Battle of Somme to be remembered 100 years on

The First World War battle saw more than a million people killed or wounded, and is remembered as “the bloodiest day in the history of the British army”.

Politicians, descendants of those who fought and hundreds of schoolchildren will attend the events at the Thiepval memorial in northern France. There will also be smaller ceremonies marking each day of the five-month battle.

The Queen of England will be attending an evening service at Westminster Abbey on Thursday 30 June, which will be followed by an overnight vigil at the Grave of the Unknown Warrior.

The battle lasted 141 days from 1 July until 18 November 1916, claiming more than one million casualties and 300,000 lost lives.

On the first day alone, 20,000 British troops were ground up in the terrifying machinery of modern warfare, with machine guns, tanks and fighter planes among the innovations adding to the carnage.

"The conditions are almost unbelievable," wrote Australian soldier Edward Lynch of his experiences. "We live in a world of Somme mud. We sleep in it, work in it, fight in it, wade in it and many of us die in it. We see it, feel it, eat it and curse it, but we can't escape it, not even by dying."

Somme has since come to embody all the horror of the First World War.

The horror of the Somme also led to the end of the so-called 'Pals Battalions', set up to allow men from the same town to serve together. Amid the carnage it soon became clear that the idea risked devastating whole communities. In one notorious incident on the first day of the Somme, 585 men of the 700-strong Accrington Pals were killed or wounded in the space of 20 minutes.  After the Somme, no more Pals Battalions were formed, while the existing battalions were gradually incorporated into other units.