Emotional tributes mark 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme

Leaving his two walking sticks beside his seat, Clive Adlam climbed up to the podium and let his father’s words ring out across these fields once more. 

A century ago, Lieutenant Tom Adlam earned the Victoria Cross for his courage while fighting less than half a mile away. Now, in front of a 10,000-strong congregation in France, his 87-year-old son read out his description of the battle.

Mr Adlam’s hands shook a little, but his voice remained steady. “There was a job to be done and you just got on and did it,” he read.

On Friday, exactly 100 years after the opening day of the Battle of the Somme, everyone remembered the men who got on and did it, without stopping to question their orders, the men who watched their comrades climb out of their trenches and walk towards their deaths before doing the same themselves. 

The commemorative service at the Thiepval Memorial to the missing of that battle began at noon on Friday. By that time a century ago, nearly 20,000 British men lay dead or dying on these fields.