Eighty-seven years ago, in the middle of World War 1, on July 1st 1916, 2000 young men from Bradford left their trenches in Northern France to advance across no man's land. It was the first hour of the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

In 1974 a BBC North crew accompanied some of the surviving Bradford Pals on what was to be their last trip back to the Somme.

Ernest Wilson talks about going home:

We weren't a nation of soldiers, you know. We weren't a military nation at all but, of course, when the call came, the response was great. A lot of us volunteered straight away. Boys from offices, factories, volunteered immediately and when we got home, of course, most of us wanted to forget about the whole thing and, in any case, we wanted to settle down to civilian life. A lot of us, of course, we hadn't finished our apprenticeships, you know. We wanted to get on with work and forget all about it. Naturally there were relatives and friends that kept asking the question,'Where you captured so-in-so Ernest? Well, you see, I think our Dad was killed somewhere near there? Have you seen his grave?'