Dear friends,
This year is the centennial anniversary of the Battle of the Somme which began on 1st July and ended on 18th November 1916, when fighting stopped because surviving the winter became the priority for both sides. It was one of the costliest battles of World War 1. The original Allied estimate of casualties on the Somme, stated at the time, was 485,000 British and French casualties and 630,000 German, but these figures are not entirely accurate. But on the first day alone the British Army lost nearly 60,000 men.
