George Kenneth Cooke was my great-great-grandfather. He was born in 1896 in St Helens. He left school in 1910 to work for the London and North-Western railway. After the war broke out he asked the railway company if he could join the army but because he was too young they refused. But when he was nearly 19 he asked again and they let him go. He joined the 29th battalion of the Royal Fusiliers on 4 November 1915. He received the King’s shilling at Chester Castle. The battalion trained near Oxford. It was very hard and after one march in the cold winter weather he caught pneumonia. He spent three weeks in hospital.Then in July 1916 the battalion sailed to France. They then travelled by train to Amiens before marching to the town of Albert near the Somme. It was three miles from the front line where the armies were fighting one of the biggest battles in the war – the battle of the Somme.

These are his memories of the battle:

We detrained [and] we marched to a small, small village named Franvillas. As I went in to select a place where I could sleep, I noticed a soldier with a lighted candle running it up the seams of his shirt. I asked him what he was doing, he said: "Burning the lice in the seams". We were there one day then we marched to Albert and, as we approached there, we noticed the statute of the tower was hanging [off]. The local people believed that whichever army caused its complete destruction would lose the war. At Albert the day after our arrival we went into...trenches, for one night only. There was a lot of barbed wire. Two men were placed in each bay and told to clear it up. After we had finished clearing up, about 10 minutes later, shellfire began and one fell on the top corner of our bay and partly covered us with earth - we did not see a flash. We moved about five yards when there was another explosion quite near to us and we were again covered partly by earth. I felt as though my inside had burst and I noticed that my pal was in a terrible state, his whole body was trembling; I remember saying to myself - I'll speak to him and if I can talk I won't worry. I called for an RAMC man, who came up very quickly and slapped my pal on his face. I asked why he did that. He replied: "Shock treatment for shock". I saw this man the following day and asked how my pal was he replied that he was the worst case of shell-shock that he had seen. On August 4th, 1916 we were told that we would be going that over that night, we were also told that a barrage would start [before]...at 9pm we would be going over the top. We were given a small can of oil to clean our rifles and bayonets...as I was cleaning I knocked my can of oil over my trousers. Before we went over we were issued with [a] rum ration... I gave mine to a man standing next to me. Soon the barrage began, then at 9pm over the top we went. I had a strange feeling whilst the barrage was on; it was nothing but noise... When we went over we met stiff opposition and had to retire....some time later we had the order to attack again and, as we were proceeding I stopped by the largest shell hole I had seen, this would be about 15 to 20 yards. When I stopped I had my right leg forward, then I felt that terrible knock on my thigh, I put my hand on my knee and my hand was covered with blood. I managed to get back to the trenches and call for help, an RAMC man was there in no time, he cut the trouser leg away above the wound and used my field dressing, poured iodine on it and put it over the wound, then bound it...he then lay me in a cutting on the side of the trench - I lay there until daylight.

My great-great grandfather was eventually taken away from the front line and had an operation on his leg before sailing back to England.

The Battle of the Somme took place between July and November 1916. Over one million men were killed or wounded.