Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, welcome to this the 98th anniversary of Armistice Day 1918, which commemorates the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front at the end of World War 1.

Those of you who come here every year will know that I don’t usually do statistics, they are impersonal, and actually quite hard to comprehend. If I were to say 100,000, or 1 Million, or 10 Million casualties they are just numbers. But this year sees a special anniversary, 100 years since the Battle of the Somme. So I will give a few statistics for that and the wider World War 1, which after all is what led to Armistice Day, and us standing here every year to pay our respects and to remember all those who gave their lives for us, in World War 1 and every conflict since.

When World War One was declared there were street celebrations in most of Europe’s capital cities. No-one envisaged trench warfare in August 1914 and the appalling casualties that would occur over 4 years of fighting. Ypres was a fine example of a medieval city but by 1918, it lay in ruins and the surrounding land had witnessed death by the tens of thousands. The Somme and Verdun witnessed appalling slaughter. No-one could have predicted the horrifying consequences of modern weaponry being used together with out-of-date tactics. The figures ‘speak’ for themselves:

The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I was more than 38 million, of which there were over 17 million deaths, ranking it among the deadliest conflicts in human history. Of those, about 11 million were military personnel, with around 900,000 from Great Britain.

The Battle of the Somme started on July 1st 1916. It lasted until 18 November, just 141 days. For many years those who led the British campaign have received a lot of criticism for the way the Battle of the Somme was fought – especially Douglas Haig. This criticism was based on the appalling casualty figures suffered by the British and the French. By the end of the battle, the British Army had suffered 420,000 casualties including nearly 60,000 on the first day alone. The French lost 200,000 men and the Germans nearly 500,000.

Put another way, nearly 88,000 Allied men had been lost for every one mile gained in the advance.

51 Victoria Crosses, the highest award for Gallantry in the face of the enemy, were awarded.

A feature of World War 1 recruitment was the use of so called Pals battalions – entire units formed from a local area, a factory, or a football club, and even public schools. Many of these locally raised battalions suffered heavy casualties at the Somme. A notable example was the 11th (Service) Battalion (Accrington), East Lancashire Regiment, better known as the Accrington Pals. The Accrington Pals were ordered to attack Serre, the most northerly part of the main assault, on the opening day of the battle. Of the 700 or so Accrington Pals who took part in the attack, 235 were killed and 350 wounded within the space of just twenty minutes. Can you imagine the devastating effect back home, with a small town losing so many of its young men in one day?

Many of those killed do not have a known grave. In March 2009, the totals from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission for the First World War were:

Buried in named graves : 587,989
No known graves, but listed on a memorial to the missing : 526,816,

So it is fair to say that about half those killed are buried as known soldiers with their own graves. The other half are either buried in graves that are often simply marked “A Soldier of the Great War” or they were never found at all.

Terrible statistics, impossible to imagine numbers, so we’ll all forget them very quickly. But behind each one is an individual, a husband, son, a brother or a father to young children who would grow up not knowing their dad. So many families got the dreaded knock on the door, and a telegram saying their loved one was either missing or killed in action. To not know where they were buried must have compounded their loss. It is those individuals we must remember, and not the numbers.

So to help us do that, I thought I would put not just a name, but a face to just one of them, one of those without a grave, a young man called John Barker.

John was born not far away in Broxted, the son of John and Elizabeth Barker. He was at the Somme from the start, but was sadly killed on 30th July 1916, aged just 18. His body was never found, and he is remembered on the Thiepval Memorial.

I have brought along a picture of John, taken just before he went off to war. I’ll place it by the memorial so if you want to look at it afterwards, please do.

So, forget the statistics - John, and the hundreds of thousands like him who have made the ultimate sacrifice on our behalf, are why we stand here today.