75 years after the Guns of August // World War I battle sites still echo the great tragedy

From: Chicago Sun-Times | Date: August 6, 1989| Author: Jack Schnedler | Copyright information

BEAUMONT HAMEL, France Beneath the low and leaden clouds of a November afternoon in the north of France, the epitaph echoed the mournful waste of martyred youth: "His last words when leaving home were, `I have only once to die.' "

He had been Pvt. C.F. Taylor, Royal Newfoundland Regiment, age 23, killed July 1, 1916, when 57,470 British Empire troops fell casualty on a single day - most of them to German machinegun fire - at the opening of the Battle of Somme.

Now he shared...

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