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Volunteers returning at Kendal railway station 1901
No one ever thought that Kendal men in The Border Regiment volunteers would have to fight in a real war but when the Boer War broke out they exchanged their scarlet tunics for the new khaki to be worn on the veldt. Mrs Bagot of Levens Hall, wife of the MP, took an ambulance corps staffed by local men to South Africa. Not all returned and are remembered on plaques in Kendal Parish Church together with the Kendal members of the volunteers.
The St John Ambulance brigade headquarters, still today on Sandes Avenue in Kendal, also assisted during the First World War when the neighbouring Stramongate School was used as a military hospital
The volunteer units became the 4th (Cumberland and Westmorland) Battalion, and the 5th (Cumberland) Battalion of The Border Regiment when the territorial forces were formed in 1908