‘The battle has a lasting legacy in Great Britain’

More than 930,00 people died during the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and the epitaph above would probably strike a chord with the families of any one of them.

But it was written for Private Thomas Justice, from South Road, Lochee, who was killed in action on July 1 — the first day of a bloody battle that went on for nearly six months.

He was 31, married to Jessie and they had a small child.

Thomas served with the Seaforth Highlanders and was a good soldier.

He’d been in from the very start of the war, had been commended for bravery twice and held the Military Medal for gallantry in the field.

But being a veteran infantryman wasn’t enough and he was one of some 20,000 British soldiers killed on the very first day.

The Battle of the Somme is being remembered 100 years on and the passage of time has not dimmed the horror nor the magnitude of the battle.

“The battle has had a lasting legacy i n Britain,” said Dundee University historian Derek J Patrick.

“And, for many, the appalling casualties sustained on its opening day have become representative of the conflict as a whole. It has shaped popular perceptions of the First World War.”

It was supposed to be a knock-out blow.

The British and French had amassed a huge, fresh army and preceded their assault on the German line with an artillery bombardment that went on for eight days.

The troops were laden with supplies and equipment and the artillery barrage was going to be so devastating, so complete, that they would literally stroll across no-man’s-land and take the line from the shattered Germans.

But far too many of the artillery shells failed to explode. The Germans knew an attack was coming and they were ready.

When the barrage lifted, the Germans climbed up to their parapets and opened up with machine guns blasting 500 rounds per minute. It was slaughter on an industrial scale.

Robertson Reid, 22, of 11 East Henderson’s Wynd, was serving in the Royal Scots and he too was killed that first morning.

His widow, Isabella, would get the telegram in a few days.

But it was going to be months before the family of Second Lieutenant Philip Rettie knew what happened to him, with the soldier being listed as “missing” for months.

Private Robert Dick (pictured below), 20, from Monifieth, had been a clerk at a yarn merchants before he volunteered and was sent to the Royal Scots. He’d been in France seven months when he was killed.

William Dand was only 18 and his folks lived in Church Street, Dundee, and he was a first-day casualty too.

Another Dundee teenager was Andrew Ogilvie, from North William Street. He lasted barely four weeks in France.

His parents were given a particularly cruel ordeal. The first telegram said he was “wounded”, the next said he was “missing” and only later was he confirmed “killed”. Another soldier to lose his life was Lt James Kerr, of the Highland Light Infantry.

These are just six of the confirmed Dundee first-day deaths from the Battle of the Somme.

The city had been reeling from appalling casualties since war started in 1914 and the Somme was

just more of the same.

“DO you mourn when another star shines out from the glittering sky?”