Centenary of the Battle of the Somme — House of Commons, 2016-06-29
Topic: Defense
Julian Carlton Knight (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a great privilege to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). July 1 1916 was the bloodiest day for the British Army and the start of our bloodiest battle. As nations applied the lessons of the industrial revolution to the battlefield, there were casualty rates of 20,000 a day—60,000 casualties on the first day—and nearly 1 million men were killed over the course of the several months of the battle. Those rates are slightly numbing. How do you put faces to close on 1 million men? How can you prevent so many tragedies from becoming, as the saying has it, mere statistics In my constituency of Solihull, we have a strong connection with our history—many Members have reflected on the history of their own constituencies. On 1 July, the mayor will be hosting our borough’s own commemoration of this pivotal battle, next to a replica trench in the grounds of Kingshurst academy. That will bring history to life for a new generation. I always find with younger people that they have a real, deep respect when faced with the sacrifices of our forebears and have real empathy for what they went through I would like to pay tribute to the men and women from my community who paid the ultimate price during the Battle of the Somme and during the Great War. There is not time enough to list them all: 24 Solihull men—Silhillians—died on the first day of the battle, and 127 would die before it concluded in November. Solihull was a very small place then in comparison with now, so we can imagine the impact on the community. Many hon. Members have mentioned that in relation to their own communities. These were people everyone knew. I remember the names I have seen and taken note of on the local war memorial: William Bolton, Charles Frost, Charles Haynes, David Jelfs, Clive Latch and Claud Wilks. Also listed are three members of the same family: Albert, Henry and Sidney Britt, all of whom served and died during the Great War. We are very lucky to live in a country where it is difficult to imagine any family suffering so terribly in a war. However, perhaps these days such things are becoming all too more frequent in our civilian lives For every man who died, another came home with life-changing injuries to a society ill prepared for them. This centenary offers us an important opportunity, amidst the sadness and respect, to recognise how far we have come in our treatment of veterans. This is not just about medical science, although that has come an astonishing distance since the Somme, as society has applied the same innovative genius to healing men as it once did to killing them. It is also about our much greater understanding of the mental and spiritual traumas that war inflicts on those who serve I am pleased that our country is making great strides towards improved mental health support for our servicemen and women, but we still have a long way to go and for many years our progress was too slow in that regard. I always think it is a great shame in our society that many of those who are homeless are former armed services personnel. I will do my best to support those efforts in my role as a Member of Parliament Of course, the age of total war meant that the wounds and risks were not borne by soldiers alone. A huge number of courageous men and women on all sides served in medical and technical positions, which were essential to the war effort. My right hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson) mentioned that many of the shells fired at the Somme were dud. It was very much a testament to the women of this country working in the munitions factories that they made such a difference in improving the quality of the armaments, thereby helping to deliver victory. So let me pay tribute to them now, especially to the extraordinary women who overcame great prejudice to play their vital part. Even before the sheer scale of the slaughter, the authorities had invited them to serve in a wide range of important roles Events like this centenary remind us not only how lucky we are to live in an age when mass mechanised warfare is seemingly not imminent but of the incalculable debt all of us owe to the men and women of our armed forces today.