Picardy

We set off at daybreak to drive from Artois down into Picardy. The sun rose deep orange turning into a bright golden fire above the misty French countryside - heralding a perfect summers day. Exactly right for our plans.

We were aiming for an early-morning rendezvous; and so before 7.00 am we'd parked the car a quarter mile beyond the tiny village of Serre, and headed off up a farm track of dusty white chalk. After 10 minutes, this brought us to a small wood - Mark Copse - and already a few figures were beneath its trees. More arrived by twos and threes, and a minibus-load, but at last no more were coming, and just before 7.30 am everything fell silent for a couple of minutes.

Then as the half-hour struck, we could hear the bells of some of the 60 parish churches which were all ringing. It was time to begin the walk.

We left the wood, and under a cloudless blue sky we followed a path of green turf which runs part of the way across a gently-rising field of crops, for a distance of about 150 metres. Here the walk ended, about half way back towards Serre village, which cannot quite be seen over the slight rise in the ground. At a slow pace, the whole route can be completed in about 5 minutes.

A SHORT WALK IN PICARDY 1st July 2006 We set off at daybreak to drive from Artois down into Picardy. The sun rose deep orange turning into a bright golden fire above the misty French countryside - heralding a perfect summers day. Exactly right for our plans. We were aiming for an early-morning rendezvous; and so before 7.00 am we'd parked the car a quarter mile beyond the tiny village of Serre, and headed off up a farm track of dusty white chalk. After 10 minutes, this brought us to a small wood - Mark Copse - and already a few figures were beneath its trees. More arrived by twos and threes, and a minibus-load, but at last no more were coming, and just before 7.30 am everything fell silent for a couple of minutes. Then as the half-hour struck, we could hear the bells of some of the 60 parish churches which were all ringing. It was time to begin the walk. We left the wood, and under a cloudless blue sky we followed a path of green turf which runs part of the way across a gently-rising field of crops, for a distance of about 150 metres. Here the walk ended, about half way back towards Serre village, which cannot quite be seen over the slight rise in the ground. At a slow pace, the whole route can be completed in about 5 minutes.

This was the life expectancy of many of the "Accrington Pals" - millworkers, clerks, railwaymen - who left Mark Copse on just such a summer's morning ninety years ago to the minute, on 1st July 1916 at the start of the battle of the Somme. Altogether 720 of them started the walk, but 585 became casualties - that's 81%. With the others, we looked around the beautifully-kept little cemetary in no-mans land, and at 8.00, as most of the Pals had been killed by that time, we took a luxury denied to the 585, and retraced our steps. It was still early. On just a single summers day like this, British and Newfoundland casualties came to almost 60,000, of whom almost 20,000 were killed. Out of all the young men in Britain aged between 13 and 24 when the war broke out, 30 per cent were killed and another 20 per cent were disabled. ANDREW E.