THE Accrington Pals’ chapel at St John’s Church will be re-dedicated this weekend.

The Accrington church closed in 1997 for major repairs, but has since re-opened. Now, four years on, a service befitting the memory of the Pals will take place this Sunday, at 2.30pm, attended by civic and military dignitaries.

The Great War Society will also attend in authentic uniform, as well as cadets from Lancashire Army Cadet Force.

The Accrington Pals, also the 11th (Service) Battalion (Accrington) East Lancashire Regiment, is probably the best remembered of the battalions raised in the early months of the First World War in response to Kitchener’s call for a volunteer army.

Groups of friends in Accrington, Blackburn, Burnley, and Chorley, enlisted together to form a battalion with a distinctively local identity.

When recruitment began on September 14, 1914, 104 men were accepted in the first three hours.

Brothers, cousins, friends and workmates enlisted together and, by September 24, the Accrington battalion had all but reached a full strength of 1,100 men.

In its first major action, however, it suffered devastating losses in the attack on Serre on July 1, 1916, the opening day of the Battle of the Somme.

‘The History of the East Lancashire Regiment in the Great War’ records that out of some 720 Accrington Pals, 584 were killed, wounded, or missing.