A tommy with his service hat folded comically into the shape of a working man’s cloth cap, poses for the camera during or just before the battle of the Somme. He is a member of the Durham Light Infantry. Two “chums” battalions from the DLI fought on the calamitous first day of the Somme on 1 July 1916. Many of them were miners who had volunteered in the early weeks of the war in 1914. Throughout June, we are publishing a “Selfie from the Somme” – an image chosen from a collection of more than 700 long-lost photographs brought to light by The Independent in recent years.
