Somme selfies: from Glasgow Boys’ Brigade to battle

In the run-up to July’s centenary of one of the bloodiest battles in human history, The Independent is publishing a different Tommy’s picture every day

A smart Scottish soldier that appears to be a member of the Highland Light Infantry (City of Glasgow Regiment). The 16th battalion of the HLI – 1914 volunteers mostly drawn from the Glasgow Boys’ Brigade – fought with calamitous consequences on the first day of the Somme on 1 July 1916. Of the 800 or so HLI soldiers who attacked the German lines at Thiepval, 554 were killed, wounded or captured. On each day until the centenary on 1 July, 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.