News
TRH commemorate the 90th Anniversary of the Battle of the Somme
30th June 2006
The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall joined thousands of people in France to honour the 20,000 British soldiers who were killed on the battlefields of the Somme exactly 90 years ago today.
The Princess Royal and The Duke of Gloucester also attended ceremonies along the former front line in northern France to mark the anniversary of the darkest day in British military history.
The Battle of the Somme lasted four and a half months and cost a total of 125,000 British lives, with 20,000 lost on the first day alone.
Around 5,000 people gathered in front of the soaring Thiepval Monument to see The Prince lay a wreath and speak of the “unutterable hell” of the battle which began on 1st July 1916.
In a speech, The Prince said: “It was not just the huge scale of our losses ... it was also the fact that for the first time in our history we put mere boys into an assault against the bomb, bullets and the terrible wire entanglements, equipped with little more than raw courage and a deep trust in their young leaders.”
The Prince told those gathered that both his own and The Duchess's families had been touched by the carnage of the First World War.
The Prince's own great uncle Captain Fergus Bowes-Lyon, was killed in the Battle of Loos which preceded the Somme campaign.
The Duchess's family suffered the devastating loss of three brothers, who would have been her great uncles, in the 1914-18 war including one - Henry Cubbitt - who died at the Somme in 1916.
Henry's brother Alick Cubbitt was killed the following year in the battle of Bourlon Wood while Hugh Cubbitt died in a cavalry charge in 1918 at Villeselve.
Like the 72,000 British and Commonwealth servicemen listed on the arches of the Thiepval, Alick Cubbit's body was never found.
With The Prince by her side, The Duchess stood silently before the graves of two unknown soldiers, one British, one French, before laying posies of roses, chrysanthemums and freesias wrapped in fern.
The Prince laid a wreath of poppies at the centre of the Thiepval memorial ahead of others from France, Australia, Canada, South Africa, India, New Zealand, the Republic of Ireland and Germany.
A simple hand-written message read: “In grateful, admiring and eternal memory. Charles and Camilla.”
The monument itself, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, was inaugurated by the previous Prince of Wales, the future Edward VIII, who himself served as an officer in the battle of the Somme.
The monument bears the names of more than 72,000 British and South African soldiers who have no known grave and who are still missing from the battles of 1916-1918.
Afterwards, Their Royal Highnesses met some of the “Somme Pilgrims” who were visiting the graves of their own relatives and WW1 veteran Henry Allingham who, at 110 years of age, is Britain's oldest man.
Mr Allingham served with the Royal Naval Air Service on the Western Front from 1917 and saw many set off for the second battle of the Somme.
“I am here not because of me, I am here because of those men that I knew so well and knew me so well, I'm here on their behalf, for their sakes,” he said before the event.
Mr Allingham's friend Dennis Goodwin, Chairman of the World War One Veterans' Association, said: “He never thought that he alone would represent all those men on the Somme.”
The four-and-a-half month battle cost a total of 125,000 British lives - 20,000 on the first day - leaving deep scars in communities across the United Kingdom.