It’s impossible to overstate the extent to which the battle of the Somme resonates in British memory. Here (Via the Daily Telegraph) is Prince Charles at the Thiepval cemetery on the ninetieth anniversary of the beginning of that terrible slaughter: “Being here today can only go a very small part of the way in helping us imagine how this beautiful countryside was devastated,” he said. “Great swathes of countryside, its mountains and glens, dales and fells, its villages and towns, an entire generation of their menfolk. In fact, nowhere was left untouched as their sons, brothers, husbands and fathers fell in one terrible day.” Describing the carnage of the Somme as “unutterable hell”, the prince added: “The magnitude of the Allied losses on July 1, 1916 are unimaginable in these days of instant communication and ever-present media, but even 90 years ago they caused a most profound shock to our nations and left scars that remain with us today. It was not just the huge scale of our losses – some 50,000 casualties in one day, of which 20,000 were killed or missing presumed dead – it was also the fact that for the first time in our history we put mere boys into an assault against the bomb, bullets and the terrible wire entanglements, equipped with little more than raw courage and a deep trust in their young leaders.” The Royal couple later met Henry Allingham, 110, who served with the Royal Naval Air Service on the Western Front later in the war. Smiling, Mr Allingham thanked the prince for his personal message on his recent birthday. The prince commented that his own grandfather had been at the Battle of Jutland, in which Mr Allingham had fought. “It’s amazing,” said the prince. After the meeting, Mr Allingham was handed a book by one modern-day serviceman and, despite his frailty, was able to write his name, the initials RNAS, followed by the date 1915-19, and his date of birth, June 6, 1896.”