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The towns of east Lancashire in North-West England were among the worst hit by the massive loss of life on the first day of the Battle of the Somme 100 years ago.

The Mayor of Accrington, a small textile town, had volunteered to form a battalion of 1,000 local men to help England’s war effort in 1914. Men from neighbouring Burnley and Chorley completed the new battalion, which became known as the Accrington Pals because friends, neighbours and workmates had all joined up to fight together. The Pals were soon a familiar sight as they marched and trained around their home district.

The Â鶹Éç’s chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet tells the story of the Accrington Pals, who joined the so-called ‘Big Push’ against the German front line at the Battle of the Somme. On July the first they marched into a hail of German machine gun fire. An allied artillery bombardment was meant to have destroyed all resistance. But the Germans were well armed and well dug-in. In less than 30 minutes more than 580 of the 720 Accrington Pals were killed, injured or missing in action.

Lyse Doucet explores the pride and sadness of local people as they prepare to mark the centenary of the day that nearly wiped out the Accrington Pals and she reflects on modern attitudes to war and remembrance.

(Photo: William Henry Parkinson, Accrington Pal who was killed on 1 July 1916. Credit: Gilbert Parkinson)