Footsteps of the fallen

Send us Fan Mail In this latest episode, we return to Belgium and look at the opening actions of the attempts by the Allies to capture a small Flanders farming village, whose name has become synonymous with the futility of the Great War - Passchendaele. The capture of Passchendaele was the story of the Empire, men from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand who travelled from the other sides of the wo...

Send us Fan Mail In our latest podcast, we head to one of the Great War's forgotten fronts - Mesopotamia, or modern-day Iraq.  A campaign that was almost medieval in its approach to fighting, the critical waterway, the Shatt al Arab became the focus of fighting in a landscape devoid of any proper infrastructure.  In this episode we look at some of the key events, culminating in an analysis of...

Send us Fan Mail On the 9th April 1915, Private Isaac Reid of the 2nd Scots Guards was shot dead by a firing party of men from his own regiment.  Charged with desertion at Neuve Chappelle, according to the writer Stephen Graham, Reid's fate was sealed by the malevolent actions of his CSM James Lawton.  As a result of Reid's execution, the men of the Scots Guards vowed to restore their ho...

Send us Fan Mail Along with Khe Sahn and Iwo Jima, the fighting at Belleau Wood is part of the US Marine Corps legend. In 26 days in June 1918, the US Marine Corps fought its first major engagement of WW1, when it was tasked with taking the heavily defended Belleau Wood.  Despite being massacred by German machine guns, the Marines fought with tenacity and bravery, in a gladiatorial arena of violen...

Send us Fan Mail In this latest episode of Trench Talk it's a pleasure to be joined by Mike Cunha.  Mike is a military historian, researcher, podcaster, and high school teacher from Boston in the United States.  His podcast "Battles of the First World War" is hugely successful and examines battles in almost microscopic detail. We talk about how a heavy metal track inspired Mike&apos...

Send us Fan Mail In our latest episode, we look at the life and work of one of the Great War's most colourful characters, Major John Norton-Griffiths.  Conservative MP, philanthropist, jingoistic, and imperialistic to his core, Griffiths took the skills he had learned as a mining engineer, to reap a trail of destruction against the Germans through his campaign of mining across both the Wester...

Send us Fan Mail As the land of the Great War has been reclaimed for housing, industry, and agriculture in the hundred or so years since the War ended, there's very little of the battlefields left for us to see. One exception to this, however, is in the area around the small village of Messines, to the south of Ypres. The fields are dotted with peaceful fishing lakes, which belie the ferocity...

Send us Fan Mail Our podcast today takes us back to the fields around Hooge near Ypres where once stood Zouave Wood.  On the 30th July 1915, the Germans attacked men of the 8th Rifle Brigade and 7th Kings Royal Rifle Corps with a terrifying new weapon of war - the  flammenwerfen - or flame thrower. What followed was one of the disasters of military planning where senior command's refusal to l...

Send us Fan Mail In today's episode, we visit Point du Jour Cemetery near Athies, just outside Arras to walk through the cemetery and hear the stories of some of the men who lie buried within.  We begin with an overview of the Battle of Arras, before visiting the magnificent stone cairn to the memory of the 9th Scottish Division, known informally as The Jocks and Boks division.  We hear the s...

Send us Fan Mail In our first episode of 2022, we pay a visit to one of the lesser-known killing fields of WW1.  Covering just a few acres of arable land between Cambrai and St Quentin, the strong points of Gillemont Farm, The Knoll, and Quennett Copse, were the scene of some of the most brutal hand-to-hand fighting between the British and Germans anywhere on the Western Front.  One veteran descri...

Send us Fan Mail  In this episode, we look at Christmas in wartime, both on the home front and in the front line.  We talk about a lucky purchase from a small Northamptonshire auction house that provided insight not only into the political history of South Africa, but also an affectionate Christmas gift sent to a soldier in 1916 who was to lose his life just sixteen days later, in tragic circumsta...

Send us Fan Mail The Royal Naval Division, made from men whose presence wasn't needed onboard ships, fought with distinction during WW1, from the defence of Antwerp in 1914, through Gallipoli, and onto the Somme in 1916.  It was during the fighting for the village of Beaucourt that the men of the Hawke Battalion paid a heavy price, with only 20 men surviving from the 400+ who went into battle...

Send us Fan Mail The Army Postal Service (APS) was a remarkable organisation that handled over 2 billion letters and 12 million parcels throughout the Great War.  A letter posted in London would normally arrive in France with a soldier in less than 48 hours.  The postal service played a vital role in many areas including the emancipation of women, espionage and played a vital role in the morale of...

Send us Fan Mail In our latest episode of "Trench Talk" it's a real pleasure to sit down and chat with Dr Irfan Malik.  Dr. Malik grew up with stories of the men from his home village of Dulmial who went off to fight for the British in WW1 in greater numbers than from any other Indian village. In this wide-ranging chat, we hear about how a chance conversation with one of his patient...

Send us Fan Mail Our journey today begins in Unicorn Cemetery near Vendhuile, just outside St Quentin at the headstone of Lt. David Clemetson.  The wealthy son of Jamaican banana traders, he enlisted into the Army from Cambridge University and served with the Pembroke Yeomanry.  Commissioned as an officer, he can, perhaps, lay claim to being the first black officer to serve in the British Army.  H...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we look at the fighting at Festubert in November 1914 where men of the Indian Army found themselves out-manned, out-gunned, and out-supplied by a rampaging German army. Despite this, the Indian Corps fighting together as a full Corps for the first time on the Western Front stopped the Germans from getting through.  We hear about the remarkable actions of Derwan Si...

Send us Fan Mail In this latest episode we head back to Flanders for another walk around the battlefield near the canal at Boesinghe. Starting at Little Swan Farm we look at a wonderful project aiming to restore the ancient elms of Flanders. Our journey takes in many of the tiny battlefield cemeteries that litter this part of the battlefield, including Colne Valley, where two mysterious epitaphs c...

Send us Fan Mail In our latest episode, it's a real pleasure to be joined by military historian, podcaster, writer, and broadcaster, Paul Reed. A professional military historian for over 30 years, Paul has worked as a historical consultant for many television programs including Meet the Ancestors and Who do you think you are? In this podcast, we talk about his career as a military historian a...

Send us Fan Mail  In today's podcast, we take a walk through two small but fascinating cemeteries in Artois, La Targette British Cemetery near Neuville St Vaast, and Le Trou Aid Post located near Fleurbaix.  Not necessarily on the itinerary of many battlefield visitors, they contain men whose stories are fascinating, and in this episode, we look at some of them. We hear about the staggering l...

Send us Fan Mail Of all areas of warfare that developed during the Great War, the advances in technology that accompanied the development of flight were surely the most dramatic. Our story of the Royal Flying Corps at war begins in a residential street in east London, where a non-descript house carries a unique place in the history of aerial warfare.  We hear about the German Zeppelin raids in Lon...

Send us Fan Mail As the sun set on the Somme battle, over 125,000 Allied soldiers lay dead on the fields of Picardy.  Every inch of ground that had been gained had been paid for in blood. The Germans, badly mauled from their experiences both in Picardy and Verdun, and concerned by Austrian failures against the Italians took the remarkable decision to withdraw their armies from the Somme to a newly...

Send us Fan Mail In our 50th podcast, we return to the Somme battlefield and look at one of the lesser-known areas of the fighting, Bernafay Wood. While there were no major battles per se, the wood itself turned into a mincing machine for the Allied infantry.  While successfully captured on the 3rd July, the wood was no prize for the Allies.  Shelled constantly by the Germans, as well as being sub...

Send us Fan Mail On this, the 106th anniversary of the Battle of Loos, it's an absolute pleasure to be joined by Michelle and Wayne Young, two avid battlefield visitors, who, like me, share a real passion for the battlefields of Artois and 1915. Any soldier who fought at this section of line near Vermelles in France, would have recognised The Lone Tree, a solitary cherry which stood in the mi...

Send us Fan Mail Our journey begins in the small village of Bazentin, at one of the smallest war memorials on the Western Front, that to the Nine Brave Men of the Royal Engineers, before we begin our walk down the valley to the south of us. This valley,  Caterpillar Valley, was one of the main arteries that supplied the front for the never-ending mincing machine of High Wood, Delville Wood and Gui...

Send us Fan Mail The year 1915 had been a chastening experience for the men of the BEF.   Tens of thousands of men had been killed on the Western Front in the failed battles at Neuve Chappelle, Aubers, Festubert, and Loos.  The Gallipoli campaign had been an abject disaster, costing the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, his job. Against this military morass of killing,  the senior co...