From Death That Hurtles by, I crouch in the trench day long

But up to a cloudless sky

From the ground where our dead men lie

A brown lark soars in song

Through the tortured air rents by the shrapnel's flare

Over the troubless dead he carols his fill, and I thank the gods

that the birds are beautiful still. So wrote the soldier poet Leslie Coulson, who served as a sergeant

with the 12th London Regiment, the Rangers, at Gomacour, and then was mortally wounded under the

Transloy Ridge in October 1916,

dying of his wounds at a casually clearing station near Albaer, a man who sadly found his grave on the Somme.

Today is the anniversary of the Battle of the Somme and this is an old front line special

where we look at some aspects of the Somme battlefields is an old Frontline special where we look at some aspects of

the Somme battlefields, visit some sites and hear the testimony of a veteran who was there in

1916. Welcome to the old front line with me, military historian Paul Reed and let's head to

Piccadie. At 7.30 in the morning, on the 1st of July

1916, the whistles blew in the British trenches opposite Gomacour in the north to Montabar in the south.

At that moment, tens of thousands of men went over the top

and moved out into no man's land, mainly at a walking pace, moving towards the German trenches

in the big push. This was the battle that would end the war, they believed. but by the end of that day, more than 57,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers had become casualties. Nearly 20,000 of the men killed in action or had died of wounds. The greatest single loss sustained by the British Army in its entire history.

What had gone so tragically wrong?

There'd been a seven-day bombardment in the end

because the offensive had been postponed due to poor weather.

...