Saturday, July 01, 2006

First Day on the Somme


Here is a photo of a poppy field taken near Shrewsbury reminding us of the poppies that grew on the battlefields in Northern France.

Nearly 20,000 British soldiers died on 1st July 1916, and a further 125,000 died over the next five months. Most were volunteers in the "New Army" who responded to Field Marshal Lord Kitchener's famous entreaty below.