KINGSBRIDGE residents and the Kingsbridge and District Royal British Legion remembered those killed in the Battle of the Somme on Friday morning.

More than 50 people, including Kingsbridge Mayor Chris Povey, clerk to the town council Martin Johnson, District and County Councillor Rufus Gilbert and members of the local RBL.

The Rev Jackie Taylor led the service at the Kingsbridge War Memorial at 10am. 100 years to the day that the Battle of the Somme began in 1916.

John Peacock, chairman of the Kingsbridge RBL, began by explaining the start of the battle. Seven days of allied bombardment meant to destroy the German trenches failed and as soon as the shelling ended, the Germans manned their machine guns.

As British and French soldiers went over the top, they were met with a ferocious barrage of bullets and more than 19,000 were killed on that first day. More than 1,300,000 men were killed in the four-moth battle of attrition, with the biggest gain being just five miles.

Chris Povey, Mayor of Kingsbridge said it was ‘an honour to represent the town at today’s memorial for the Somme’. He continued: ‘It was a hugely tragic event with such a huge loss of life and for me it indicates why we must never have a divided Europe again.

‘Although, as a country, we may chose to remove ourselves from the bureaucratic element of Europe, we are still Europeans and we should never forget that. We should always make sure that we never end up back in that place, whilst we must always remember to honour those people who gave their lives to give us the lives we have today.’

‘They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them.’ - Robert Laurence Binyon.