PEOPLE are being invited to pay their respects at a special remembrance event in Bradford at the weekend honouring the sacrifices made by local men during World War One.

Saturday will mark 101 years since the first day of the Battle of the Somme when 1,400 Bradford Pals went over the top fighting for their king and country.

Out of those men, an estimated 917 were wounded and 230 of them died on the battlefield or from their wounds soon after.

Bradford Territorials in the 6th battalion West Yorks regiment also experienced the horror of that day but stayed on the Somme battling it out, suffering heavy loss of life on July 25 and September 3, 1916.

This Saturday, the Lord Mayor of Bradford Councillor Abid Hussain is hoping people from across the district will join him at the memorial to the Bradford Pals in the Memorial Garden behind the Bradford Cenotaph at 11am.

After he has given a welcome and an introduction to the event, there will be an address by the Bradford WW1 Group and a reflection led by the Lord Mayor’s Chaplain Mufti Khurshid Alam Sabri.

The Deputy Lieutenant of West Yorkshire, David Pearson from Haworth, will be reading from a World War One poem.

Lone bugler Brian Anderson, from the Band of the West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service, will sound The Last Post to mark the start of a one minute’s silence. Wreaths will then be laid.

The service will end with a commendation given by a member of The Royal British Legion from “For the Fallen” by Laurence Binyon. Prayers will be led by the Lord Mayor’s Chaplain and then The National Anthem will be sung.

Cllr Hussain said: “The sacrifices of those young men from Bradford who came together to form the Bradford Pals and who gave so much during the First World War and particularly the Battle of the Somme should never be forgotten.

“We should also remember the grief and suffering of those families whose loved ones never returned home.”

Earlier this year, a new memorial to the Bradford Pals was placed at the heart of the French World War One battlefields.

The Telegraph & Argus’s Honour the Pals Appeal saw hundreds of Bradfordians donate money to fund a fitting memorial to the Pals and to other servicemen from the district who fought and died in that war.

Bradford Council matched the funding for the stone which is now in the grounds of the French memorial chapel on the Serre Road between Hébuterne and Serre in northern France, where so many of the Bradford Pals fought and died in the frontline trenches.