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Feature: All-night vigils to remember deadliest battle of WWI

Xinhua, November 22, 2015 Adjust font size:

The Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in London's Westminster Abbey has been chosen as the centerpiece of an all-night vigil on June 30, 2016 to mark the centenary of the deadliest battle of World War One.

With all-night vigils also taking place in Edinburgh, Cardiff and County Down in Northern Ireland, it will commemorate the start on July 1, 1916 of the infamous Battle of the Somme.

On the first day of the battle the British suffered 60,000 casualties, a third of them killed in what remains the worst day for casualties in Britain's military history.

When the battle ended 141 days later on Nov. 18, the toll for both sides was heavy, 620,000 British and French casualties and around 500,000 German casualties. Heavy rains in October eventually brought the fighting to an end as a stalemate, with no victory for either side.

Britain's Culture Secretary John Whittingdale said: "We must never forget the scale of what happened at the Somme. More died on the first day of battle than any other day of the First World War. Almost every family in the country was touched by the devastating losses. I hope people of all generations up and down the country will have the chance to attend an event and honour the bravery of those who sacrificed so much."

As well as the Westminster Abbey vigil around the Grave of the Unknown Warrior, there will be a vigil at the Scottish National War Memorial in Edinburgh Castle, the Welsh National War Memorial in Cardiff, and at the Clandeboye and Helen's Tower, Co Down, Northern Ireland, in association with the Somme Heritage Center. There will also be a program of overnight events at the Imperial War Museum in London that night.

On July 1, the day the Battle of the Somme started exactly a century earlier, there will be a national commemorative service at Manchester Cathedral followed by a procession to the city's Heaton Park.

The British government will be holding an event on July 1, 2016, at Thiepval in northern France, where a memorial holds the names of 72,000 fallen soldiers who have no known graves. Endit