RALPH Chapman of Holsworthy with his grandson Nicholas Shepherd, who now lives in Exeter, were among the thousands of people, including members of the Royal Family, David Cameron and President Hollande of France, who attended a ceremony in France at the Thiepval Memorial on July 1 to mark the centenary of the Battle of the Somme, writes Christine Williams.

One of World War One’s bloodiest, the battle was fought in northern France and lasted five months, with the British suffering almost 60,000 casualties on the first day alone.

The British and French armies fought the Germans in a brutal battle of attrition on a 15-mile front and more than a million men were killed or wounded on all sides at the Somme.

Mr Chapman had a special reason for going since his uncle, Clarence Blight of Buckland Filleigh, who had put up his age from 17 to 18 in order to be able to enlist, was killed in action in September 1918 shortly before the Armistice and was buried at Vis-en-Artois.

Having applied more than a year ago and explained a family connection, they were lucky enough to be allocated two tickets and on two days before travelled to a hotel at Ypres in Belgium via Paris and Versailles.

They both found it a very moving experience and Nicholas kept thinking, ‘We are standing on the very ground where the terrible slaughter took place’.

Before the service of commemoration, which began at noon, they watched a big screen as the BBC Symphony Orchestra played a new score to accompany archive footage of the battle showing men clambering out of trenches towards the barbed wire of no-man’s-land.

The service, which was narrated by the actors Charles Dance, Joely Richardson and Jason Isaacs, began with the French and British national anthems.

Among the memories they brought home with them were a Welsh male voice choir singing Keep the Home Fires Burning and other songs which had been popular during the war.

During the two minutes’ silence 10,000 poppies and cornflowers, the French flower of remembrance, were released from the top of the memorial.

Before returning home via Bruges they visited the Menin Gate, the Memorial to the Missing, dedicated to the British and Commonwealth soldiers who were killed at Ypres and whose graves are unknown.

Meanwhile six men from the Holsworthy area who fought and died during the First World War, two of them on July 1 1916 and two on July 2, are currently commemorated in an exhibition in Holsworthy Museum.

They include Lt Arthur Spencer of Black Torrington aged 20 and Private Frederick Jones aged 21 of Pancrasweek who were both killed in the Battle of the Somme and are buried at Thiepval. Photos of all the men are accompanied by detailed information about their lives before they enlisted and of their bravery in battle.