Friday, July 01, 2016

Commemorations are being held in the UK and France to mark the centenary of the start of the Battle of the Somme Oakham War Memorial

Commemorations are being held in the UK and France to mark the centenary of the start of the Battle of the Somme.



















Here in Oakham the county town of Rutland no event has been organised.

At 7.30am this morning one member of the public visited the towns war memorial.
The memorial littered with rotting Rutland Remembers Crosses.

93 men from Rutland were sent to the battle, 55 of those were never found.




The Battle of the Somme (French: Bataille de la Somme, German: Schlacht an der Somme), also known as the Somme Offensive, was a battle of the First World War fought by the armies of the British and French empires against the German Empire. It took place between 1 July and 18 November 1916 on both sides of upper reaches of the River Somme in France. It was the largest battle of the First World War on the Western Front; more than one million men were wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles in human history.