THE battle honours that proudly adorn the colours of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment cannot be matched by another regiment in the entire Army.

But none speaks more eloquently of courage and selfless sacrifice than the one that commemorates the Battle of the Somme, which took place in France 86 years ago today.

It is a date and an episode that not only stands out prominently in a glorious regimental history stretching back more than 300 years, but also one that is indelibly engraved on the hearts of thousands of people in East Lancashire.

For they are the descendants of the hundreds of men of the famous 'Accrington Pals' battalion who were wiped out or wounded in just 10 minutes on the Somme on that fateful summer morning of 1916 as they walked into a hail of German machine-gun fire.

Theirs was the 11th Battalion of the East Lancashire Regiment -- an illustrious forebear among those amalgamated as the Queen's Lancashire's in 1970 -- raised from volunteers from across our region in response to the recruiting call made by Accrington's Mayor at the outbreak of the First World War.

But because their sacrifice -- 235 killed and 350 wounded -- was concentrated among men from such a concise area it was felt all the more painfully among their relatives and survivors. And it told forcefully of the strength of the volunteer spirit that East Lancashire had shown.

How right, then, that at long last that their courage and noble willingness to risk -- and shed -- their lives has now been officially recognised by Hyndburn Council's granting of the Freedom of the Borough to the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, as it was in Accrington at the weekend on the eve of the Somme anniversary.

It is an honour that was long overdue for a distinguished regiment that East Lancashire claims as its own and, above all, as a memorial to the men who 86 years ago sacrificed everything for their country and its freedom.