At 07:30 on 1 July 1916, the men of the 15th Battalion, The Prince of Wales's Own (West Yorkshire Regiment), better known as the Leeds Pals, left their positions in a series of copses named after the Gospels and advanced towards the village of Serre, near Bapaume, in the Somme Valley, only to be met by heavy German machine gun fire, suffering over 500 casualties in a few minutes.