Somme selfies: young Irish fusilier from the ‘skins’

In the run-up to July’s centenary of one of the bloodiest battles in human history, The Independent is publishing a different Tommy’s picture every day

A very young and freckled Irish soldier poses for a postcard image to send home. He wears the cap badge of the “skins” or Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. Two battalions of the Inniskillings, a regiment based in Omagh, fought on the murderous first day of the Somme on 1 July 1916. They suffered over 1,000 casualties, more than half their strength. This image is part of a series of photographs taken in late 1915 and in 1916 for a few francs by a local photographer, Alfred Depire. Like almost all of the soldiers in the collection, our young Irishman has never been identified.