“ But how about these males who took half in the latter days of the Somme, who fought just
as bravely, and whose sacrifices had been equally nice?
Although Vere was never to see that new world, it was because of the sacrifices of young
men like him that it did finally come into being.
Nonetheless, thanks to some wonderful archival digging by the historian Paul Reed, the circumstances of his dying can finally be revealed, and it's a shifting second indeed when we see the Stockdale household learn the reality - although it would be a spoiler to offer it away here.
Because of his efforts, and those of tens of 1000's of others,
the final offensive of the Somme did assist slowly to
show the tide of the battle against the Germans. It's subsequently chilling to think that 100
years ago - in the same size of time by which we have been on our summer season holidays and again at work for a number of weeks, and schoolchildren are already on the
other side of half-time period - the Somme continued to rage, with round 7,000 males being killed
or critically wounded on daily basis. ”