Via Daily Mail:
A soldier shot during the Battle of the Somme was saved by a spoon and a bible he kept in his jacket pocket.
Henry Cooper, from Manchester, was shot in the chest on the frontline but survived because the bullet struck the spoon and the bible before piercing his skin.
The bullet punctured major organs, including his lung, and became lodged inside his body.
The 20-year-old soldier was sent back to the UK and spent months recovering in hospital in Southampton. Mr Cooper suffered as a result of the wound in later life and died in the 1970s.
The remarkable story has emerged on the eve of the centenary of the Somme offensive, which started on July 1, 1916. The first day of the battle remains the bloodiest in British military history.
The silver spoon was passed down to Mr Cooper's grandson Rod Cooper, who carried it in his pocket while serving in Iraq in 1991.
From HuckFunn:
The Battle of the Somme began 100 years ago in the fields of France. On the first day of the battle, 20,000 British soldiers were killed and another 40,000 were wounded. The battle would last for another 145 days and become one of the bloodiest battles in human history.
I read a novel several years ago about a British woman whose father had served in WWI. When he died in the 70's, she realized that she knew that he had fought at the Somme but beyond that she knew nothing of the WWI. She traveled to Thiepval, France which is the site of a large memorial to the war dead of that battle in order to learn about the war. She came upon a large pavilion upon which the names of tens of thousands of British soldiers were inscribed on the walls. She asked a park ranger, "Are these the names of all of the British who died in the war"? He replied "No". She asked, "Are these the names of all the British who died in this battle"? He replied "No… these are the names of the British who fought in this battle and were never found."