VISIT TO THE SOMME BATTLEFIELD by Roz Gladden , Liverpool Lord Mayor
In August this year , a group of us set off from Liverpool Town Hall to visit the Somme battlefield on the centenary . Our group included myself , the Consort - Cllr Roy Gladden , the Lord Lieutenant , Dame Lorna Muirhead and her husband Mr Ronald Muirhead , Standard Bearers from the Royal British Legion , the Kings regiment , the Liverpool PALS , and veterans from various army regiments as well as relatives from those who died at the Somme and Kenny our estimable piper from the Liverpool Scottish .
Shortly before our departure to France , I had discovered that I would be following in my grandfather ’ s footsteps to France almost a 100 years to the day . It then got very personal .
As soon as I knew I would be Lord Mayor during this centennial year , it was important to me to travel there to mark this important milestone in Liverpool ’ s history . The Battle of the Somme raged from the 1st of July 1916 until the 18th of November and during that time more than a million men were killed or wounded making it the bloodiest battle in human history .
Specific to Merseyside was the part played by the Liverpool PALS , the 17th , 18th , 19th and 20th of the Kings ( Liverpool ) Regiment in the Battle of Guillemont between the 3rd to the 6th of September . The PALS Regiments seemed like a great idea at the time . Groups of men who had gone to school or college together ,
or who worked at the same factory or played in the same football or cricket teams or lived in the same streets would all join up in a battalion together . Their sense of loyalty and camaraderie would join them together into an indomitable fighting force .
That worked , up to the point when the telegrams started arriving . When house after house suffered losses so unbearable , it would take two generations to recover .
The Liverpool and Manchester PALS joined together to take back the village of Guillemont and they were largely successful but the losses were heavy . Liverpool lost 1791 men during that battle including 465 lost just on one day the 30th of July 1916 ‘ Liverpool ’ s Blackest Day ’. It is hard to imagine how it must have felt when all those telegrams started to arrive to the streets of Liverpool .
All the bodies of those who died were buried in France , often close to the place where they were killed . Back in the 1920 ’ s a visit to France without the aid of the Eurotunnel and ‘ easyJet ’ would have cost the average Liverpool resident five years pay .
Clearly that would have been out of the question for most of our residents who probably never had the opportunity to mourn at the grave of their blessed husband , son or father . It was our intention to pay homage to our Liverpool men a hundred years
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