The Old Front Line

The capture of Vimy Ridge by the Canadian Corps in April 1917 was one of Canada's iconic moments in the Great War. In another of our Battlefields In A Day series we look at the wider Vimy Ridge battlefield, seeing some lesser-known locations and getting an understanding of this important battle.  Send us Fan Mail Support the show

In this episode we travel to the Somme battlefields of 1916, see the ground where men of the 13th Rifle Brigade fought in a tragic attack, and walk the route the ANZACs took into Pozières village when they took it, see where Albert Jacka VC might have been awarded a bar to his Victoria Cross, and ending on the ground where the Canadians made their assault on Courcelette in September 1916.  Send us...

In the latest of our Battlefields In A Day series we travel to Arras in Northern France to visit some key locations connected to the fighting here in 1917-1918; from the Arras Memorial to the key battle sites, ground connected to the 1917 movie and the ground fought over by Australians in 1917 and Canadians in 1918. A separate Battlefields In A Day covering Vimy Ridge will come later! Send us Fan...

We begin Season 4 of the podcast with a walk between the Somme villages of La Boisselle and Contalmaison, the scene of heavy fighting in July 1916. We see memorials, battlefield cemeteries and discover the stories of those who fought here more than a century ago. You can support the Podcast via BuyMeACoffee and Patreon . Send us Fan Mail Support the show

In a new Podcast Series we use the Adjutant's Notebook to look at different aspects of First World War history. In this episode we examine the cornerstone of the British Army in the Great War - the Division. These self-contained units of nearly 20,000 men fought the battles and held the line, and by 1918 there were more than seventy of them. Send us Fan Mail Support the show

In the second in our series of Battlefields In A Day, we travel to the Somme battlefields in Northern France. The Somme was one of the defining battles of the Great War and we follow it's story from beginning to end, seeing some of the key sites connected to the fighting in 1916. Send us Fan Mail Support the show

During the Great War pilots took their aircraft above the battlefield not only to bomb and strafe, but to photograph the trenches of the Western Front. What do these images show us and how do they relate to the landscape we know today?  Send us Fan Mail Support the show

In this episode, the first in a series of Battlefields in a Day , we explore one of the iconic British and Commonwealth battlefields of the Great War: Ypres, in Flanders. On our tour we take in some well known and famous locations, and travel off the beaten track, too.  Send us Fan Mail Support the show

Astride the Arras-Cambrai road a small wayside memorial commemorates a missing British officer. Out in the fields small Comrade's Cemeteries act like beacons to the fighting here in April 1917. What took place on this ground around Arras, near to Feuchy Chapel?  Send us Fan Mail Support the show

Just astride the road between Poperinghe and Ypres, the hamlet of Brandhoek was a main site for the treatment of wounded soldiers. Here women serving as Army nurses got close to the realities of war, and the war cemeteries here today remind us that not everyone could be saved.  Send us Fan Mail Support the show

Among the dark Oak trees of Bourlon Wood, the Bantam Battalions from England, Scotland and Wales experienced their baptism of fire. Who were The Bantams, and did all roads lead to Bourlon Wood in November 1917?  Sign up for the free podcast newsletter here: Old Front Line Bulletin . You can order Old Front Line Merch via The Old Front Line Shop . Got a question about this episode or any others? Dr...

To commemorate one hundred episodes of the podcast we take a journey along the Western Front visiting four locations from Flanders to the Somme to Verdun to the Vosges. What does the landscape of the Great War mean to us? Send us Fan Mail Support the show

In this episode we look at the writer Henry Williamson, best known for his nature writing and Tarka The Otter novel, but in the 1950s he began to publish 'A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight', some fifteen novels, five of which cover the Great War. We look at his life, his war, and his work as a writer, a forgotten author of the First World War. The Henry Williamson Society website .  Send u...

We visit the small village of Soupir on the Aisne where men of the British Expeditionary Force, known as The Old Contemptibles, fought in September 1914. We visit the British graves here and walk the battlefield to the Aisne heights where some of the first trenches were dug in the Great War. Sign up for the free podcast newsletter here: Old Front Line Bulletin . Got a question about this episode o...

From Bully Beef to Hardtack and Plum and Apple Jam... what did the British Tommy in the trenches of the Western Front eat? How was it supplied, how good was his food, how did it reach him, and having had a meal, how did he go to the toilet?  Send us Fan Mail Support the show

We return to the 'Forgotten Front' in Northern France where the British operations on the Western Front took place in 1915, and there were long periods of static trench warfare. Here we visit the site of the Cuinchy 'Brickstacks' - huge stacks of undelivered bricks that formed towers on the battlefield here.  Send us Fan Mail Support the show

In this episode, we follow Great War poets Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon into the trenches near Fricourt at the 'Bois Français' during the months before the 1916 battle and learn about how the death of a much-beloved comrade affected them both. Send us Fan Mail Support the show

Christmas Day in 1914 - a day we more commonly associate with a Christmas Truce between the British and Germans. Who died and where, and how many?  Sign up for the free podcast newsletter here: Old Front Line Bulletin . You can order Old Front Line Merch via The Old Front Line Shop . Got a question about this episode or any others? Drop your question into the Old Front Line Discord Server or email...

In a special Trench Chat, we are joined by Matt Dixon, host of the Footsteps of the Fallen Podcast. We talk about Matt's interest in the Great War, what led him to produce the podcast and the books he is currently working on.  Send us Fan Mail Support the show

In this episode, we go 'off the beaten track' at Vimy Ridge and look at two unusual cemeteries on the battlefield here - Lichfield and Zivy Crater Cemeteries - where the Canadians buried their dead in some old mine craters in April 1917.  Send us Fan Mail Support the show

In this episode we are Behind the Lines on the Somme, starting in the small village of Heilly, and looking at how soldiers were billeted in places like this, we then walk down to the railway station and examine the use of railways on the Somme and establishment of medical facilities for the wounded. We end at Heilly Station Cemetery, a vast city of the dead from the Somme battles of 1916. Send us...

In this episode, we return to Flanders, and walk from the Lille Gate on the edge of the city of Ypres via 'Shrapnel Corner' to Bedford House Cemetery, one of the largest in this area and laid out in an unusual way. We end on the old Ypres-Comines Canal where the German Army was stopped south of Ypres in April 1918. Send us Fan Mail Support the show

In the second of our episodes recorded while on a Leger Battlefield Tour , we travel to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Experience at Arras and then down to the Somme battlefields to see the Lochnagar Crater, the Ulster Tower, the trenches in the Newfoundland Park and end at 'Mighty Thiepval'. Send us Fan Mail Support the show

In an episode released between Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday, we pause to Remember. We reflect on the veterans back in the 80s and 90s, and think about what visiting the battlefields of the Great War means to us more than a century later.  Send us Fan Mail Support the show

In this episode after so many months away from The Old Front Line we return to Flanders with a Leger Battlefield Tour group on a trip along the Western Front. We visit Tyne Cot, walk the trenches at Sanctuary Wood and attend the Last Post at the Menin Gate.  Send us Fan Mail Support the show