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The first panel of a monument to the 5,000 Liverpool Pals who served in World War I has been completed ready for casting.

Made by sculptor Tom Murphy it will be one of a pair showing scenes from the volunteer soldiers’ story that will be displayed in Lime Street Station.

Fundraisers for the artwork still have around £35,000 of a total £80,000 to find to ensure it will be finished for next year’s 100th anniversary of the Pals enlisting on August 31.

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The Pals were not regular soldiers but mostly office staff who responded to an appeal by war secretary Lord Kitchener and Lord Derby for 100,000 volunteers to serve in northern France.

Liverpool was the first city to step forward with 1,050 men recruited at St George’s Hall by 10am on August 31, 1914.

They arrived in such numbers thousands had to be asked to return to sign up.

Mr Murphy, whose public artworks include the Hillsborough memorial at the bottom of William Brown Street, said: “It’s important that we remember the Liverpool Pals. I don’t think people in the city realise how many people we lost.

“A friend of mine came to see the panel and said ‘that’s what happened to my grandfather, he was kissed goodbye at the station and was never seen again’.”

The Pals took part in some of the bloodiest battles of World War I including the Somme, Arras and Passchendaele. More than 2,800 did not return home.

The 15ft wide monument’s first panel shows several scenes from the men queuing up to enlist, through their training at locations such as Knowsley Hall and Kitchener’s visit to Liverpool, to their departure from Lime Street Station.

The second will depict the wounded and dead in the French battlefields and the survivors’ return to Lime Street, where one of Kitchener’s famous finger-pointing posters will lie crumpled on the platform.

A silicone rubber mould will now be made from the first clay panel which in turn will be used to cast the finished work in resin. The completed piece will have the appearance of bronze.

Bill Sergeant, of the Liverpool Pals Memorial Fund, said: “After Kitchener made his appeal Liverpool was the first to respond. Manchester was next and other cities followed.

“In Tom’s piece there is a contrast between the scene of joy as the Pals are sent off to war and the dismal picture of them returning often wounded in much smaller numbers than they left.”

The Liverpool Pals Memorial Fund was launched last year with the re-enactment of a parade made in 1915 by the men who volunteered to fight.

The organisation is also seeking family members of more than 200 Pals who were killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme on July 1, 1916, for a book.

It can be contacted at www.theliverpoolpalsmemorialfund.com

To make a donation towards the memorial make cheques payable to ‘The Liverpool Pals Memorial Fund’ and send them to Mr Hughie Campbell, 36 Thursby Crescent, Kirkby, L32 8TT.