Footsteps of the fallen

Send us Fan Mail The weather played its part in the Great War, perhaps in more ways than first imagined.  The Great War lasted over 1500 days, and over 600 saw rain on the Western Front.  The winter of 1914 saw torrential rain and temperatures drop to -10 in France, and the autumn of 1917 in Flanders saw four months' worth of rainfall in just 33 days.  London's Met Office offered to help...

Send us Fan Mail On the 110th anniversary, we travel to France and walk around the battlefield of the first major offensive launched by the British on the Western Front at Neuve Chappelle. Initial successes were tempered by poor decision-making and poor communications between divisional commanders and the offensive ground to a halt in the face of heavy German resistance.  Casualties were 11,000 ki...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to this latest episode of the podcast. Today, we walk the battlefield around the area of the Hohenzollern Redoubt, the formidable German strongpoint located on the battlefield at Loos, which was attacked by the 9th Scottish Division on the opening day of the battle of 25th September 1915.  Fighting continued until the middle of October when men of the 46th Midland Division...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to the first Trench Talk of Season 7! It's a real pleasure to be joined by naval historian and writer Chris Sams as we talk about the Battle of Jutland in 1916.  The long-awaited showdown between the Royal Navy and the Kriegsmarine turned into an unexpectedly bad day for the British.  We look at what happened that afternoon off the coast of Denmark and talk about othe...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to the first episode of 2025! Today, we head to Belgium and walk a less-trodden route south of Plugstreet Wood towards the hamlet of Le Gheer.  From the village of Ploegsteert, we head south and east across the farmer's fields to discover the long-lost history of this part of the battlefield.  These seemingly bare fields tell the story of the rank and file of the Alli...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to the final episode of 2024! One of the great misnomers of WW1 is that soldiers spent all their time in the trenches fighting. Fighting battles took up a tiny amount of soldiers' time, so what did soldiers do when not in the line? In this episode, we look at life behind the lines, where soldiers had the opportunity to spend their pay on treats to make soldiering more...

Send us Fan Mail A famous saying asserts that an army marches on its stomach, and in this episode, we examine food and drink for men on the front line.  The challenge of feeding an army was immense, and the war office employed science to calculate the exact calorific intake needed by a soldier to survive. Feeding the men was one thing; feeding them something palatable was something else. We look a...

Send us Fan Mail In the early hours of the 30th July 1915, men of the Rifle Brigade and Kings Royal Rifle Corps were attacked near Hooge by German soldiers using a new and appalling weapon of war - liquid fire.  The subsequent counter-attack that afternoon by the British was a military disaster that could have been avoided had the protests of senior commanders in the line been listened to. We exam...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to this latest episode, in which we explore the history behind one of the world's great monuments, the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing in the Belgian city of Ypres. We hear the history of the Last Post, look at the famous lions and their connection to Australia, hear the stories of some of the dead, and contemplate what makes this an iconic place of remembrance. Su...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to the latest episode! In today's episode, we look at the role played by Army Chaplains during the Great War. Responsible for the spiritual and personal welfare of soldiers, the Chaplain was a source of great comfort for men during the hell of trench warfare. We look at the history of the Army Chaplain Department and discover the massively important role that Chaplain...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to this latest podcast, in which we travel to the southern part of the Somme battlefield, a shell-cratered morass on which the men of Canada, Australia and France died in their thousands in the final 100 days of the War. We tour the battlefield and visit the cemeteries and memorials, which bear testament to the sacrifice of so many who fell so close to the end of four year...

Send us Fan Mail In today's podcast, we journey through Amiens and its surrounding areas, uncovering the deep connections to the Great War. We start in the village of Naours, exploring caves that hold a remarkable record of soldiers from the conflict. Next, we delve into the history of Amiens Cathedral and discover a moving poem, "The Song of Amiens," written by a lesser-known poet...

Send us Fan Mail In this latest episode, we answer a couple of listener questions and then tour the battlefield near St. Quentin.  We hear the story of the tragic death of two British soldiers shot for spying by the Germans, stand on the very trenches from which the offensive began, and visit some of the redoubts which stood in the way of the German onslaught. Our journey concludes with the story...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode we look at the Kaiserschlact, or Kaiser's Battle which was launched by the Germans in March 1918, a final roll of the dice to win the war before American superiority in arms and men came to the fore. Logistical problems tempered initial successes, and by early summer, the advance had faltered.  On the 8th of August, the Allies counter-attacked with an offensiv...

Send us Fan Mail Why do we always do the same thing? This question was posed during a work call last week, and it got me thinking about travelling around the battlefields and why I always seem to take the easy route to Ypres. In this episode, we meander up the coast from Calais to Nieupoort, taking in Zuydcoote, Adinkerke, Coxyde, Nieupoort and Ramskappelle to see what Great War history can be fou...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to this latest episode. We find ourselves in Ypres, on a part of the salient that offers real bang for the buck regarding military history. Our journey today covers just over a mile and a half from White House Cemetery to Kitchener's Wood, and we hear the stories of the cemeteries and memorials on this part of the old front line. We visit White House Cemetery, where w...

Send us Fan Mail In this latest episode, we look at colonial soldiers' experiences in the Great War. Britain and France made full use of the human capital of their global empires to provide extra manpower for their armed forces. Our journey begins in an art gallery in Belgium, and we look at the work of the famous German artist Karl Goetz and his most scandalously infamous medallion depicting...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we travel to the Somme and begin our journey at one of the most iconic sites on the battlefield, the Basilica at Albert.  We hear about its founding and discover more about the legend of the Golden Virgin. We leave Albert, head onto the battlefields over the Tara and Usna line, and visit the Lochnagar Crater at La Boiselle.  Just to the right of the crater on the...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we visit one of the forgotten fronts of the Great War and look at the fighting in Palestine in 1917-1918.  This was an unforgiving landscape that saw numerous battles, the removal of a Corps Commander and one of the most impressive military victories in history. Support the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/footstepsofthefallen https://www.buymeacoffee.com/footstep...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, recorded live on the battlefields, we are at Festubert, the forgotten battle of 1915, and we visit some of the cemeteries around the battlefield to hear the personal stories of the men buried within them.  Support the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/footstepsofthefallen https://www.buymeacoffee.com/footstepsblog

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Season 7! In our first episode, we look at poison gas, its development and use on the battlefield, and how the science of chemical weapons saw the militarisation of academia in the pursuit of developing more lethal and deadly weapons. We discover how the Allies combated the German gas threat, what it was like to be a gas victim and how a common garden pest was, in fact,...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to the final episode of Season 6 and our 150th podcast! In this episode, we look back at the podcast since it began 3 1/2 years ago, examine some of the statistics about the pod, and contemplate some of my favourite episodes that have been released. We then head over to Belgium and travel from Essex Farm to Elverdinghe, where we visit some of the smaller and less visited c...

Send us Fan Mail In this latest podcast, historian and author Tom Isitt joins us. Tom has a passion (or, he might say, obsession) with the Italian Front in the Great War. An inhospitable battlefield with appalling weather conditions and treacherous terrain, the fighting around the Isonzo River proved to be the graveyard of the Italian army in a series of 12 battles that cost hundreds of thousands...

Send us Fan Mail With the sad news of the passing of Martin Middlebrooke, this podcast heads to the Somme battlefield where we walk across the battlefield at the village of Fricourt. Our journey takes in some of the cemeteries and memorials that cover this part of the Somme battlefield, and we look at some of the literary figures whose output provides so many insights into Fricourt and its surroun...

Send us Fan Mail Many of you who listen to the podcast aren't on social media and are not followers of me on Twitter so please find attached a very brief update on what's happening with the podcast going forward. I posted a video on Twitter on Sunday 18th February and this is the audio recording of that video.   You can view the video on YouTube with the following link: https://youtu.be/...