Whenever you hear someone talk about 2500 deaths in Iraq over three years, recall (or learn about), almost ninety years ago, the Battle of the Somme:

The first day of the battle, codenamed Z-Day, was generally accepted to be the worst of them all, with some battalions suffering losses of more than 90 per cent.

The Battle of the Somme was supposed to be won by the Allies on that first day of July. It was partly thanks to this overconfidence that the generals allowed Malins access to the trenches. Instead, the battle lasted until November – long after the finished film had been screened at home. By the end of the offensive, there were more than one million casualties from both sides. After five months of bitter fighting, the Allies had advanced just five miles.

As horrific as the battle was for the British troops who suffered and died there, it cost hundreds of thousands of French and German lives as well. One German officer famously described the Somme as “the muddy grave of the German field army”.

Among those to experience the horrors of the battle from within the trenches were a young JRR Tolkien, later to write the epic Lord of the Rings, the poets Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon, future British Prime Minister Anthony Eden – and an Austrian corporal named Adolf Hitler.