12th May 2011

DORCHESTER: Dedication service for Dorsets' memorial

A special service was held to dedicate a new memorial honouring the soldiers of the Dorset Regiment who died during the Battle of the Somme.

Present at the event were many former soldiers of the Devon and Dorset Regiment (as the Dorsets became in 1958) as well as some relatives of those men who served in World War I and young Cadets.

The memorial will stand not just for those who died on the Somme but also the Territorials and Yeomanry who fought and died elsewhere on the Western Front in France, in the Middle East and in Mesopotamia.

A Committee of volunteers, supported by the Dorset and South Wilts Branch Western Front Association, who meet in Pimperne, organised the appeal, which raised more than £23,000, most of it donated by individuals and organisations throughout Dorset.

The memorial will be a much needed focus for all those families and school groups from Dorset who visit the Western Front.

On the morning of 1st July 1916, 350 young men from the Dorset Regiment were killed in a field near the French village of Authuille.

It was the first morning of the Battle of the Somme – the infamous and disastrous battle of the First World War. The total number of casualties on day one of the battle was 60,000 – 19,000 died.

In all, more than 4,500 of Dorset’s young men were killed in the Great War, another 16,000 survived, many living with terrible injuries.

In the 95 years since there have been many memorials erected in France and elsewhere – but never one to the Dorsets.

Local company Stoneform, based at Bockhampton near Dorchester, were commissioned to build an obelisk in Portland stone.

On the base of the obelisk is that famous quotation from Thomas Hardy “Victory crowns the just”.