A SPECIAL ceremony to commemorate the beginning of the Battle of the Somme took place yesterday.
Members of Huddersfield Flower Club and local representatives of the Royal British Legion, attended a service at Huddersfield Parish Church.
The War Memorials Trust approached the National Association of Flower Arrangement Societies who in turn contacted the Huddersfield Flower Club.
The club laid a chaplet, a laurel wreath, comprised of five white roses to represent the five Yorkshire regiments.
There was also a silver plaque marking the occasion.
Secretary of Huddersfield Flower Club Margaret McNaire said: " I had three uncles and two great uncles that went to France.
"The uncles came back, the two great uncles didn't."
Mrs McNaire, of Berry Brow, said her relatives would never talk to her about the horrors they endured at the Somme.
She said: "All those young men who thought they were making a better world.
"They wiped out 90 per cent of the Leeds regiment and 400 from our own drill hall here."
During the service there was a Bible reading followed by a minute's silence.
The Vicar of Huddersfield, the Rev Catherine Ogle, said: "We're just trying to honour the memory of those people that took part and particularly the tremendous loss of young life."
