The start of the first major battle of the First World War was yesterday commemorated by the City of Hamilton.

And the widow of a soldier who marched off to war nearly 100 years ago was the guest of honour at the City Hall ceremony.

Joseph Levon, the husband of Lillian Levon, now 97, left the peace of Bermuda for the horror of the trenches when he volunteered to serve with the Bermuda Militia Artillery in France.

Mr Levon served with the Bermuda contingent attached to the Royal Garrison Artillery in some of the bloodiest campaigns of the war and also served in the Second World War helping to man gun batteries around the Island.

Yesterday, Ms Levon, who married Mr Levon long after the 1918 Armistice ended the conflict, said the ceremony was “moving” and “emotional.”

Mr Outerbridge told dignitaries and onlookers at the ceremony, held on the City Hall steps: “One hundred years have passed and more wars have been, and continue to be, fought around the world and we reserve the time today to honour those whose lives were lost.”

He said that Island soldiers served in the Bermuda Militia Artillery, the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps, the Royal Navy and the Royal Flying Corps, as well as with other British regiments and with foreign armed services.

Several hundred Bermudians went to war — and 80 of them never came home.

Mr Outerbridge said: “We quietly remember and thank those who gave themselves so readily to serve their country.”

The service was held to mark the start of the Battle of the Frontiers on the French and Belgian borders, where French, British and German troops clashed in a series of battles — the first large scale engagements of the war which Britain had entered only ten days before.

And the casualty lists numbering in the hundreds of thousands on both sides gave a grim foretaste of the future of a war destined to be fought on an industrial scale.

Deidra Bean, of Chewstick, read two First World War poems, In Flanders Fields, by Canadian Army surgeon Lt Col John McCrae and For the Fallen, by Laurence Binyon, which contains the line still used at military services around the globe — “At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.”

Among the dignitaries were Governor George Fergusson — whose grandfather Lt General Sir Charles Fergusson served throughout the war as a divisional and corps commander — his wife Margaret, Bermuda Regiment CO Lt Col Michael Foster-Brown and US Consul General Robert Settje.

The Bermuda Regiment, created in 1965, was formed from an amalgamation of both units.

Col Foster-Brown said: “We are very proud of the military tradition of the Regiment and the history of service — it goes back a long way.

“World War One, with the sacrifice of 80 servicemen, is clearly a significant part of this. I came here to honour their service and sacrifice.”