A BABY born on the first minute of Remembrance Day has been named Tommy, a nickname for soldiers, as a tribute to them.

Tommy Townsend was born in Royal Blackburn Hospital on the first minute of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 90 years after the day the guns fell silent on the Western Front.

Mum Amy Witherington is from Milton Street, Oswaldtwistle, one of the Lancashire towns from which the Accrington Pals marched off together to fight at the Battle of the Somme in the First World War.

She decided to call her son Tommy while she lay in a maternity hospital bed listening to news on the 90th Remembrance Day.

The 22-year-old new mum said: “All my great grandads were Tommies in that war.

“Like most people I only heard about them when I was at school.

“But all the news got me thinking and I remembered our new health centre has been named the Accrington Pals Health Centre by Prince Edward.”

Baby Tommy, whose father is security guard Sam Townsend, 24, weighed 8lb 4oz. Sam said: “He is perfect in every way.”

The family’s home is just a mile from the Accrington Pals memorial in St John’s Church, Accrington. The church is now threatened with permanent closure after its electrical wiring failed a safety check.

Seven hundred Pals, officially known as the 11th (Service) Battalion (Accrin-gton) East Lancashire Regiment, climbed out of their trenches on July 1, 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

Twenty minutes later, two German machine gunners had killed 235 of them and wounded 350.

British soldiers have been known as Tommies since 1815, possibly after the name Private Tommy Atkins appeared on a sample Army pay book.