A sombre safari to the Somme battlefields with members of the Lightweight Land Rover Club
Reminders of Britain’s nautical and military past are everywhere, even in our language. It doesn’t have to be particularly muddy underfoot at a summer sports event or vehicle show before someone likens it to ‘the Somme’ in an allusion to the mud of that World War One battlefield.
It has become part of the English vernacular but mud was just one of the many horrors of the war that was raging 100 years ago. Spoken references are just one of numerous legacies that World War One has left while physical ones are to be found in the form of war memorials in every town and village in the United Kingdom and, unsurprisingly given the scale of the slaughter, on the former battlefields in Belgium and France.
The idea of military vehicle enthusiasts taking their vehicles to the battlefields is nothing new and military vehicle owners have been visiting Europe’s World War Two battlefields for decades. What is less common is owners of newer vehicles visiting older battlefields. When the Lightweight Land Rover Club (LLRC), for owners of the military half-ton models of 1968-1984, made plans to visit the Somme during August this ye…
