With a cannon blast and a piercing whistle, Britain and France on July 1
marked 100 years since soldiers emerged from their trenches to begin
one of the bloodiest battles of World War I at the River Somme.
Under
grey skies, unlike the clear sunny day that saw the biggest slaughter
in British military history a century ago, the commemoration kicked off
at the deep Lochnagar crater, created by the blast of mines placed under
German positions two minutes before the attack began at 7:30 am on July 1, 1916.
A
lone piper walked around the edge of the crater at the ceremony, to be
followed by a main event attended by the British royal family and Prime
Minister David Cameron, as well as French President François Hollande and former German president Horst Koehler.
The commemoration ceremony was held at the Thiepval Memorial, which honors more than 72,000 missing servicemen.
Just over a week after Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, Hollande highlighted the friendship that saw British and French soldiers fight side by side.
“I
want to recall that it is the European idea which allowed us to
overcome divisions and rivalries between states, and which has brought
us peace for the past 70 years,” Hollande said in a statement before the
ceremony.
Britain’s Prince William on June 30 paid tribute to a
generation lost at the Battle of the Somme at the start of an all-night
vigil in memory of the Allied soldiers who would have been preparing
themselves to charge the German side.
The following day some 20,000 soldiers were mowed down — after a week of bombardment failed to destroy German defenses — in the deadliest day in British military history.
Another 30,000 were wounded and maimed.
“We
lost the flower of a generation, and in the years to come it sometimes
seemed that with them a sense of vital optimism had disappeared forever
from British life,” said William, attending alongside his wife Kate and
brother Prince Harry.
“It was in many ways the saddest day in the long story of our nation.”
The
Battle of the Somme lasted 141 days, involving troops from across what
was then the British Empire, and left around one million dead, injured
or missing while moving the frontline only a few miles.
“Tonight
we think of them… We acknowledge the failures of European governments,
including our own, to prevent the catastrophe of world war,” said
Prince Willia