Authuille Church, Thiepval

Written by Mike
Memorial to the Highland Light Infantry at Authuille Church Memorial to the Highland Light Infantry at Authuille Church

On the 80th Anniversary of the opening day of the Battle of the Somme, a memorial was erected in the village of Authuille to honour the memory of the 15th, 16th and 17th Battalions of the Highland Light Infantry. 

The memorial is in the form of a plaque and attached at the side of the entrance to Authuille Church.  The memorial reads:

"To the eternal memory of the Officers, NCO's and men of the 15th (Glasgow Tramways), 16th (Boys Brigade) and 17th (Glasgow Commercials) Battalions of the Highland Light Infantry who fought and died near the village of Authuille during the opening days of the Battle of the Somme on the First of July 1916.

"From a hundred lonely graves in that foreign field - from the spots where they fell, and which are now sacred spots for us - our dead are asking us when we mean to erect that monument.

"From trench and shell hole where death found them, their voices call - young, musical voices, the voices of boys still in their teens, the voices of martyrs on life's threshold.

"Scarce a wind can blow that will not waft to you these voices.  And they ask a better Britain as their monument.  They ask it of you and me. 

"Shall we not go from this place resolved to build it?

Mike

Mike

Mike McCormac has been a photographer since about ten years old.  He's a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, and lives in a village in the hills near Paphos in Cyprus.

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