A poignant exhibition that sees 72,396 shrouded figures laid in lines on the ground gives a shocking insight into the number of men killed fighting in the First World War whose bodies were never found.

The Shroud of the Somme memorial being built at the Olympic Park in London today represents every Commonwealth serviceman who died on the Somme battlefields during WWI but has no known grave.

Artist Rob Heard, 53, who spent three-and-a-half years hand-sewing calico shrouds over the figures, said each one links to the name of a man killed fighting but never found.

The Shrouds of the Somme installation is on display until November 11 (Picture: PA)

For Rob, it is about giving each soldier the memorial spot they were robbed of.




‘The key to this is about the individual, so that is why the way we’ve chosen to lay these figures out there — with a gap between them,’ he said.

‘It is an ordered gap which is so important because they are individuals.

‘They’re not a mass, and each one is made to a name.’

The exhibition takes its name from the Battle of the Somme, fought in northern France, which was one of the bloodiest of the First World War.

Figures are put in place as artist Rob Heard unveils his Shrouds of the Somme installation honouring the dead of the First World War at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London (Picture: PA)

72,396 small shrouded figures represent soldiers who died and were never recovered from the Somme battlefields (Picture: PA)

Volunteers and members of 1 Royal Anglian Regiment helped carry out the painstaking job of laying out the figures (Picture: PA)

For five months the British and French armies fought the Germans in a brutal battle of attrition on a 15-mile front.

The aims of the battle were to relieve the French Army fighting at Verdun and to weaken the German Army.

But the fight was unsuccessful and ultimately tragic. In total, there were over one million dead and wounded on all sides.

The thousands of figures in Rob’s exhibit will be on display to the public at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park until Sunday, after which time they will be sold to raise money for military charities.

He started the project after injuring his hands in a car crash, which meant he could not continue his work as a wood carver.

‘I was feeling sorry for myself post-surgery, and I was just looking at the guys coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq at the time without their legs and with arms off, and just started thinking “come off it, get it together”.

Rob Heard hand-sewed every single figure (Picture: PA)

The poignant exhibition hopes to give the men killed during the Somme but never recovered the grave they were robbed of (Picture: PA)

The display is part of a nationwide commemoration of the centenary of the end of the First World War (Picture: Reuters)

‘The idea for making the shrouds was just an epiphany, I can’t actually remember how that came around. I just started to do it.

‘I wasn’t commissioned or asked to do it.’

He only finished the last figure five days ago and said it was strangely like a ‘prison sentence’.

‘I knew exactly what I was doing every day and I did it for 12 hours a day for three-and-a-half years, every single day,’ he said.

The display in Stratford is part of a nationwide commemoration of the centenary of the end of the war.

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