NEWS FEED
Soldiers from The Hampshire Regiment and The Dorsetshire Regiment were individually remembered in a unique and historic centenary art project to commemorate the fallen of the Battle of the Somme.
The 19,240 Shrouds of the Somme commemorated all 19,240 allied soldiers who fell on the first day of the battle, which began on 1 July 1916.
Exactly 100 years to the day later, at the same time as the whistle was blown to ‘go over the top’, 19,240 hand-stitched shrouded figures representing every soldier were laid out in Exeter’s Northernhay Gardens.
The names of the fallen were marked by the artist Rob Heard who has seven volumes of the War Graves Commission’s lists of those who died.
The Hampshire Regiment lost 232 men on the first day of the Battle of the Somme and The Dorsetshire Regiment lost 70.
