TOWNS and villages across East Lancashire were left deeply scarred by the Somme because of the high losses suffered by the ‘Pals’ battalions.

These units were made up of men who lived, worked and socialised together in Accrington, Blackburn, Burnley, Clitheroe, Nelson, Colne, Haslingden, Rawtenstall and the towns and villages which surround them.

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They joined up together and, at the Somme, many of them died together as they walked into a hail of German bullets.

The units were raised early in the war after it became clear that Britain’s professional standing army was far too small to wage war on the conflict’s industrial scale.

Driven by patriotism that often veered into jingoism, the cream of the nation’s young men signed up in their droves.

They were the men who were inspired by the famously moustachioed Lord Kitchener’s “Your Country Needs You” campaign, which became a famous image of the war.

Many regiments suffered massive casualties in a short period of time as units walked slowly into the murderous fire of the machine guns.

Historian Steve Williams, from Brindle, said: “The loss of so many young men from the towns of East Lancashire had an effect which still reverberates today.

“Children lost fathers and women were left to raise families without a man around which would have a direct impact for decades.

“With historical hindsight, one could look at the Somme as having been a watershed in warfare.

“Although similar battles and tactics continued, the enormous loss of life on all sides led to generals and tacticians moving on to different forms of warfare.”

As the battle progressed over the following weeks and months, the Pals units were involved in other more complex and successful attacks.

Paul Nixon, from Find my Past, which is making its archive of 65 million military records free until July 4, including 32 million from the First World War, said: “It wasn’t a failure in the sense that they couldn’t do what was expected.

“It was a failure because it was men walking at a snail’s pace into German machine guns. Unless you had bullet-proof armour you were not going to survive. They didn’t stand a chance.”