For the British, the Battle of the Somme is the embodiment of the first world war. At 7.30am on 1 July 1916, 100 years ago on Friday, a British infantry assault began after seven days of artillery bombardment of the German lines. “Good luck, men,” one commander shouted as his troops, many of them volunteers, many of them from Ireland, prepared to go over the top. “There’s not a German left in their trenches, our guns have blown them all to hell.”

Only an hour later, there were already around 30,000 British casualties. By the end of the day, the official total had risen to 57,470, of whom 19,240 were dead. It was the bloodiest day in the history of the British army. The battle continued for four and a half months, along a 20-mile front. At the end the British had sustained 420,000 casualties, their French allies a further 200,000 and the Germans more than 500,000.

The Somme has gone down in British memory as a symbol of the human cost and futility of the first world war and, in some eyes, of all wars. But views of the battle and the war have not been unchanging.

In the immediate aftermath of the first war, the dead of the Somme were mourned for the sacrifice they had made in the outcome of a war worth winning. Half a century on, in a Britain living under the threat of nuclear annihilation, the military achievements of the first world war seemed less obvious, and were eclipsed by the virtue of the victories of the second. Pity for the dead, shaped by poems, plays, novels and television, had become the more dominant concern. The sheer scale of the carnage took precedence in the public mind.

On Friday, as the dignitaries and the relatives solemnly return to the Somme, and communities of every kind ponder their connections to the events of 1916, the sense of loss is still potent, as indeed it must surely always be. The scale of death on that day, in that battle, and throughout the war, retains an extraordinary hold on Britain’s collective and institutional memory. But perhaps we should also remember, particularly in the aftermath of last week’s referendum, that the Somme was a battle fought with European and Commonwealth allies in a collective effort. The peace in Europe, which was appallingly hard won in the years through to 1945, is our shared inheritance. We were part of Europe then. We are still part of Europe now. We shall always be part of Europe. Its peace and ours are one and the same.