Somme 100th year anniversary service

Somme 100th year anniversary service

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The Somme 100th year anniversary service and parade was held at the town’s Cenotaph opposite Rochdale Town Hall. Veterans, cadets and associations from across the borough joined the parade, as the local community came together to remember the fallen.

The Mayor and Mayoress, Vice Lord-Lieutenant Edith Conn DL JP, Deputy Lord Lieutenant Ian Sandiford, Deputy Leader Jackie Beswick, Rochdale MP Simon Danczuk, Heywood and Middleton MP Liz McInnes and local councillors all laid wreaths along with local school children who had made their own commemorations.

The service was led by The Rev Canon Alan Shackleton, Royal British Legion Chaplin, and the blessing was read by Rev Margaret Smith, Rochdale Town Centre Chaplin.

At 2.40pm the parade was led by the King’s Division Band down Yorkshire Street onto Baillie Street and across the River Roch, forming up for the service outside the Cenotaph at 3pm.

Local men had signed up to fight through ‘pals battalions’ which were conscripted from the town’s streets, work places and social clubs. Many registered with the Lancashire Fusiliers.

Hundreds of Rochdale recruits were amongst the fallen, many losing their lives on the first day of the battle, 1 July 1916. The losses ripped apart whole communities. Entire generations were sacrificed on the fields of Northern France.

The Battle of the Somme lasted from 1 July to 18 November 1916 on the banks of the Somme River in France. Almost 60,000 British soldiers were killed or wounded on the first day of fighting. After five months of fighting there was a staggering one million dead or wounded on both sides.