Send us a text 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. History points to Walter Tull, the former professional footballer as holding this honour, but Clemetson's ...
Nov 28, 2021•51 min•Season 3Ep. 7
Send us a text 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 Singh Negi who won the Victoria Cross for his near-suicidal bravery when clearing German trenches, the ra...
Nov 21, 2021•54 min•Season 3Ep. 6
Send us a text 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 catch our imagination. We hear about the perils of building trenches on farmland, visit Dragoon Camp Ce...
Nov 14, 2021•56 min•Season 3Ep. 5
Send us a text 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 and podcaster, some of the Great War veterans he's met and interviewed, why boy bands and history don't mix,...
Nov 07, 2021•1 hr 19 min•Season 3Ep. 4
Send us a text 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 losses suffered by the French during the offensives of 1915 and the story of a remarkable piece of deception, ...
Oct 31, 2021•48 min•Season 3Ep. 3
Send us a text 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 London before looking at the changing role played by aircraft. From being viewed as a quirky novelty in 19...
Oct 24, 2021•50 min•Season 3Ep. 2
Send us a text 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 constructed defensive line, a remarkable feat of precision German defensive engineering, the Siegfried...
Oct 17, 2021•56 min•Season 3Ep. 1
Send us a text 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 subjected to gas attacks the wood was a dismal place to be a soldier. The weather, which proved to be almos...
Oct 03, 2021•49 min•Season 2Ep. 25
Send us a text 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 middle of this strip of murdered nature. The tree disappeared after WW1, but thanks to the amazing efforts of...
Sep 26, 2021•46 min•Season 2Ep. 24
Send us a text 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 Guillemont beyond. Why was this location so important and what was it like for the men who served there? W...
Sep 19, 2021•46 min•Season 2Ep. 23
Send us a text 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 command of the British Army were wrought with infighting, nepotism, backstabbing, intrigue, and gossip. Sir ...
Sep 12, 2021•39 min•Season 2Ep. 22
Send us a text For a period of three months between July and September 1916, the Allies and Germans battled for control of the fortified village of Combles, on the northeast of the Somme battlefield. A coordinated Franco-British assault on the 26th of September 1916 finally took the village but at a very heavy price. In this episode, we look at the battle from a German, British and French perspective, and draw on some of the remarkable primary sources that describe the fighting. We also hear the...
Sep 05, 2021•38 min•Season 2Ep. 21
Send us a text The disease-ridden and inhospitable landscape of Salonika is one of the forgotten campaigns of WW1. For almost three years soldiers from all over the world fought against each other in increasingly awful conditions. More men became casualties from disease than from enemy action and the Allies had over 160,000 cases of malaria during the campaign. We hear about the Allies first impressions of Salonika, how the creative output of two of the finest minds in English art and music were...
Aug 29, 2021•45 min•Season 2Ep. 20
Send us a text For a period of 8 days in early September 1914, the situation for the Allies was precarious. The Germans were just two days march from the French capital, and the situation looked desperate. Through a combination of poor German communication, some inspired French leadership, and the commandeering of over 600 Parisian taxi cabs, the French and British successfully stopped the Germans, saved Paris, and undoubtedly changed the overall course of the Great War. The German retreat to th...
Aug 22, 2021•50 min•Season 2Ep. 19
Send us a text The "Cold Meat Specialist" or Regimental Burial Officer was a vital cog in the military machine responsible for coordinating the retrieval and burial of the dead and ensuring that their grave locations were accurately marked. With over 500,000 dead littering the battlefields of the Great War, the task was nothing short of monumental. How did the Army manage casualties on a scale never before seen? How were the dead recovered, and more importantly how were they identified? What was...
Aug 15, 2021•54 min•Season 2Ep. 18
Send us a text For a period of six weeks in the summer of 1916, the British and Germans battled for control of the small but strategically important village of Guillemont.. The capture of the village was the story of the men from the south and west of Ireland, men from Limerick, Connaught, and Munster who successfully drove the Germans out, albeit at great personal cost. Over 15,000 men died in taking this small village. The sheer number of Victoria Crosses won in the fighting is a testament to ...
Aug 08, 2021•52 min•Season 2Ep. 17
Send us a text The 14th Battalion of the Australian Imperial Forces was known as "Jacka's Mob" after their officer, the profane, insubordinate, and much-loved larrikin Albert Jacka, a dairy farmer's son from Victoria. A man more inclined to use his fists than his reasoning to solve a problem, Jacka would surely have been promoted higher in the ranks than he was, were it not for his temper, his argumentative personality, and his dislike of military discipline. For an act of incredible bravery at ...
Aug 01, 2021•41 min•Season 2Ep. 16
Send us a text In the dark waters of the Atlantic, the German U-Boat fleet was taking a monstrous toll on Allied merchant shipping, to the extent that Admiral Jellicoe feared Britain would cease to exist as a fighting force unless something was done to stop the U-boat menace. Spurred on by the sinking of the Lusitania in May 1915 the Royal Navy introduced a new weapon to fight against German submarines - the decoy boat or Q Ship as they were known. In a game of cat and mouse, merchant shipping l...
Jul 25, 2021•43 min•Season 2Ep. 15
Send us a text On the afternoon of the 14th April 1917 men of the 1st Essex and the Newfoundland Regiment were given the unenviable task of attacking and holding Infantry Hill, just to the east of the small but strategically vital village of Monchy le Preux. By mid-morning, not a single man remained unwounded to the east of Monchy and men were being captured in their hundreds by the rapidly advancing Germans. A party of just ten men commanded by Lt Col Forbes-Robertson collected weapons and ammu...
Jul 18, 2021•35 min•Season 2Ep. 14
Send us a text In June 1916, Lord Kitchener of Khartoum was on board HMS Hampshire, heading for Archangel in Russia for top-secret talks. About 1 mile from the Orkney Islands, HMS Hampshire exploded and sank to the bottom of the sea, killing 737 of the 749 souls on board, including Kitchener himself. For the Great War generation, this was their 9/11 or Kennedy assassination. There was a genuine fear that without Kitchener, there was no hope that the war would be won. But, no sooner had the Hamps...
Jul 11, 2021•48 min•Season 2Ep. 13
Send us a text Our latest episode begins in Couin military cemetery where a top hat and white gloves marks the final resting place of Edwardian theatre's greatest dandy, Basil Radford, or as he was more commonly known Gilbert the Filbert. Before his untimely death on the Somme, Radford was one of a huge number of entertainers and theatre stars who served in the Great War and used their talents to entertain the men when not in the lines. How did men entertain themselves when not in the trenches? ...
Jul 04, 2021•37 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Send us a text In this second episode about the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing, it's an absolute pleasure to sit down and chat with Georgia Brusby, who served as an Intern for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission at Thiepval through the summer and autumn of 2019. Her passion and enthusiasm for history and the Memorial come through as we talk about the importance of remembrance, some of the remarkable stories of the men who are commemorated there, the dangers of low flying wreaths, and the hi...
Jun 27, 2021•53 min•Season 2Ep. 11
Send us a text In this first episode of a two-part podcast, we visit the largest British war memorial in the world, Sir Edwin Lutyen's geometric masterpiece, the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing. Bearing the names of over 72,000 British and South African soldiers who died on the Somme and have no known grave, the memorial stands as a testament to the volunteer Army who responded to Lord Kitchener's famous "Your country needs you!" appeal and who were killed in their thousands on the fields of Pi...
Jun 20, 2021•57 min•Season 2Ep. 10
Send us a text On the 29th of September 1918, men from the Staffordshire Brigade successfully smashed through the German lines in the most heavily defended area of the Western Front, around the canal at Ricqueval. It was a remarkable success for a Brigade so unfairly criticised for its actions at Gommecourt in 1916 and was a fine example of planning, coordination, and derring-do. The battle didn't go entirely the Allies' way. Men from the 107th American Infantry suffered more casualties that day...
Jun 13, 2021•37 min•Season 2Ep. 9
Send us a text In this episode, we visit the famously preserved trenches at Sanctuary Wood near Ypres. This remarkable landscape of trenches and dugouts is a must-see for any battlefield visitor. The museum attached to the cafe contains a remarkable and often chilling set of stereo-scope images that show the Great War in a level of violent detail very rarely seen. We examine the work of a Royal Engineers officer by the name of William Livens, whose hatred of the Germans drove his life's work, to...
Jun 06, 2021•32 min•Season 2Ep. 8
Send us a text In this special episode of Trench Talk, I have the pleasure of sitting down with Belgian archaeologist Simon Verdegem and talking about his career specializing in the excavation of WW1 sites. We talk about his introduction to archaeology and the poignant discovery of the remains of a New Zealand soldier in excavations in Messines. We look at the hugely successful Dig Hill 80 project at Wytschaete, and some of the incredible archaeological finds that came out of the project., inclu...
May 30, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Send us a text In January 1917, a German encrypted message was intercepted by a small relay station in Cornwall and passed to the secretive world of the code breakers inhabiting the dingy Room 40 in the Admiralty building in London's Whitehall. In the room were some of the finest minds in England, led by the enigmatic and charismatic Oxbridge scholar Albert "Dilly" Knox. The team, including a man known as "The Dormouse" and a cake-loving Vicar called Monty, decrypted the message, and its 166-wor...
May 23, 2021•38 min•Season 2Ep. 6
Send us a text In this episode, we begin our journey through the footsteps of the fallen in Brighton, where one Autumn afternoon in 1915 the Constabulary were called to a disturbance on the seafront, following the appearance of a large collection of saber-wielding men. On arrival, however, they found calm, with the genteel folk of Brighton swapping cigarettes for chapatis with the Indian soldiers who were happily cooking their dinner in the seafront gardens. Who were these men, and how did they ...
May 16, 2021•45 min•Season 2Ep. 5
Send us a text In our latest episode, we walk the battlefield in one of the lesser-known killing fields of the Somme, Trones Wood. While diminutive in size, the wood was a fearsome obstacle, whose capture was essential for the wider assualts planned on the Somme front, starting on the 14th July. For a period of five days, the British and Germans fought brutally for control of the wood, and it was a remarkable attack by the men of the Northamptonshire Regiment, that finally wrested control of the...
May 09, 2021•34 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Send us a text On the 31st October 1914, men of the 2nd Battalion the Worcestershire Regiment fought one of the greatest counter attack actions in British military history, in an afternoon of brutal close quarters, hand to hand combat against the Germans, in the small Belgian village of Gheluvelt. If the Germans had taken Gheluvelt, nothing stood between them and the city of Ypres, and then the Channel ports that lay beyond. Outnumbered, exhausted and subjected to German artillery fire on a scal...
May 02, 2021•41 min•Season 2Ep. 3
