On 1st July 1916 at around 7:20 am, which would have been 88 years ago yesterday, 720 Accrington Pals went over the top on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, near Serre.
About 580 were either killed, wounded or were missing. So it is a fitting tribute that Accrington has erected a momument in their memory.
How strange that six months later, one war poet by the name of Wilfred Owen, was in the exact same location as the Accrington Pals, and made his way straight down Sackville street and then onto a Boche dugout in no mans land opposite the 'Heidenkopf' (
http://www.1914-18.co.uk/woa/dug%20out%20text.htm)
His experience can be read in his famous poem 'The Sentry', a read on...
http://www.englishverse.com/poems/the_sentry