devonshire Regiment
section_title: Regular Army
hierarchical_section_title: Devonshire Regiment / History / First World War / Regular Army
caption_attribution_description: English: The Battle of the Somme, July-november 1916 Lewis gun section of the 8th Battalion, Devonshire Regiment resting after an attack near Fricourt, August 1916.
context_page_description: The Devonshire Regiment was a line infantry regiment of the British Army that served under various titles and served in many wars and conflicts from 1685 to 1958, such as the Second Boer War, the First World War and the Second World War. In 1958 the regiment was amalgamated with the Dorset Regiment to form the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment which, in 2007, was amalgamated with the Royal Gloucestershire, Berkshire and Wiltshire Regiment, the Royal Green Jackets and The Light Infantry to form a new large regiment, The Rifles.
context_section_description: The 1st Battalion, Devonshire Regiment was a Regular Army unit and, after absorbing some 500 reservists, departed for France, landing at Le Havre on 21 August 1914, just 17 days since Britain's entry into the war, as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). The battalion joined the 8th Brigade of the 3rd Division in early September 1914, and then transferred to the 14th Brigade of the 5th Division later in the month. The battalion served on the Western Front throughout the war, seeing action first during the Battle of La Bassée in October where they helped in the capture of Givenchy Ridge, followed by the First Battle of Ypres, where the battalion, in common with most of the rest of the British Regular Army, sustained very heavy casualties. The 1st Devons lost in the battle two thirds of their officers and a third of the other ranks. The battalion then took part in the Winter operations 1914–1915, occupying trenches in deep mud and snow before, in April 1915, suffering 200 casualties from shelling and German counterattacks after holding Hill 60 after its capture a few days before.
  The 2nd Battalion, assigned to the 23rd Brigade, 8th Division, was another Regular Army unit, that was awarded the French Croix de guerre for holding up the massive final German advance of the war at the Bois des Buttes on 27 May 1918, the first day of the Third Battle of the Aisne. General Henri Berthelot, General Office Commanding the French 5th Army in his Order of the Day of 20 August 1918 said: "Thus the whole battalion, colonel, 28 officers and 552 non-commissioned officers and men, responded with one accord and offered their lives in ungrudging sacrifice to the sacred cause of the Allies."
  The 3rd (Special Reserve) Battalion (formerly part of the Militia) was mobilised upon the outbreak of war to serve mainly in a training capacity, holding and training officers and men before sending them overseas to active battalions of the regiment throughout the world. By the end of the war over 13,000 men and 750 officers had passed through the battalion.
caption: Lewis gun section of the 8th (Service) Battalion, Devonshire Regiment resting after an attack near Fricourt, France, August 1916.
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