Who the hell is this man Livens?!
Episode description
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 design and develop weapons to kill as many Germans as he could. Dangerous to know, he turned his barracks bedroom into a bomb factory and made flame throwers in the officer's mess. He is best known for his invention of the Livens Projector, the standard British trench mortar, and he was twice decorated for bravery.
We meet once again, Bernard, a stalwart of The Roundabout Appreciation Society, a man who never let the vagaries of Belgian weather get him down, and whose visit to Sanctuary Wood nearly ended in disaster thanks to a dropped umbrella and being strangled by his own anorak.
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