July 4, 2025 • 37 mins
Our latest questions from podcast listeners discuss what role German steel helmets, Stahlhelm, had on the First Day of the Somme, how did Great War veterans feel about WW2, how were women who fell pregnant from British soldiers treated during the conflict, and when we visit British and Commonwealth cemeteries are we walking over the graves of those buried there?
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SPEAKER_00 (00:02):
Welcome to some more questions and answers here on
the old front line.
These are questions submitted byyou, the podcast listeners, and
each month we select some of thebest questions that have been
submitted via email and theDiscord server to answer here
and hopefully give us all freshperspectives and new knowledge
(00:26):
of this vast subject of theGreat War.
So let's begin.
Coming up soon on the podcast issomething a bit different.
bringing in quite a fewdifferent things in recent times
and I think that's good to movethe podcast forward and what I'm
going to do is effectively takekind of a month's worth of
(00:47):
podcasts and focus them around aspecific theme and in this case
the theme will be the war in theair the war above the western
front during the great war andthere's going to be an
introductory episode there'll besome interviews with some
experts and then a bit aboutwhat you can find of the Royal
(01:07):
Flying Corps and the RAF I'llpick the best four and that'll
(01:38):
keep that theme of looking atone particular subject going for
that month.
But let's get straight down toour questions this week.
And our first question comesfrom Zachary Lang in
Massachusetts, USA.
(02:11):
He asks, in that crucialcampaign in 1916.
Well Zachary, you're quite rightthat there are quite a lot of
documentaries out there whereyou'll see film, archive film,
being used to symbolise theGerman side of the Battle of the
(02:32):
Somme, the first day of theBattle of the Somme, where
you'll see film and the men init, the soldiers in it, are
wearing Stahlhelms.
Now that's because the amount offilm that TV companies draw on
is actually relatively limitedand it comes from archives like
the Imperial War Museum and theNational Archives in America and
(02:53):
in particular with America a lotof that film was stuff that was
actually captured in the SecondWorld War by American units
entering Nazi Germany whocleared out huge collections of
newsreels which included recentstuff from that conflict but
also material from the FirstWorld War and a lot of the
material that exists The goodmaterial seems to always show
(03:16):
German soldiers with Stahlhelmson.
Now, that's a kind of nationalmilitary characteristic that
emerges from the First WorldWar, but we more commonly see
with soldiers in World War II.
And I think when it comes tomaking documentaries,
documentary makers probablyfocus on that kind of imagery
because if you show some film ofsome soldiers in Stahlhelm,
(03:38):
Stilhelm, it's like that,then...
Everyone knows that they'reGermans.
Now, the truth of the battle onthe first day of the Battle of
the Somme, the 1st of July,1916, was that probably very few
German soldiers had Stahlhelms.
I almost said probably none ofthem did.
(03:58):
And my own opinion would be thatthat was probably much nearer
the truth, because by thatopening stage of the Battle of
the Somme, only tens ofthousands of Stahlhelms had
actually been produced.
Officially, this was the M1916Stahlhelm, designed to protect
German soldiers and to replacewhat we would call the
(04:19):
Pickelhaube, which was oftenalso called the Leather Helm,
from leather with brass fittingsand that famous spike although
there were variations of that inthe artillery they wore a ball
mounted on that feature forexample so that kind of helmet
(04:41):
was a pre-war bit of kit that inthe early battles particularly
once trench warfare began thatkind of helmet a leather helmet
on the perched on the top ofsomeone's head was redundant and
a Stahlhelm just like theadaptation of steel helmets in
the French and then the Britishforces was was something that
was really essential to allowsoldiers to survive the
(05:02):
experience of trench warfarewith shells going off above
positions and causing casualtiesto the men below.
But the Germans were planning amajor offensive in that early
part of 1916, which was theBattle of Verdun.
And in that battle, a decisionwas made that the assault troops
in the leading waves would allhave the new Stahlhelm.
So the focus was on issuing theStahlhelms to those units that
(05:26):
would fight in that openingstage of the offensive there in
the Meuse at Verdun and I thinkonly about 30 or 40,000 of these
helmets were available for thatearly phase of the fighting at
Verdun and that kind ofprioritization of the Stahlhelms
to troops there seems to havecontinued so when we look at the
German units that were occupyingthe Somme front from Gommacourt
(05:49):
down to Montauban in the Frenchsector I don't think that they
were on the kind of top of thelist for the reception of the
Stahlhelms and when you you lookat the unit history so I've got
the unit history of the 119thReserve Infantry Regiment which
was the unit that defendedBeaumont Hamel and Hawthorne
Ridge and the positions in frontof the Sunken Lane in that
(06:11):
northern part of the Sommebattlefield and when we look at
some of the contemporary imagesof their troops in the front
line area leading up to theBattle of the Somme they've all
got pickle halbers many of themhave removed the spike and put a
cloth cover over the helmet tostop the sun reflecting on the
brass fittings but they don'thave Stahlhelms and over the
(06:32):
years of collecting images ofGerman soldiers on the Somme
front I have only rarely seenimages of Germans with
Stahlhelms taken during the 1916Battle of the Somme so in terms
of the 1st of July battle Ithink very few if any actually
had Stahlhelms when we look atthe pictures of captured German
(06:53):
soldiers wearing these in theearly phase of the Somme battle
it seems to be actions wherethey're units that were brought
in after the fighting of the 1stof July, or in sectors where
helmets had been issued, not toevery soldier, but as trench
stores.
This seems to be the more commonpractice.
So the Germans don't really haveenough Stahlhelms to give to
(07:15):
every single soldier.
Of the millions of Germansoldiers that are holding all
450 miles of the Western Front,so they issue them in penny
packets, as the British wouldcall it, where the Stahlhelms
are sent into a front line hereand they become trench stores
which units going to and fromthose trench systems hand over
and retain for the use in thetrenches to units coming and
(07:38):
going and Ernst Junger talksabout this in Storm of Steel so
as he's coming up in September1916 to take over the positions
near to the village ofGuillemont they're marching up
with the men wearing Feldmutzersthese are the kind of German
soft caps or the Pickelhalberand when they get into the line
the unit they're relievingthey've got Stahlhelms and they
(07:59):
hand their Stahlhelms over toJünger's Hanoverians and they
wear them when they're in theforward zone of the battlefield
and by the end of 1916 althoughover a million Stahlhelms had
been made and issued to Germansoldiers on the front line again
it still wasn't enough for everysingle soldier so probably
(08:21):
throughout the battle of theSomme unit after allied unit
that encountered the Germansover And you see again in some
of the early images of theBattle of the Somme.
where units have gone intobattle in some of the areas
(08:42):
where there's been some successand have captured the German
position.
There are quite a few famousphotographs of British Tommies
holding up pickle halberds withthe spike and the badges of
Bavarian or Württemberg soldiersor Prussians or whatever it is,
proudly displaying thesesouvenirs, which were much
sought after.
(09:02):
And really, it would be wellinto 1917, at the time of the
British assault at Arras or theFrench fighting on the Chemin
des Dames, that the vastmajority of German soldiers by
that stage of the war were nowissued with Stahlhelms and they
were not just part of trenchdoors, they were part of a
soldier's kit.
(09:23):
And when we look at photographsfrom that period, private
photographs and then officialphotographs, we see the
Stahlhelm in much greaterevidence than the Pickelhalber.
That seems to have been put intothe kind of corner and not quite
forgotten because it wasprobably worn on parades behind
the lines again I've got kind ofimages that show this but the
Stahlhelm was the bit of battlekit you took with you into the
(09:46):
front line area and probably bythe end of the war particularly
as that was a period in which alarge number of new conscripts
came into the German army andthe army was swelled in terms of
numbers to cope with thefighting on the western front
and then all those men werebrought from Russia in 1918 to
come and fight in the west whenStahlhelms would certainly have
(10:08):
been issued to them for for thefighting on the Western Front.
They may not have had them onthe Eastern Front.
I'm not honestly sure howprevalent they were there.
Any Stahlhelm experts listeningto this perhaps can contact us.
But I think the greatestsymbolism of the Stahlhelm as
part of the German soldiers'identity is what makes it kind
of an everlasting symbol offrontline service for German
(10:30):
soldiers in the Great War.
And you see this reflected inthe books that were published in
the 1920s and 30s, and thatsymbol of the Stahlhelm used
used on quite a lot of those andyou see it most definitely on
war memorials right acrossGermany where the Stahlhelm is a
central feature on many Germanlocal war memorials listing the
(10:50):
local dead.
So while the first day of theBattle of the Somme was part of
that transition period from justassault troops and machine
gunners and sentries, those kindof people being issued with the
Stahlhelms initially, By the endof the Battle of the Somme,
you're seeing a kind of shifttowards them being not just
trench doors, but rapidlybecoming part of a soldier's
(11:13):
everyday kit used on the frontline.
A footnote to the Great War,perhaps, but certainly an
interesting one.
And thank you, Zachary, for thatquestion.
So let's move on to questionnumber two, which comes from
Ryan Alder.
Ryan asks, Obviously I can'tspeak for all Great War veterans
(11:45):
nor all Second World Warveterans but when we read the
accounts of men who served inthe Great War that went on to
experience another conflict justa generation later many of whom
had sons or daughters involvedin it then we see how I guess
how sad they were to see thatthe sacrifice of the Great War
(12:09):
wasn't entirely in vain butwithin two decades Europe was at
war once more with the sameenemies.
In fact enemies on an evengreater scale and in some ways
much more of a world war inWorld War II than in the Great
War.
Now If I look back on theveterans that I interviewed in
(12:31):
the 1980s and 90s, the vastmajority of them did go on to
serve in the Second World War.
Most of them probably, from whatI recall, in the Home Guard or
as ARP wardens because they wereslightly too old or slightly
unfit or not fit enough toreally properly serve again.
But some did go on to serve.
(12:53):
So Malcolm Vivian, who I oftentalk about in this podcast,
who'd been a gunner officer onthe West Coast, in the First
World War.
He rejoined the Royal Artilleryin 1939.
He was managing all of the JoeLyons tea bars in London at that
point and he got permission fromJoe Lyons to re-enlist and he
joined the gunners again and hewas put in charge of the
(13:14):
anti-aircraft defences along theSuez Canal until he got sick
about two or three years intothe war and then was sent home
and discharged.
Jimmy Lovegrove, who'd been aninfantry officer on the Western
Front with 2nd 4th South Lancand a very young officer at that
had been wounded in one of theattacks on the Hindenburg Line
in 1918 he ended up in thePioneer Corps George Butler
(13:38):
who's at regular soldier,underage Tommy, joined the army
before the Great War, aged 12,went across in 1915 with the
Lancashire Fusiliers and thenjoined the Machine Gun Corps and
by the time of the Battle of theSomme, aged 18, he was in charge
of a machine gun section, theoldest serving soldier in the
(13:59):
unit, the longest servingsoldier in the unit, the most
senior soldier in that unit interms of other ranks, but the
youngest soldier in that unit.
and his service when the MachineGun Corps was disbanded after
the Great War he returned to theLancashire Fusiliers and he
continued to serve with them upto and after World War II he
(14:21):
went over with the LancFusiliers in the BEF in 1939-40
during the Phoney War and thentook part in the retreat to
Dunkirk and then for the rest ofthe war once he got back to
Britain he was working at thedepot training new recruits and
I've had World War II veteransof the Lancashire Fusiliers come
to places like Monte Cassinowith me who had been trained by
(14:44):
him during that period and couldremember him and there was
another chap M.L.
Walkington who had served withthe Queen's Westminster Rifles
on the Western Front in theearly phase of the Great War
taking part in the ChristmasTruce then he was commissioned
into the Machine Gun Corps andin the late 30s joined the Royal
Sussex Regiment and served withthem again in the BEF in 1939-40
(15:08):
so those are just a few TheGreat War The War to End All
Wars and there they were just afew precious years later in
(15:33):
uniform once more going off toEurope to fight against Germany
and many of them said that theythought of the mates the pals
that they'd lost in the GreatWar wondered whether that
sacrifice had really amounted toanything in the end and I
remember Malcolm used to saythat he wondered what the
families of those who had diedin the Great War which included
(15:56):
his own parents who'd lost oneof their his younger brother in
the fighting at Ypres in 1917 hekind of wondered how they felt
about the meaning of sacrificeto see that great war sacrifice
somehow squandered in the peacethat followed and I think that's
(16:16):
also a kind of sense that youget from some of these men that
they'd fought so hard to bringvictory to bring a conclusion to
that war they'd done their bitthe next bit was over to
politicians to make something ofit that victory and turned the
peace into a meaningful part ofworld history and many of them
felt that perhaps thepoliticians had fallen short on
(16:40):
that I think for others as wellit was just fairly simple that
they'd served in the Great Warthey were proud of their service
proud of what they'd done theywere proud to have been in
uniform during the Great Warthey didn't see it as a terrible
experience on one level it wasAnd it was an experience,
(17:00):
whether they acknowledged thator not, that affected them for
the rest of their lives.
But they said pretty muchunanimously something they would
never have missed.
And when it came to servingagain...
There wasn't really muchconscious thought involved in
that.
That was what they did.
That's what duty meant.
(17:20):
They'd served king and countryin the Great War, and now, 20
years later, as Britain's aboutto go to war again, I think, as
Jimmy Lovegrove said, it wentwithout question that we would
serve.
There was no question about it.
Of course we were going to be inuniform.
Of course we were going to bedoing our bit.
(17:42):
Just as we've done our bit inthe Great War.
And a lad like George Butler, aworking class lad who'd lived on
the streets of Manchester, seenthe sharp end of the First World
War, spent all those years inthe peacetime army in the 20s
and 30s, and now went back towar in 1939, probably for him...
(18:04):
perhaps a degree of relief.
He loved soldiering.
He was a warrior, really, notjust a soldier.
A man who lived and thrived inthe army, perhaps even lived and
thrived on the battlefield.
And so for him, it was kind of anatural environment to return
to.
And probably, if he feltanything about his service in
(18:25):
the Second World War, heregretted that he wasn't able to
continue to serve on the frontline beyond that experience in
the BEF in 1939-39.
So I think there's a lot ofcomplex emotions going on there,
but I think at the heart of itwas this sense of duty that that
generation had that, as JimmyLovegrove said, there was no
(18:47):
kind of question that theywouldn't have stepped forward
and done their bit again.
Now, having said that, I do knowthat there were quite a few
examples, and this is somethingthat was very common in that
1930s period when there was agreat polarisation of political
ideas and identity.
that some men who had served inthe Great War and some women who
(19:08):
had served in the Great Warturned to organisations like the
Peace Pledge Union.
They were against war.
Vera Brittain is a very, verygood example of that, who had
seen her brother killed in theGreat War, her fiancé, and just
about every man that she'd evercared for had fallen in that
conflict.
(19:29):
She'd married a very badlywounded veteran, and so the kind
of shadow of the great war wentright across her life and many
people like her did not want tosee that repeated a generation
later so they turned to peaceorganizations of which there
were several examples to try andpush that message of peace it's
(19:51):
not the same as appeasementthese were people who felt that
war was wrong and then when thewar did break out and it was
clear that hitler and and theNazis were perhaps even more of
an identifiable enemy, not justof Britain, to the whole of
mankind in 1939-40.
Despite their feelings aboutpeace, despite their feelings
(20:13):
about war, many did go on toserve as conscientious
objectors.
There's a whole plethora ofemotions and ideas here, and
like I say, I can't speak for anentire generation or multiple
generations, but I guess one ofthe hardest things perhaps to
have been would have been aGreat War veteran who'd
(20:35):
survived, seen his mates killed,perhaps even named some of his
children after those mates, andthen seen those children march
off to war again.
There are so many people whosememoirs of the Great War that
I've read that I've subsequentlydiscovered lost sons in the
(20:57):
Second World War.
How would that have made youfeel?
It's perhaps almostunimaginable.
And I'll give you a bit of anexample.
There's a chap called LancelotSpicer, who was an officer in
the 9th Battalion, King's OwnYorkshire Line Infantry, and who
was awarded the DSO and MC forgallantry in the Great War.
He was in that battalion that onthe eve of the Battle of the
(21:19):
Somme made that famous toast,When the Barrage Lifts.
And he wrote a collection of hisletters that was subsequently
published.
Now Spicer's quite an unusualname, and on one of my early
trips to Anzio, following mydad's war, around that part of
the Second World Warbattlefields, I went into the
Beachhead Cemetery at Anzio.
(21:41):
And there's quite a lot of menfrom the King's Own Yorkshire
Line Infantry in there.
They had a battalion at Anzio.
And when I was looking along oneof the rows, I saw a Lieutenant
Spicer.
And that kind of connectionbetween the regiment and the
name made me stop and pause.
And when I looked him up in theregister...
He was the son of LancelotSpicer.
(22:01):
So that man who'd served in theGreat War, published his
letters, told that story aboutwhen the barrage lifts had lost
his son at Anzio.
in a kind of trench warfare onthat part of the Italian
campaign battlefields in WorldWar II, and then went on to
publish his son's letters of hisexperience in Tunisia, North
(22:23):
Africa, and then in the Italiancampaign.
So just like you kind of hint atat the beginning of your
question there, Ryan, This isall part of those crisscross
pathways that link the Great Warwith the Second Great War, World
War II.
And I'm sure over time all of uswill discover more and it's all
(22:45):
part of the fascination of thatsubject and things that I guess
make us stop and think about themeaning of sacrifice as it
stretches across those two greatconflicts.
It's a fantastic question, Ryan.
Thank you.
Question number three comes fromJohn from California, and this
was sent in on fan mail, whichis a little thing where you can
(23:05):
fill in a little form, I think,on the Buzzsprout website, and
it sends me a kind of textmessage, but I don't see your
number, and unless you put yourname on there like John did, So
John asks, I often think of thatyoung woman and can only imagine
(23:46):
that this was quite common.
Do you know how such women andchildren were treated after the
war?
Were records kept?
Were British soldiers everrequired to financially support
their illegitimate kids?
And P.S.
How do I find out about thetours you lead?
Well, John, thanks for thisquestion.
I mean, this is a reallyinteresting subject.
(24:09):
We've got to remember that whensoldiers are in a war on active
service, away from the trencheswith money in their pocket and
perhaps a sense of thelimitations of their life
expectancy, they are going tofind young women and have
relations with them, whetherthey're meaningful relations or
perhaps less meaningful.
(24:31):
And this could easily anddefinitely It was something that
I think the army found verydifficult to control.
There was no way really to stopit or control it.
(24:55):
You could lecture soldiers aboutall kinds of aspects of sexual
health.
Whether they followed thatadvice was a very different
subject indeed.
And that would have led...
to exactly the kind of situationthat you describe.
And it was a time in whichwomen's rights were really
(25:17):
fairly minimal.
So a young woman, having fallenpregnant by a British Tommy,
being presented to thecommanding officer of a unit by
her father, and the fatherexpecting some kind of justice,
probably would have been givenshort shrift, shown the door,
and the soldier moved onsomewhere else.
And probably no contact betweenthat soldier And that family...
(25:40):
ever again and I wonder how manysoldiers left behind that kind
of situation during their periodof service on the Western Front
some going back home perhaps towives and girlfriends or
fiancées and then perhapsmarrying after the war but
knowing in the back of theirmind there was another family
perhaps that they'd had tocompletely ignore again how
(26:04):
would soldiers deal with thatelement of their experience an
interesting question to which Ireally don't have an answer.
But I do remember an old friendof mine, Keith Quabel, who was
one of our team of battlefieldguides.
He's retired from guiding now.
And he went in the 1970s with alot of veterans to the Great War
(26:26):
battlefields.
And he once told me a story thatas he was taking them in a
minibus up towards the Somme,somewhere like that around
Arras, and he went through awhole series of villages before
the motorways were constructed.
And he thought, well, we'dbetter stop so the old boys can
have a drink and go to the loo.
And he was coming up to thisvillage.
and he said, we're going to stopat this next village.
(26:47):
And one of the veterans kind ofpeered over his shoulder, tapped
him and said, not here lad, Ileft issue here.
back in the Great War and whathe meant was of course that he
perhaps fathered a child thereand he was going to turn up and
all of the family members wouldcome out recognise him somehow I
mean it's an increduloussituation and probably would not
(27:08):
have happened but in the back ofhis mind was this worry that
somehow as an old man he'd berecognised and to be called to
account for what he'd done allthose decades before and left
behind that son or daughter whohe'd never known and who had
never known him and again theremust have been almost a kind of
(27:28):
generation.
I mean, that's a too big aphrase for it, but a generation
of young people in the 20s whoknew that their fathers had been
British soldiers, British andCommonwealth soldiers, and would
never know them, would neverknow who they were.
And if we went across to theother side of No Man's Land in
the area occupied by the Germanarmy in Belgium, right across
(27:53):
France in that occupied zone,exactly the same thing would
have been happening there aswell, with German soldiers
having relations with localFrench and Belgian girls.
And I spent a lot of time in myearly career as a battlefield
guy with Ledger, staying in thetown, the city of Tournai, got
to know a lot of people there,and that was a big billeting
area for German troops, andquite a few of them used to
(28:15):
boast how they were related toGerman soldiers who had served
there during the Great War andhad never returned, and their
grandmother had been a singleparent for all that time and had
brought up their father or theirmother.
So I think there's a wholeelement of the Great War with
this that we really do not knowenough about and so little of it
(28:41):
would have been written downthat we probably will never know
about.
as much as we should do, wouldlike to know about it.
Because it's all part of thesocial history of soldiering and
the social history of whathappened behind the lines on the
Western Front in the Great War.
Now, the part two of yourquestion was about how do you
(29:02):
find out about the tours that Ilead?
Well, I did a live streamrecently with Al Murray and
James Holland looking at theSecond World War and the tours
that we do with Ledger, with BenMain and many of our team of
World War II guides discussingthe World War II tours.
And I spoke about on there howthese days, because of my
position as the kind of productmanager of battlefields, I spend
(29:26):
more time guiding a desk than Ido a coach.
I still do 10 or 12 tours ayear, but different to the
40-plus tours that I was doing10 years ago.
So you can find all of the toursthat I'm involved in on the
Ledger Holidays website, andI'll put a link to that in the
show notes for those who areinterested.
There's a big team of guys thatwere with me, and all of them,
(29:50):
like me, like me, you listeningto this podcast they are
fascinated they are passionateabout their aspects of military
history and some of them do boththe first and the second world
war some do waterloo as well butthe key element to it is their
passion for the subject andtheir ability to talk about that
subject quite complex subjectsin a meaningful and
(30:12):
understandable way and put thatacross to a group so what i'm
saying is if you ever travel ona ledger battlefield tour you
may not get me but you're goingto get one of the other guides
who will give you just as goodan experience so if you were
looking at battlefield toursthere's many companies out there
by no means are we the only onesdoing it but in terms of what i
(30:34):
do i only do tours throughledger and one that i do every
year which i always enjoy iswalking walking the battlefields
in flanders with my old frienddr victoria humphries and we do
a double act where i do the kindof historical side and she does
more of the right Thanks foryour fantastic questions.
(31:06):
And I would love to do an entireepisode on the main substance of
your question, looking at thosechildren that came about as a
consequence of relations betweenyoung women behind the front and
soldiers who were returning fromthe front line.
But if only there was an expertout there.
If anyone knows one, then get intouch.
(31:26):
So on to our fourth and finalquestion which comes from John
Benneker and he asks I'm busywatching your old Frontline
podcast event live from theArras Memorial and saw you
walking towards the grave ofMajor Sinclair.
This made me think on which sideof the headstone is the actual
graves of the soldiers.
I've not yet been so privilegedto visit a First World War
(31:47):
cemetery but from what I've seenon videos and photographs there
seems to be no outline of theactual grave only the rows and
rows of headstones as seen inthe videos.
Aren't we walking over theirgraves?
Isn't it disrespectful?
Or what was the thinking behindthe design of the war
cemeteries?
Well, you've come to anessential point there, John,
(32:08):
about how these cemeteries wereconstructed.
There were hundreds, if notthousands of them across just
the British and Commonwealthsector of the Western Front.
Some of them tiny collections ofgraves, others much bigger
cemeteries.
The vast majority of the smallerburial sites were closed and
moved into what were calledconcentration cemeteries
creating these nice neat rowsthat we see in the modern
(32:31):
photographs and videos ofcemeteries on the western front
and even during the war itselfcemeteries were constructed in
an orderly way if they were awayfrom the battlefront slightly
which the faubourg damiencemetery which features in the
video that you mentioned whichis on our youtube channel that
is a good example of this aswell and you are quite right
(32:52):
that the the headstone sits justas it suggests at at the head of
the grave.
And if the soldier is lyingthere, his head is resting close
to where that headstone is andthe rest of him lays beneath
where we stand.
So we are walking over theirgraves.
It's different to a civiliancemetery where that grave is
(33:13):
outlined by a kerbstone or by astructure or a feature or
whatever it is.
The decision with militarygraves was that they would be
marked with a headstone and thenthere would be earth and grass
laid on top.
and it would then be constructedmade permanent to look like an
English garden with all theplants and flowers that would be
(33:34):
placed amongst the headstonesand in the rows and in the
cemetery more widely and nodirect consideration was given
to this idea of walking ongraves and in some respects when
we walk over a grave I spokeabout how you know imagine a
soldier laying there with hishead towards the headstone of
the grave and his body lyingbeneath you the sad reality of
(33:56):
of trench warfare was that tobury the complete remains of a
soldier was perhaps often veryrare.
I remember a veteran that Iinterviewed who was in a trench
at Ypres when they got heavilybombarded.
He was in the zig and the zag ofa trench, the crenellation of
the trench, the bays as theywere called.
He was in one bay, his mate wasin the other, and shells came
(34:18):
down, direct hit on his mate.
All that was left of him was histwo army boots with his feet in
them and smoke coming out of theboots.
That was all that was left ofthat soldier.
so what he did is he took hismate's boots with his feet in
popped them in a sandbag andwhen they were relieved and went
out the line he stopped at asoldier's cemetery just behind
the front dug a little grave putthe boots and the feet in that
(34:39):
grave covered it over put up across with his name on and wrote
to his mother and said sorry totell you that your son was
killed in action shot throughthe heart died at once suffered
no pain he couldn't tell her thereality of what had happened to
him and he was read popularnewspapers throughout the his
life and he picked up asupplement in the 1920s, 30s
(35:00):
which showed the construction ofthe war cemetery which he said
made him kind of giggle really,kind of smile because he saw
these beautiful cemeteriesconstructed and no doubt the
families of those who wereburied there thought they were
lying in repose underneath withtheir arms on their chest and he
thought back to the lad who he'dburied which all that remained
of him was his two feet in hisarmy boots.
(35:23):
So if we could and not that weshould somehow archaeologically
scan these cemeteries I think asI've seen with archaeology and
the recovery of human remainswould see a very different
picture and see how fragmentarymany of these burials will be
but I think the essential ideabehind the cemeteries to create
(35:44):
this memorial garden of whichthe headstones were the central
point of remembrance forindividual soldiers the whole
consideration to walking overgraves and curb stones for
graves just wasn't evenconsidered and I think it was a
right decision because it turnedthem into what they are now very
much part of the landscape theseincredible beautiful gardens of
(36:06):
remembrance which I hope thatyou will get a chance John to go
and visit sometime soon and youwill be moved you will be
affected your life will bechanged by visiting a cemetery
like this there's no doubt aboutthat and I think you'll take a
lot away from it once you haveactually seen them and I hope
that's going to happen for yousometime soon.
(36:28):
So that's a great question,John, and that's where we draw
this episode of the questionsand answers to a conclusion.
Don't forget, think about thosequestions for the war in the air
on the Royal Flying Corps andthe Royal Air Force.
Send those in for a specialedition of the Q&As.
You can send any question in,whether it's for that or
something else down the line viathe two traditional methods of
(36:51):
email and the Discord server andalso fan mail via Buzzsprout.
And as always, I hope you foundthese questions and answers of
interest see you again soon forsome more q and a's here on the
old front line you've beenlistening to an episode of the
(37:15):
old front line with me militaryhistorian paul reed you can
follow me on twitter at somcoryou can follow the podcast at
old front line pod Check out thewebsite at oldfrontline.co.uk
where you'll find lots ofpodcast extras and photographs
and links to books that arementioned in the podcast.
And if you feel like supportingus, you can go to our Patreon
(37:37):
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Buy Me A Coffee atbuymeacoffee.com slash
oldfrontline.
Links to all of these are on ourwebsite.
Thanks for listening and we'llsee you again soon.
Welcome to some more questions and answers here on
the old front line.
These are questions submitted byyou, the podcast listeners, and
each month we select some of thebest questions that have been
submitted via email and theDiscord server to answer here
and hopefully give us all freshperspectives and new knowledge
(00:26):
of this vast subject of theGreat War.
So let's begin.
Coming up soon on the podcast issomething a bit different.
bringing in quite a fewdifferent things in recent times
and I think that's good to movethe podcast forward and what I'm
going to do is effectively takekind of a month's worth of
(00:47):
podcasts and focus them around aspecific theme and in this case
the theme will be the war in theair the war above the western
front during the great war andthere's going to be an
introductory episode there'll besome interviews with some
experts and then a bit aboutwhat you can find of the Royal
(01:07):
Flying Corps and the RAF I'llpick the best four and that'll
(01:38):
keep that theme of looking atone particular subject going for
that month.
But let's get straight down toour questions this week.
And our first question comesfrom Zachary Lang in
Massachusetts, USA.
(02:11):
He asks, in that crucialcampaign in 1916.
Well Zachary, you're quite rightthat there are quite a lot of
documentaries out there whereyou'll see film, archive film,
being used to symbolise theGerman side of the Battle of the
(02:32):
Somme, the first day of theBattle of the Somme, where
you'll see film and the men init, the soldiers in it, are
wearing Stahlhelms.
Now that's because the amount offilm that TV companies draw on
is actually relatively limitedand it comes from archives like
the Imperial War Museum and theNational Archives in America and
(02:53):
in particular with America a lotof that film was stuff that was
actually captured in the SecondWorld War by American units
entering Nazi Germany whocleared out huge collections of
newsreels which included recentstuff from that conflict but
also material from the FirstWorld War and a lot of the
material that exists The goodmaterial seems to always show
(03:16):
German soldiers with Stahlhelmson.
Now, that's a kind of nationalmilitary characteristic that
emerges from the First WorldWar, but we more commonly see
with soldiers in World War II.
And I think when it comes tomaking documentaries,
documentary makers probablyfocus on that kind of imagery
because if you show some film ofsome soldiers in Stahlhelm,
(03:38):
Stilhelm, it's like that,then...
Everyone knows that they'reGermans.
Now, the truth of the battle onthe first day of the Battle of
the Somme, the 1st of July,1916, was that probably very few
German soldiers had Stahlhelms.
I almost said probably none ofthem did.
(03:58):
And my own opinion would be thatthat was probably much nearer
the truth, because by thatopening stage of the Battle of
the Somme, only tens ofthousands of Stahlhelms had
actually been produced.
Officially, this was the M1916Stahlhelm, designed to protect
German soldiers and to replacewhat we would call the
(04:19):
Pickelhaube, which was oftenalso called the Leather Helm,
from leather with brass fittingsand that famous spike although
there were variations of that inthe artillery they wore a ball
mounted on that feature forexample so that kind of helmet
(04:41):
was a pre-war bit of kit that inthe early battles particularly
once trench warfare began thatkind of helmet a leather helmet
on the perched on the top ofsomeone's head was redundant and
a Stahlhelm just like theadaptation of steel helmets in
the French and then the Britishforces was was something that
was really essential to allowsoldiers to survive the
(05:02):
experience of trench warfarewith shells going off above
positions and causing casualtiesto the men below.
But the Germans were planning amajor offensive in that early
part of 1916, which was theBattle of Verdun.
And in that battle, a decisionwas made that the assault troops
in the leading waves would allhave the new Stahlhelm.
So the focus was on issuing theStahlhelms to those units that
(05:26):
would fight in that openingstage of the offensive there in
the Meuse at Verdun and I thinkonly about 30 or 40,000 of these
helmets were available for thatearly phase of the fighting at
Verdun and that kind ofprioritization of the Stahlhelms
to troops there seems to havecontinued so when we look at the
German units that were occupyingthe Somme front from Gommacourt
(05:49):
down to Montauban in the Frenchsector I don't think that they
were on the kind of top of thelist for the reception of the
Stahlhelms and when you you lookat the unit history so I've got
the unit history of the 119thReserve Infantry Regiment which
was the unit that defendedBeaumont Hamel and Hawthorne
Ridge and the positions in frontof the Sunken Lane in that
(06:11):
northern part of the Sommebattlefield and when we look at
some of the contemporary imagesof their troops in the front
line area leading up to theBattle of the Somme they've all
got pickle halbers many of themhave removed the spike and put a
cloth cover over the helmet tostop the sun reflecting on the
brass fittings but they don'thave Stahlhelms and over the
(06:32):
years of collecting images ofGerman soldiers on the Somme
front I have only rarely seenimages of Germans with
Stahlhelms taken during the 1916Battle of the Somme so in terms
of the 1st of July battle Ithink very few if any actually
had Stahlhelms when we look atthe pictures of captured German
(06:53):
soldiers wearing these in theearly phase of the Somme battle
it seems to be actions wherethey're units that were brought
in after the fighting of the 1stof July, or in sectors where
helmets had been issued, not toevery soldier, but as trench
stores.
This seems to be the more commonpractice.
So the Germans don't really haveenough Stahlhelms to give to
(07:15):
every single soldier.
Of the millions of Germansoldiers that are holding all
450 miles of the Western Front,so they issue them in penny
packets, as the British wouldcall it, where the Stahlhelms
are sent into a front line hereand they become trench stores
which units going to and fromthose trench systems hand over
and retain for the use in thetrenches to units coming and
(07:38):
going and Ernst Junger talksabout this in Storm of Steel so
as he's coming up in September1916 to take over the positions
near to the village ofGuillemont they're marching up
with the men wearing Feldmutzersthese are the kind of German
soft caps or the Pickelhalberand when they get into the line
the unit they're relievingthey've got Stahlhelms and they
(07:59):
hand their Stahlhelms over toJünger's Hanoverians and they
wear them when they're in theforward zone of the battlefield
and by the end of 1916 althoughover a million Stahlhelms had
been made and issued to Germansoldiers on the front line again
it still wasn't enough for everysingle soldier so probably
(08:21):
throughout the battle of theSomme unit after allied unit
that encountered the Germansover And you see again in some
of the early images of theBattle of the Somme.
where units have gone intobattle in some of the areas
(08:42):
where there's been some successand have captured the German
position.
There are quite a few famousphotographs of British Tommies
holding up pickle halberds withthe spike and the badges of
Bavarian or Württemberg soldiersor Prussians or whatever it is,
proudly displaying thesesouvenirs, which were much
sought after.
(09:02):
And really, it would be wellinto 1917, at the time of the
British assault at Arras or theFrench fighting on the Chemin
des Dames, that the vastmajority of German soldiers by
that stage of the war were nowissued with Stahlhelms and they
were not just part of trenchdoors, they were part of a
soldier's kit.
(09:23):
And when we look at photographsfrom that period, private
photographs and then officialphotographs, we see the
Stahlhelm in much greaterevidence than the Pickelhalber.
That seems to have been put intothe kind of corner and not quite
forgotten because it wasprobably worn on parades behind
the lines again I've got kind ofimages that show this but the
Stahlhelm was the bit of battlekit you took with you into the
(09:46):
front line area and probably bythe end of the war particularly
as that was a period in which alarge number of new conscripts
came into the German army andthe army was swelled in terms of
numbers to cope with thefighting on the western front
and then all those men werebrought from Russia in 1918 to
come and fight in the west whenStahlhelms would certainly have
(10:08):
been issued to them for for thefighting on the Western Front.
They may not have had them onthe Eastern Front.
I'm not honestly sure howprevalent they were there.
Any Stahlhelm experts listeningto this perhaps can contact us.
But I think the greatestsymbolism of the Stahlhelm as
part of the German soldiers'identity is what makes it kind
of an everlasting symbol offrontline service for German
(10:30):
soldiers in the Great War.
And you see this reflected inthe books that were published in
the 1920s and 30s, and thatsymbol of the Stahlhelm used
used on quite a lot of those andyou see it most definitely on
war memorials right acrossGermany where the Stahlhelm is a
central feature on many Germanlocal war memorials listing the
(10:50):
local dead.
So while the first day of theBattle of the Somme was part of
that transition period from justassault troops and machine
gunners and sentries, those kindof people being issued with the
Stahlhelms initially, By the endof the Battle of the Somme,
you're seeing a kind of shifttowards them being not just
trench doors, but rapidlybecoming part of a soldier's
(11:13):
everyday kit used on the frontline.
A footnote to the Great War,perhaps, but certainly an
interesting one.
And thank you, Zachary, for thatquestion.
So let's move on to questionnumber two, which comes from
Ryan Alder.
Ryan asks, Obviously I can'tspeak for all Great War veterans
(11:45):
nor all Second World Warveterans but when we read the
accounts of men who served inthe Great War that went on to
experience another conflict justa generation later many of whom
had sons or daughters involvedin it then we see how I guess
how sad they were to see thatthe sacrifice of the Great War
(12:09):
wasn't entirely in vain butwithin two decades Europe was at
war once more with the sameenemies.
In fact enemies on an evengreater scale and in some ways
much more of a world war inWorld War II than in the Great
War.
Now If I look back on theveterans that I interviewed in
(12:31):
the 1980s and 90s, the vastmajority of them did go on to
serve in the Second World War.
Most of them probably, from whatI recall, in the Home Guard or
as ARP wardens because they wereslightly too old or slightly
unfit or not fit enough toreally properly serve again.
But some did go on to serve.
(12:53):
So Malcolm Vivian, who I oftentalk about in this podcast,
who'd been a gunner officer onthe West Coast, in the First
World War.
He rejoined the Royal Artilleryin 1939.
He was managing all of the JoeLyons tea bars in London at that
point and he got permission fromJoe Lyons to re-enlist and he
joined the gunners again and hewas put in charge of the
(13:14):
anti-aircraft defences along theSuez Canal until he got sick
about two or three years intothe war and then was sent home
and discharged.
Jimmy Lovegrove, who'd been aninfantry officer on the Western
Front with 2nd 4th South Lancand a very young officer at that
had been wounded in one of theattacks on the Hindenburg Line
in 1918 he ended up in thePioneer Corps George Butler
(13:38):
who's at regular soldier,underage Tommy, joined the army
before the Great War, aged 12,went across in 1915 with the
Lancashire Fusiliers and thenjoined the Machine Gun Corps and
by the time of the Battle of theSomme, aged 18, he was in charge
of a machine gun section, theoldest serving soldier in the
(13:59):
unit, the longest servingsoldier in the unit, the most
senior soldier in that unit interms of other ranks, but the
youngest soldier in that unit.
and his service when the MachineGun Corps was disbanded after
the Great War he returned to theLancashire Fusiliers and he
continued to serve with them upto and after World War II he
(14:21):
went over with the LancFusiliers in the BEF in 1939-40
during the Phoney War and thentook part in the retreat to
Dunkirk and then for the rest ofthe war once he got back to
Britain he was working at thedepot training new recruits and
I've had World War II veteransof the Lancashire Fusiliers come
to places like Monte Cassinowith me who had been trained by
(14:44):
him during that period and couldremember him and there was
another chap M.L.
Walkington who had served withthe Queen's Westminster Rifles
on the Western Front in theearly phase of the Great War
taking part in the ChristmasTruce then he was commissioned
into the Machine Gun Corps andin the late 30s joined the Royal
Sussex Regiment and served withthem again in the BEF in 1939-40
(15:08):
so those are just a few TheGreat War The War to End All
Wars and there they were just afew precious years later in
(15:33):
uniform once more going off toEurope to fight against Germany
and many of them said that theythought of the mates the pals
that they'd lost in the GreatWar wondered whether that
sacrifice had really amounted toanything in the end and I
remember Malcolm used to saythat he wondered what the
families of those who had diedin the Great War which included
(15:56):
his own parents who'd lost oneof their his younger brother in
the fighting at Ypres in 1917 hekind of wondered how they felt
about the meaning of sacrificeto see that great war sacrifice
somehow squandered in the peacethat followed and I think that's
(16:16):
also a kind of sense that youget from some of these men that
they'd fought so hard to bringvictory to bring a conclusion to
that war they'd done their bitthe next bit was over to
politicians to make something ofit that victory and turned the
peace into a meaningful part ofworld history and many of them
felt that perhaps thepoliticians had fallen short on
(16:40):
that I think for others as wellit was just fairly simple that
they'd served in the Great Warthey were proud of their service
proud of what they'd done theywere proud to have been in
uniform during the Great Warthey didn't see it as a terrible
experience on one level it wasAnd it was an experience,
(17:00):
whether they acknowledged thator not, that affected them for
the rest of their lives.
But they said pretty muchunanimously something they would
never have missed.
And when it came to servingagain...
There wasn't really muchconscious thought involved in
that.
That was what they did.
That's what duty meant.
(17:20):
They'd served king and countryin the Great War, and now, 20
years later, as Britain's aboutto go to war again, I think, as
Jimmy Lovegrove said, it wentwithout question that we would
serve.
There was no question about it.
Of course we were going to be inuniform.
Of course we were going to bedoing our bit.
(17:42):
Just as we've done our bit inthe Great War.
And a lad like George Butler, aworking class lad who'd lived on
the streets of Manchester, seenthe sharp end of the First World
War, spent all those years inthe peacetime army in the 20s
and 30s, and now went back towar in 1939, probably for him...
(18:04):
perhaps a degree of relief.
He loved soldiering.
He was a warrior, really, notjust a soldier.
A man who lived and thrived inthe army, perhaps even lived and
thrived on the battlefield.
And so for him, it was kind of anatural environment to return
to.
And probably, if he feltanything about his service in
(18:25):
the Second World War, heregretted that he wasn't able to
continue to serve on the frontline beyond that experience in
the BEF in 1939-39.
So I think there's a lot ofcomplex emotions going on there,
but I think at the heart of itwas this sense of duty that that
generation had that, as JimmyLovegrove said, there was no
(18:47):
kind of question that theywouldn't have stepped forward
and done their bit again.
Now, having said that, I do knowthat there were quite a few
examples, and this is somethingthat was very common in that
1930s period when there was agreat polarisation of political
ideas and identity.
that some men who had served inthe Great War and some women who
(19:08):
had served in the Great Warturned to organisations like the
Peace Pledge Union.
They were against war.
Vera Brittain is a very, verygood example of that, who had
seen her brother killed in theGreat War, her fiancé, and just
about every man that she'd evercared for had fallen in that
conflict.
(19:29):
She'd married a very badlywounded veteran, and so the kind
of shadow of the great war wentright across her life and many
people like her did not want tosee that repeated a generation
later so they turned to peaceorganizations of which there
were several examples to try andpush that message of peace it's
(19:51):
not the same as appeasementthese were people who felt that
war was wrong and then when thewar did break out and it was
clear that hitler and and theNazis were perhaps even more of
an identifiable enemy, not justof Britain, to the whole of
mankind in 1939-40.
Despite their feelings aboutpeace, despite their feelings
(20:13):
about war, many did go on toserve as conscientious
objectors.
There's a whole plethora ofemotions and ideas here, and
like I say, I can't speak for anentire generation or multiple
generations, but I guess one ofthe hardest things perhaps to
have been would have been aGreat War veteran who'd
(20:35):
survived, seen his mates killed,perhaps even named some of his
children after those mates, andthen seen those children march
off to war again.
There are so many people whosememoirs of the Great War that
I've read that I've subsequentlydiscovered lost sons in the
(20:57):
Second World War.
How would that have made youfeel?
It's perhaps almostunimaginable.
And I'll give you a bit of anexample.
There's a chap called LancelotSpicer, who was an officer in
the 9th Battalion, King's OwnYorkshire Line Infantry, and who
was awarded the DSO and MC forgallantry in the Great War.
He was in that battalion that onthe eve of the Battle of the
(21:19):
Somme made that famous toast,When the Barrage Lifts.
And he wrote a collection of hisletters that was subsequently
published.
Now Spicer's quite an unusualname, and on one of my early
trips to Anzio, following mydad's war, around that part of
the Second World Warbattlefields, I went into the
Beachhead Cemetery at Anzio.
(21:41):
And there's quite a lot of menfrom the King's Own Yorkshire
Line Infantry in there.
They had a battalion at Anzio.
And when I was looking along oneof the rows, I saw a Lieutenant
Spicer.
And that kind of connectionbetween the regiment and the
name made me stop and pause.
And when I looked him up in theregister...
He was the son of LancelotSpicer.
(22:01):
So that man who'd served in theGreat War, published his
letters, told that story aboutwhen the barrage lifts had lost
his son at Anzio.
in a kind of trench warfare onthat part of the Italian
campaign battlefields in WorldWar II, and then went on to
publish his son's letters of hisexperience in Tunisia, North
(22:23):
Africa, and then in the Italiancampaign.
So just like you kind of hint atat the beginning of your
question there, Ryan, This isall part of those crisscross
pathways that link the Great Warwith the Second Great War, World
War II.
And I'm sure over time all of uswill discover more and it's all
(22:45):
part of the fascination of thatsubject and things that I guess
make us stop and think about themeaning of sacrifice as it
stretches across those two greatconflicts.
It's a fantastic question, Ryan.
Thank you.
Question number three comes fromJohn from California, and this
was sent in on fan mail, whichis a little thing where you can
(23:05):
fill in a little form, I think,on the Buzzsprout website, and
it sends me a kind of textmessage, but I don't see your
number, and unless you put yourname on there like John did, So
John asks, I often think of thatyoung woman and can only imagine
(23:46):
that this was quite common.
Do you know how such women andchildren were treated after the
war?
Were records kept?
Were British soldiers everrequired to financially support
their illegitimate kids?
And P.S.
How do I find out about thetours you lead?
Well, John, thanks for thisquestion.
I mean, this is a reallyinteresting subject.
(24:09):
We've got to remember that whensoldiers are in a war on active
service, away from the trencheswith money in their pocket and
perhaps a sense of thelimitations of their life
expectancy, they are going tofind young women and have
relations with them, whetherthey're meaningful relations or
perhaps less meaningful.
(24:31):
And this could easily anddefinitely It was something that
I think the army found verydifficult to control.
There was no way really to stopit or control it.
(24:55):
You could lecture soldiers aboutall kinds of aspects of sexual
health.
Whether they followed thatadvice was a very different
subject indeed.
And that would have led...
to exactly the kind of situationthat you describe.
And it was a time in whichwomen's rights were really
(25:17):
fairly minimal.
So a young woman, having fallenpregnant by a British Tommy,
being presented to thecommanding officer of a unit by
her father, and the fatherexpecting some kind of justice,
probably would have been givenshort shrift, shown the door,
and the soldier moved onsomewhere else.
And probably no contact betweenthat soldier And that family...
(25:40):
ever again and I wonder how manysoldiers left behind that kind
of situation during their periodof service on the Western Front
some going back home perhaps towives and girlfriends or
fiancées and then perhapsmarrying after the war but
knowing in the back of theirmind there was another family
perhaps that they'd had tocompletely ignore again how
(26:04):
would soldiers deal with thatelement of their experience an
interesting question to which Ireally don't have an answer.
But I do remember an old friendof mine, Keith Quabel, who was
one of our team of battlefieldguides.
He's retired from guiding now.
And he went in the 1970s with alot of veterans to the Great War
(26:26):
battlefields.
And he once told me a story thatas he was taking them in a
minibus up towards the Somme,somewhere like that around
Arras, and he went through awhole series of villages before
the motorways were constructed.
And he thought, well, we'dbetter stop so the old boys can
have a drink and go to the loo.
And he was coming up to thisvillage.
and he said, we're going to stopat this next village.
(26:47):
And one of the veterans kind ofpeered over his shoulder, tapped
him and said, not here lad, Ileft issue here.
back in the Great War and whathe meant was of course that he
perhaps fathered a child thereand he was going to turn up and
all of the family members wouldcome out recognise him somehow I
mean it's an increduloussituation and probably would not
(27:08):
have happened but in the back ofhis mind was this worry that
somehow as an old man he'd berecognised and to be called to
account for what he'd done allthose decades before and left
behind that son or daughter whohe'd never known and who had
never known him and again theremust have been almost a kind of
(27:28):
generation.
I mean, that's a too big aphrase for it, but a generation
of young people in the 20s whoknew that their fathers had been
British soldiers, British andCommonwealth soldiers, and would
never know them, would neverknow who they were.
And if we went across to theother side of No Man's Land in
the area occupied by the Germanarmy in Belgium, right across
(27:53):
France in that occupied zone,exactly the same thing would
have been happening there aswell, with German soldiers
having relations with localFrench and Belgian girls.
And I spent a lot of time in myearly career as a battlefield
guy with Ledger, staying in thetown, the city of Tournai, got
to know a lot of people there,and that was a big billeting
area for German troops, andquite a few of them used to
(28:15):
boast how they were related toGerman soldiers who had served
there during the Great War andhad never returned, and their
grandmother had been a singleparent for all that time and had
brought up their father or theirmother.
So I think there's a wholeelement of the Great War with
this that we really do not knowenough about and so little of it
(28:41):
would have been written downthat we probably will never know
about.
as much as we should do, wouldlike to know about it.
Because it's all part of thesocial history of soldiering and
the social history of whathappened behind the lines on the
Western Front in the Great War.
Now, the part two of yourquestion was about how do you
(29:02):
find out about the tours that Ilead?
Well, I did a live streamrecently with Al Murray and
James Holland looking at theSecond World War and the tours
that we do with Ledger, with BenMain and many of our team of
World War II guides discussingthe World War II tours.
And I spoke about on there howthese days, because of my
position as the kind of productmanager of battlefields, I spend
(29:26):
more time guiding a desk than Ido a coach.
I still do 10 or 12 tours ayear, but different to the
40-plus tours that I was doing10 years ago.
So you can find all of the toursthat I'm involved in on the
Ledger Holidays website, andI'll put a link to that in the
show notes for those who areinterested.
There's a big team of guys thatwere with me, and all of them,
(29:50):
like me, like me, you listeningto this podcast they are
fascinated they are passionateabout their aspects of military
history and some of them do boththe first and the second world
war some do waterloo as well butthe key element to it is their
passion for the subject andtheir ability to talk about that
subject quite complex subjectsin a meaningful and
(30:12):
understandable way and put thatacross to a group so what i'm
saying is if you ever travel ona ledger battlefield tour you
may not get me but you're goingto get one of the other guides
who will give you just as goodan experience so if you were
looking at battlefield toursthere's many companies out there
by no means are we the only onesdoing it but in terms of what i
(30:34):
do i only do tours throughledger and one that i do every
year which i always enjoy iswalking walking the battlefields
in flanders with my old frienddr victoria humphries and we do
a double act where i do the kindof historical side and she does
more of the right Thanks foryour fantastic questions.
(31:06):
And I would love to do an entireepisode on the main substance of
your question, looking at thosechildren that came about as a
consequence of relations betweenyoung women behind the front and
soldiers who were returning fromthe front line.
But if only there was an expertout there.
If anyone knows one, then get intouch.
(31:26):
So on to our fourth and finalquestion which comes from John
Benneker and he asks I'm busywatching your old Frontline
podcast event live from theArras Memorial and saw you
walking towards the grave ofMajor Sinclair.
This made me think on which sideof the headstone is the actual
graves of the soldiers.
I've not yet been so privilegedto visit a First World War
(31:47):
cemetery but from what I've seenon videos and photographs there
seems to be no outline of theactual grave only the rows and
rows of headstones as seen inthe videos.
Aren't we walking over theirgraves?
Isn't it disrespectful?
Or what was the thinking behindthe design of the war
cemeteries?
Well, you've come to anessential point there, John,
(32:08):
about how these cemeteries wereconstructed.
There were hundreds, if notthousands of them across just
the British and Commonwealthsector of the Western Front.
Some of them tiny collections ofgraves, others much bigger
cemeteries.
The vast majority of the smallerburial sites were closed and
moved into what were calledconcentration cemeteries
creating these nice neat rowsthat we see in the modern
(32:31):
photographs and videos ofcemeteries on the western front
and even during the war itselfcemeteries were constructed in
an orderly way if they were awayfrom the battlefront slightly
which the faubourg damiencemetery which features in the
video that you mentioned whichis on our youtube channel that
is a good example of this aswell and you are quite right
(32:52):
that the the headstone sits justas it suggests at at the head of
the grave.
And if the soldier is lyingthere, his head is resting close
to where that headstone is andthe rest of him lays beneath
where we stand.
So we are walking over theirgraves.
It's different to a civiliancemetery where that grave is
(33:13):
outlined by a kerbstone or by astructure or a feature or
whatever it is.
The decision with militarygraves was that they would be
marked with a headstone and thenthere would be earth and grass
laid on top.
and it would then be constructedmade permanent to look like an
English garden with all theplants and flowers that would be
(33:34):
placed amongst the headstonesand in the rows and in the
cemetery more widely and nodirect consideration was given
to this idea of walking ongraves and in some respects when
we walk over a grave I spokeabout how you know imagine a
soldier laying there with hishead towards the headstone of
the grave and his body lyingbeneath you the sad reality of
(33:56):
of trench warfare was that tobury the complete remains of a
soldier was perhaps often veryrare.
I remember a veteran that Iinterviewed who was in a trench
at Ypres when they got heavilybombarded.
He was in the zig and the zag ofa trench, the crenellation of
the trench, the bays as theywere called.
He was in one bay, his mate wasin the other, and shells came
(34:18):
down, direct hit on his mate.
All that was left of him was histwo army boots with his feet in
them and smoke coming out of theboots.
That was all that was left ofthat soldier.
so what he did is he took hismate's boots with his feet in
popped them in a sandbag andwhen they were relieved and went
out the line he stopped at asoldier's cemetery just behind
the front dug a little grave putthe boots and the feet in that
(34:39):
grave covered it over put up across with his name on and wrote
to his mother and said sorry totell you that your son was
killed in action shot throughthe heart died at once suffered
no pain he couldn't tell her thereality of what had happened to
him and he was read popularnewspapers throughout the his
life and he picked up asupplement in the 1920s, 30s
(35:00):
which showed the construction ofthe war cemetery which he said
made him kind of giggle really,kind of smile because he saw
these beautiful cemeteriesconstructed and no doubt the
families of those who wereburied there thought they were
lying in repose underneath withtheir arms on their chest and he
thought back to the lad who he'dburied which all that remained
of him was his two feet in hisarmy boots.
(35:23):
So if we could and not that weshould somehow archaeologically
scan these cemeteries I think asI've seen with archaeology and
the recovery of human remainswould see a very different
picture and see how fragmentarymany of these burials will be
but I think the essential ideabehind the cemeteries to create
(35:44):
this memorial garden of whichthe headstones were the central
point of remembrance forindividual soldiers the whole
consideration to walking overgraves and curb stones for
graves just wasn't evenconsidered and I think it was a
right decision because it turnedthem into what they are now very
much part of the landscape theseincredible beautiful gardens of
(36:06):
remembrance which I hope thatyou will get a chance John to go
and visit sometime soon and youwill be moved you will be
affected your life will bechanged by visiting a cemetery
like this there's no doubt aboutthat and I think you'll take a
lot away from it once you haveactually seen them and I hope
that's going to happen for yousometime soon.
(36:28):
So that's a great question,John, and that's where we draw
this episode of the questionsand answers to a conclusion.
Don't forget, think about thosequestions for the war in the air
on the Royal Flying Corps andthe Royal Air Force.
Send those in for a specialedition of the Q&As.
You can send any question in,whether it's for that or
something else down the line viathe two traditional methods of
(36:51):
email and the Discord server andalso fan mail via Buzzsprout.
And as always, I hope you foundthese questions and answers of
interest see you again soon forsome more q and a's here on the
old front line you've beenlistening to an episode of the
(37:15):
old front line with me militaryhistorian paul reed you can
follow me on twitter at somcoryou can follow the podcast at
old front line pod Check out thewebsite at oldfrontline.co.uk
where you'll find lots ofpodcast extras and photographs
and links to books that arementioned in the podcast.
And if you feel like supportingus, you can go to our Patreon
(37:37):
page, patreon.com slasholdfrontline or support us on
Buy Me A Coffee atbuymeacoffee.com slash
oldfrontline.
Links to all of these are on ourwebsite.
Thanks for listening and we'llsee you again soon.
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