At 07.30 in the morning on the 01 July 1916 the Battle of the Somme began. | "There are shells lying at the edge of roads, great craters left by shells and mines and of course the ever present and deeply moving cemetaries." | | BBC Radio Leicester's Ben Jackson |
Within minutes of the first men going over the top, it was clear to those on the ground that this wasn't going to be the walk over that they'd been assured it would be. By the end of the day, there were 60,000 casualties, 20,000 of whom were dead. It might be 90 years since the guns fell silent over the Somme, but the statistics alone are still enough to shock and even today the landscape is scared and pockmarked by the millions of shells that were fired from both sides, and the hundreds of miles of trenches dug to defend their positions. With the 90th anniversary upon us, I under took a trip to the battle fields along with my friend Chris Sturgess who came up with the idea in the first place, and Richard Lane who's the Regimental historian for the Leicestershire Regiment. Listen to interviews from BBC Radio Leicester's Ben Jackson's trip and take a look at the photos...I'd never been to the battle fields before, but the over-riding impression that this gently beautiful part of France left me with was just how much of the battle is still left to see.  | | Thiepval Memorial |
There are shells lying at the edge of roads, great craters left by shells and mines and of course the ever present and deeply moving cemetaries which constantly remind you of the hundreds of thousands of men who fell here. Ninety years on from what was undoubtedly the worst day in the history of the British Army, it seems more important than ever to remember those men who fought in the battle that was supposed to end all wars. The tragedy is that a little over twenty years later, many of them would be back fighting over the same ground against the same enemy. | 
