THEY had no way of knowing, but 100 years ago today many of the Durham Pals had only a week to live.

At their billets just behind the frontlines, 18th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry took part in intensive preparations for the battle which was about to take place: training for the assault and bringing munitions to the forward trenches.

On June 20, the battalion was divided in two. Three officers and 197 men of D Company left for Gezaincourt and were attached to the West Yorkshire Regiment, the Bradford Pals, for the battle.

The remaining 789 men of the battalion remained in trenches outside the village of Courcelles, under regular enemy bombardment, where they continued training.

The battalion war diary recorded: “The battalion bombers at Courcelles practised the making and use of Bangalore torpedoes. These are long iron pipes filled with ammonal and fitted with a detonator. They explode laterally and vertically upwards, very slightly downwards and not at all backwards or forwards and are most useful in destroying wire entanglements uncut by a bombardment.

“During the latter days of June, the heavy bombardment of German trenches and wire went on systematically, assisted by observation from our balloons and planes and every day thick clouds of our cylinder gas could be seen rolling greasily over the enemy’s line."

For eight days leading up to Zero Hour, the British artillery rained shells down on the German lines, to pulverise the enemy’s defences and cut the deadly wire. Headquarters were confident that, when they went over the top, the British would be able to walk across No Man’s Land and into the German lines.

Both sides now traded artillery fire. Private William Ewbank, a 20-year-old from Shildon, who before the war had worked as an oiler at the LNER depot in his hometown, was badly wounded with shrapnel in his abdomen and was evacuated to a field hospital.

A nurse wrote home to his family: “He is so anxious you should know he is here. He does not suffer much pain and on the whole is wonderfully cheery. I shall write to you again in a few days as I know you must be very anxious for he is such a good fellow.”

The next letter home informed them that Pte Ewbank had died on June 22.

Three days later, on June 25, the battalion suffered further casualties when German shells hit the cellar in which several men had taken cover.

Private George Lounton, from Bishopwearmouth, in Sunderland, and Private Frank Plows, an 18-year-old from York, were killed.

They would be the battalion’s last casualties before the slaughter of the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

BLOB Don’t miss The Northern Echo for our coverage of the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. We'll have a DLI Diary special on Thursday, telling what the Pals were doing on the eve of the battle, and on Friday – the anniversary of the battle itself – we'll have a special supplement about the Pals' experiences on the bloodiest day in British military history