This image shows some soldiers of the South Wales Borderers billeted at the Highlands Hotel in Boscabel Road, St Leonards in February 1915. These soldiers were of the 7th Service Battalion of the South Wales Borderers. Although they initially shipped to France, they were moved through it and stationed at Salonika, Greece. Not the easy posting that you’d imagine. Allied forces made up of British, French, Russian, Italian, Greek and Serbians fought the combined forces German, Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian armies there between 1915 and 1918. This website is dedicated to remembering the conflict at Salonika.

I wasn’t aware of this particular campaign until I started researching this article!

The Highlands Hotel is now known as the Highlands Inn.

The two photographs used to create the image are below. You can view the top image full size on my Flickr page by clicking on it.

This image is part of a series of Then and Now images I’ve created for East Sussex Council’s World War 1 commemoration website. The website is focussed on the contribution that the men and women of East Sussex made towards the war effort.