TODAY in the small chapel at Radnor Street Cemetery, the Swindon in the Great War group is placing a crucifix made from rusted bayonets.

The work commemorates perhaps the most notorious battle of the war.

It is the 100th anniversary of the start of Battle of the Somme, an attempt to drive back the entrenched German forces from positions around the Somme River in Northern France.

By the time the offensive was called off on November 18, the Allies had advanced about seven miles.

There were more than a million casualties on all sides, including nearly 500,000 British troops.

Of these, nearly 50,000 fell on the first day alone, many of them torn to pieces by machine gun fire as they advanced on German positions.

The memorial in the Radnor Street Cemetery chapel was the idea of Mike Pringle from Swindon in the Great War. He gathered battlefield relics, which were welded together by local firm Stainless Supplies.

The cross is surrounded by 40,000 ring pulls sourced from local charity the Purple Community Fund.

They represent the estimated 40,000 deaths among troops of all nations 100 years ago today.

Mike said: “The idea of the ring pulls is that they are throwaway items – they’re things that are discarded.

“In a way that’s what these men were back then. They were just fodder.”