Standing silently in light drizzle at 7.30am on 1st July 2016, our group were taken back to the moment exactly one hundred years earlier, when whistles blew and the young volunteers of Kitchener’s New Army went ‘over the top’ to start the Battle of the Somme. The race was on. On one side were British troops, laden down with packs, rifles and equipment - walking slowly and deliberately in waves across no man’s land. On the other, German soldiers emerged from their bunkers and frantically assembled their machine guns. Tragically, only one side knew it was a life or death [...]