My Great Uncle R was lucky. He went "over the top" with his Regiment on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Within 20 minutes all the Officers were dead. He pushed forward and got a bullet through his thigh. He managed to get himself into a shell hole where he sheltered "with the dead and injured" until dark, when he started crawling back towards the British lines. He was found and evacuated to a Military hospital in Cambridgeshire where he wrote to his younger brother, my Grandfather. He said he would rather lose his leg than go back to the "Hell-hole".
My mother's young cousin was not so lucky. A few days later, 21 year old Henry lost his life at the Somme. He is a name on a memorial. I don't think there is even a grave.
When I was a young child I would see men from two generations around town with terrible scars and missing limbs. When I asked my mother why, she told me (briefly) about the two wars - the War to End all Wars - and the one that followed a few years later. We never learn.
17 people killed by dogs since 2024
Sadiq Khan has commissioned benches from Spain for the pedestrianised Oxford Street
