‘Somme 110’: the WFA marks 110 years since the first day

The Western Front Association has published Somme 110, a special-edition magazine marking 110 years since the opening day of the Battle of the Somme. It was released on 1 July 2026, the anniversary of the 1916 assault, and continues the tradition of the earlier Somme 90.

Edited by Dr Martin Purdy, the issue sets out a single theme in its introduction: humanity, and the personalisation of sacrifice. Purdy first visited the Somme in the 1990s and has returned to the Western Front at least twice a year since, guidebooks, memoirs and trench maps in hand. He suggests the ground offers a more condensed and emotionally relatable version of a scale of loss that can otherwise be hard to grasp – a dimension deepened by the battle’s association with Pals battalions and the communities they came from.

The magazine draws together material from the WFA archive and new articles from members of the Association. Publications trustee Colin Wagstaff sourced much of the content. The Babcock International Group sponsored the edition; Babcock is the UK’s joint-biggest defence employer of veterans and the largest employer of military reservists.

Veterans remembered

A thread of recollections from the WFA’s own late veteran members runs through the issue. It opens with Roy Bealing, photographed at the Lochnagar Crater on 1 July 1980, and the memory – recorded by early member Richard Dunning – of his friend Alf Moxham, cut down on the lip of the crater in 1916 and believed to lie there still.

The first day, told by those who were there

The opening assault is set out in detail through the 11th Battalion East Lancashire Regiment (the Accrington Pals) and their advance on Serre. The British barrage lifted at 7.20am, but the Pals were not due to go over until 7.30am, giving the German machine-gunners time to come up from their deep dugouts. Darryl Porrino, chairman of the WFA’s North Wales branch, tells the story largely in the words of the survivors – the wounded who lay out in No Man’s Land, and the runners who came back with the message that the attack had been ‘a wash-out’.

Across the battle and its aftermath

The remaining articles range widely across 1916 and the years that followed:

• A chance encounter with a piper, and the Tyneside pipers of the first day.
• ‘Death in the air’, a flyer’s tale.
• Ordinary Seaman Joe Murray on the Ancre with the Royal Naval Division.
• Captain Wilfred ‘Billy’ Nevill and the footballs kicked towards the German trenches on 1 July – and how the story has been retold, and misinterpreted, ever since.
• The influence of Martin Middlebrook’s The First Day on the Somme, published in 1971.
• The death of two senior officers, told through a set of photographs.
• Moving the wounded: the work of the ambulance trains.
• The winter on the Ancre from the German side, as the fighting sank into the mud around the Butte de Warlencourt and Redan Ridge.
• Battlefield clearance after the battle, and a little-known dispute involving men of the Chinese Labour Corps.
• The Wallace Memorial at Bazentin: its history and recent repair.
• ‘Lost and found in Albert’, two pieces on Thiepval – including why the memorial now standing there was first intended for St Quentin – and a newly discovered memoir by Ralph ‘Rafe’ Peel of the 6th Yorkshires, recording his battalion’s entry into the line in the Thiepval sector.

Not yet a member?

Much of what fills Somme 110 – original research, first-hand testimony and material drawn from the archive – is the same kind of writing that reaches WFA members throughout the year in Stand To!, the Association’s respected journal. Membership brings a range of further benefits alongside it. If you have come across this article by chance and are not yet a member, you can see the full package and join at the WFA membership page.

Read ‘Somme 110’