November 14, 2025 • 44 mins
In this 40th Questions and Answers episode, we explore some of the lesser-known battlefields of the Western Front, uncovering places where traces of the First World War fighting can still be seen today. We examine what really happened to trenches after they were captured in battle, discuss whether WW1 historians face a new challenge from Artificial Intelligence, and debate the nature of First World War generalship — were those in high command truly butchers and bunglers, or more capable than history has allowed?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:10):
Incredibly, this is our fortieth question and answer
episode.
Forty episodes of the QA'sstaggering.
It's something that I startedafter a suggestion from a
regular listener who lives inTunbridge Worlds, who spoke to a
friend of mine and mentionedthat in some of the other
podcasts that they listened to,unconnected to the First World
(00:32):
War, they had regular Q ⁇ Asessions, and would that be
something that I'd consider?
And I wasn't really sure how itwould be received, but I was
already getting a lot ofquestions which I was answering
by email, and this is somethingthat happens on battlefield
doors, obviously not by emailbecause the people are sitting
(00:54):
in a coach with me, someone atthe front asks a question, and
the answer probably will be ofinterest to a wider audience.
So I then get on the microphoneand I talk to everyone.
And this is kind of the samething, but to a much bigger
audience through the podcastitself.
But the QA episodes have becomeincredibly popular.
(01:16):
Some of our highest peakingepisodes in terms of listener
figures have been QA episodes.
So I think that what people likeis having essentially four
different elements of Great Warhistory in one episode.
A lot of diverse topics thatprobably wouldn't necessarily
(01:36):
make an episode in their ownright, but it gives us a chance
to talk about those subjects.
And I must say that the qualityand diverse nature of the
questions that you've sent inare really what makes these
episodes.
So thank you for that.
Thank you for helping me reachthis milestone of 40 QA
(01:57):
episodes, and please, pleasekeep those questions coming.
And this week as well has been aweek in which the BBC on BBC 4
have repeated my very firsttelevision programme that I made
for mainstream television, andthat was the Forgotten
Battlefield, which was filmed inthe summer of 2001 following the
work of the diggers and thenbroadcast the following March.
(02:20):
And following the BBC setting upa YouTube channel and putting
extracts from some of theirfactual programmes on there
relating to history, a clip ofForgotten Battlefield got 1.7
million downloads in just a fewweeks.
So that prompted the BBC toengage in a conversation about
(02:42):
Forgotten Battlefield and themshowing, re-showing that episode
from 2002, which has not been onmainstream television since I
think about 2007.
It's currently, as I broadcastthis in mid-November, it's still
on iPlayer, and I think it isfor about a month.
So if you haven't already had achance to check it out, I would
(03:04):
recommend it.
It's an archaeology programshowing the archaeology of the
battlefields at Eap, that areauncovered by the diggers all
those years ago, and showingthings that really have not been
seen before or since, andprobably will not be seen in
that kind of documentary again.
And for me personally, it wasincredible to kind of think back
(03:27):
over all those years andremember what I saw there.
And not long after it wasrebroadcast last week, I nipped
over to EAP with John HayesFisher, who's the producer
director of that program, whowe've worked together for many
years in other televisionprojects and are now working
together on the Old FrontlineYouTube channel.
And we popped over on one of ourregular day trips and we went to
(03:50):
EAP and we revisited theForgotten Battlefield and stood
at some of the graves of thosethat the diggers recovered,
including the two Royal Welshfusiliers.
So it felt as if that wholestory really had kind of come
full circle.
Anyway, that's a bit of catch upon the podcast.
Now let's move on to in thisspecial fortieth episode, let's
(04:11):
move on to this week'squestions.
Question number one comes fromIan Henley.
Ian asks I once went to a sitemaybe in the Reims region called
the Mandamassage, an amazinglypreserved hillside trench system
that could have been abandonedyesterday.
Do you have a list of top sitesthat perhaps are overlooked for
(04:31):
a visitor?
I'm always trying to findsomething I've not visited
before, so on our last trip wewent into the trench system in
Thieved Val Wood.
Well thanks for this one Ian.
It's always good to start a Q⁇ A session with something
relating to the battlefieldsthemselves and especially this
fortieth episode.
And you've raised a reallyinteresting point there about
(04:52):
sites where we can find thearchaeology of the Great War,
the remains of the Great War,and what that then tells us
about the history of the GreatWar.
Where can we find those kind ofsites beyond the very well-known
ones?
And even on that British sectorof the Western Front, you've
mentioned Thief Val Wood, whichyou have to visit by
appointments with a guide fromthe Ulster Tower who takes you
(05:17):
into the reconstructed trenchsystem on the edge of the wood,
and you see mortar pits anddugout entrances.
It's a fantastic visit, and I'mglad you got a chance to go in
there.
And if any of you are over onthe Somme battlefields, go to
the Ulster Tower, make thatappointment, join the tour and
take a visit into the wood.
It is absolutely fascinating todo so.
(05:39):
But in terms of some othersites, I've looked at this in a
few podcast episodes,particularly on what I call the
French part of the WesternFront, that area beyond the
Somme.
And indeed, there is an episodecalled Beyond the Somme that
hopefully inspires people totake that journey beyond the
British sector of the WesternFront to see what was really the
(05:59):
bulk of that Western Front, tosee some of these amazing
places.
But if I'm going to look at kindof an overview and let's say
pick five locations that perhapsare not as well known where we
can find a connection to theFirst World War, we'll start in
Flanders, not near to Epe, butmuch nearer to the coast to the
(06:21):
north, along the old railwayline at Parvise.
Parvise was a village north ofYape, about halfway between Yape
and the coast itself, where thatsection of the Western Front,
held at different points byFrench troops, and then the
Belgian army ran across the flatlands there, the flat ground,
(06:42):
which had been flooded followingthe opening of the sluice gates
up on the Issa Canal, which hadflooded the Issa Plain and
flooded that wider area of NorthFlanders.
And on a flat landscape that wasflooded, any kind of rising
ground gave you some kind ofadvantage.
And trench systems, of course,could not be dug, not as such.
(07:05):
And what both sides in that areadid is they used elevations on
the terrain to occupy them asoutposts or static lines.
So the railway line at Pervise,north of the village, was on an
embankment, and that could thenbe defended.
And you can walk this.
The railway line was, I think,torn up in the 60s or 70s.
(07:26):
It doesn't run up to the coastanymore, it's a walkway, it's a
cycle path, it's a bridle way,and it takes you up onto that
bit of the landscape of theFirst World War in that area.
Now, Parvice was an importantvillage just behind the front
line, and there were two Britishnurses who worked there, Elsie
Knocker and Marie Chisholm.
(07:46):
They occupied the so-calledcellar house of Parvise, which
was a cellar in one of thebuildings there, where they had
their own kind of privatemedical unit really to help the
Belgian soldiers in that part ofthe front because the Belgian
army had lost a lot of itsmedical units in the early phase
of the First World War.
I mean, that is a subject foranother day for its own podcast.
(08:06):
But the area around thatvillage, when you walk up along
the railway line, you can seethe importance of even a slight
rise on an embankment like that,and more importantly, there's a
lot of remains of the defencesthere, concrete structures that
were built by Belgian soldiersfrom headquarters through to
firing positions, and as you getfurther up that railway line
(08:30):
towards Ramskapel, you'll findsome bigger and bigger concrete
structures.
And in some of the villages likeParvice, there are observation
towers which you can still visitas well.
So that is a really importantpart of the front.
That Belgian sector of theWestern Front, north of Eap,
where you will reach out andtouch quite a lot of the past on
(08:51):
that landscape, and it'sactively now preserved, which is
a really good thing.
Coming down to the Somme, whichmany people visit on a regular
basis, and they go to thetrenches at the Newfoundland
Park or book a tour to TiepvalWood.
What visitors do less of iscross the river Somme and go to
places like Soyer Corps, forexample, which is a village in
(09:13):
that flat Sonterre plain, wherein a wood there there is a
German trench system from 1916,which was actively preserved in
the 1990s, and where you canwalk around a section of the
battlefield where the Frenchfought the Germans in that 1916
battle, and that is managed bythe wider Somme Tourist
(09:36):
Authorities and the effectivelythe County Council, and it gives
us a good insight into thefighting in that part of the
Somme battlefield.
So that's on that northern partof the front that we would more
closely associate with theBritish and Commonwealth forces.
Once we get into that Frenchpart of the Western Front,
beyond the Somme, there are somany places to choose from,
(10:01):
really.
And if I was to say what are thebest places where we can find
really interesting, meaningful,and incredible trench systems
from the First World War.
I mean, there are lots of themif you care to look, but let's
look at three of those tocomplete a kind of list of five
with Parvice and Sawyer Corps,and then these next three in the
(10:22):
French sector.
One would be the Bois Brule,that is near to the village of
Marbot in the Saint Mielsalient, and this was where the
French met the Germans in thefighting at the beginning of the
First World War, where a trenchsystem was established in that
Bois Brule, and there were quitesubstantial attacks there in
1915, which resulted in heavylosses on both sides.
(10:45):
And when the front went staticand remained static for quite a
long time, the Germansreinforced their trench system
there with concrete positions,so you can go into that Bois
Brule and you can walk throughthose German trenches with
concreted fire steps, firingpositions, parapets.
I mean it is really quiteincredible to see.
(11:07):
And the wider wood beyond, ifyou follow the German line up
through that forested areathere, there are bunkers,
further trench systems, it justgoes on and on.
And there was a German hospitalbuilt into a bunker system there
that was later damaged.
That is also preserved.
There's some original Germancemeteries in that area as well,
(11:28):
where you can see some of theearly graves and even some unit
memorials as well.
So it is a place where you willliterally be tripping over the
past of the Great War on thatmodern landscape.
And also in the Bois Brule is asection of recreated French
trenches, and that's the imagethat I'm going to use for the
(11:49):
thumbnail for this episode,where the French army some years
ago went in there, the modernFrench army, and created a early
war system of French trenches togive the visitor an idea of what
the French positions in thatarea look like facing the German
ones that which have kind of notquite preserved themselves, but
because there's a lot ofconcrete there, they've lasted
(12:11):
much longer.
The French trenches, which wereshallower and more basic, have
kind of disappeared into thewooded area.
There are shallow depressions,but here they've actually
recreated part of the line.
So it's a place you can go to toliterally see both sides of the
battlefield.
And if we continue beyond thatSaint Miel salient, heading
towards Pont à Mousson, you'llcome to the Bois de la Pret.
(12:33):
And the Bois de la Pret, a nameprobably unfamiliar to most of
you, was again the scene ofheavy fighting at various points
during the First World War, anarea where there is a vast
French cemetery from the SecondWorld War full of prisoners of
war who were brought back fromGermany to be buried there, but
there are First World Warburials in the area too.
(12:55):
And once you go into the Bois dela Pret itself, there are some
original memorials, but thewhole wood there, almost the
forest, is literally full oftrench systems with original
barbed wire, barbed wirepickets, positions everywhere.
When I first went there in the1980s, the amount of ordnance
lying around was quitestaggering.
(13:17):
There were helmets and waterbottles and mess tins and all
this kind of stuff lying aroundin shell holes.
I mean, all of that hasgradually gone over those nearly
40 years.
But the site itself really isquite incredible, and there are
literally miles and miles andmiles of trenches in the Bois de
(13:39):
la Pret.
There are probably more trenchesin that one wooded area than on
the whole of the British sectorof the Western Front preserved
within wooded areas there.
So it just gives you an idea ofhow vast and how important and
how dense the trench systems arein some of these places.
And the Bois de la Pret issomething that we will
definitely be returning to, andI'm hoping to make a visit down
(14:02):
there to record some stuff forthe YouTube channel in the near
future.
But we're going to end towardsthe end of the Western Front
with our fifth and finallocation, Le Lange.
We're sticking with the subject,the theme of trenches, because
Le Lange is up on the VosgesMountains, where the trenches
there are cut into the rock.
It is really absolutelyincredible to go there and see
(14:26):
the views across thatmountainous region.
I went there once, and most ofthe high points around me were
covered in snow.
It's a position which was onGerman soil in 1940, and it was
one of the symbolisms, theimportance of this is the French
took the war to German soil byinvading that bit of
Alsace-Lorraine by attacking it,and French troops came up this
(14:50):
incredible slope towards theGermans on the high point at La
Lange, captured part of theGerman line.
Both sides shared one trench andthey gradually fought their way
over that trench system.
The whole area on the crest ofthat part of the Vosges
Mountains was then preserved,and you can walk through a
massive trench system withloopholes and firing positions
(15:13):
and communication trenches, andthere's a fantastic museum close
by which tells the story of theGreat War at La Lange and in
that wider area of the Vosges,that end, if you like, of the
Western Front.
So there's much more I could sayand many more places that I
could recommend, Ian, buthopefully that's given you a
(15:37):
little bit of a taster, a littlebit of an insight, and hopefully
prompted you to perhaps go andfind at least some of those
places on your next visit to theold front line.
So moving on to question numbertwo, and this one comes from Dan
Fettel.
It's kind of following on withthat theme of trenches.
Dan asks, I was wondering whathappened when an enemy took over
(15:58):
a trench, what changes wouldthey make in the immediate
aftermath to make it their own?
How would the support andcommunication trenches affect
their ability to defend it?
Now you make a really good pointhere, Dan, because when an
attack goes in and it'ssuccessful, the German
positions, if it's an attack bythe French or the British, or
(16:18):
the Allied positions, if it's anattack by the Germans, they
would be captured, and you'venow moved your line forward.
What do you do to the trench ortrenches that you've captured to
turn them into your newpositions?
And this is something thathappened many, many times on the
Western Front.
If we'd take just one area andfollowed that through with
(16:42):
trench maps, we would see howpart of a line would essentially
develop over the course of thefour years with the
establishment of the line, withlocalized attacks, then perhaps
a big attack, and the line wouldbe pushed back at times, then
following later offensives, itmight be pushed back again, and
there's this kind of pendulumeffect, the toing and throwing
(17:04):
across many of those first worldwar battlefields right along all
450 miles of the Western Front.
But in an attack, when a forcehas captured an enemy position,
they've captured a trench whichis then set up to face their
positions.
So the bit where the enemy wouldfire from, the parapet, is
(17:25):
facing towards their old lines.
So that has to change.
So the first thing that wouldhappen is they capture that
forward trench, that first linetrench, and then immediately set
about making it defensible byturning the parapet into the
parados, and the parados, theback of the trench, into the new
parapet, because that's nowfacing towards the next line of
(17:48):
enemy trenches where the enemywill no doubt still be.
So the attacking in the earlyphase of the war, the attacking
troops probably had thatresponsibility.
They'd go forward, capture atrench, and immediately work on
that trench to make itdefensible.
But as the war went on, it wasrealized that if you give one
(18:09):
unit all of the tasks, thechance of success is reduced.
So units would go forward withattacking troops to help them
with those kind of tasks.
So what you see, for example, onthe first day of the Somme is
British units going over the topwith elements from their
divisional pioneer battalion,often broken up into companies.
(18:29):
So four companies can be splitbetween four different attacking
units, and they go forward tohelp with this kind of work
because they're soldiers,they're infantry soldiers,
they're trained to fight, butthey're pioneers, so they're
carrying equipment with them,picks and shovels and other
engineering equipment that theycan then use to quickly turn
that captured enemy trench into,in this case of the first day of
(18:53):
the song, into a new Britishtrench which can then be
defended against thecounter-attacks.
So while the infantry havecaptured the trench and now
defending it, the pioneers havegone forward and they're helping
to make that a properlydefensible position.
And in some cases, fieldcompanies of the Royal Engineers
(19:13):
would also be used to do thesekind of tasks as well.
And there were three of thosefield companies in every
infantry division, so they werealways available to assist in
this way.
And I think what it shows is theimportance of tools.
We we looked at the kind ofweapons of trench warfare in one
episode, and it's not just aboutthe bombs and bullets and the
(19:33):
bayonets, tools are just asimportant.
If it's a war, a troglodite warwhere you're digging in, the
ability and the tools that helpyou dig in are just as
important.
So the shovel becomes just asimportant as a personal weapon,
especially in situations likethis where you're capturing
enemy ground and you're turningthose trenches into your own.
(19:57):
Now, if you've captured theenemy front line, as you've
mentioned in your question, Dan,ahead of you are the support
lines and the reserve lines andthe communication trenches.
So the next task, because you'veprobably got two former German
communication trenches, if it'sa British attack, coming into
the line that you've captured,you need to block those straight
away.
(20:17):
So a bomb block would becreated.
They get rubbish, detritus,sandbags, tear them off the
parapet and the parados, andcreate two blocks which they
would immediately post men to.
And some of the guys that Iinterviewed in the 80s were
involved in this kind of work.
One of them was a Lewis gunner,and his job was when they
captured one of these positionsto set his Lewis gun up, facing
(20:39):
straight down this communicationtrench on a slightly elevated
position.
The bomb block was created.
There were men behind itdefending it, but he had a clear
line of fire.
And when the Germans launched acounter-attack to try and take
that bomb block, knock it down,get back into their old trench,
he was able to lay downautomatic fire that stopped them
(21:00):
from doing it.
So what we see then are thesekind of mini battles taking
place as these positions arethen captured, turned around in
terms of the defence, and thenheld against enemy attacks.
And that then gives them astaging point to carry on this
attack.
Later on in the war, otherbattalions would have passed
(21:21):
through them in this leapfrogmanner to go for the next line,
and when they got to the supportline, the next line of trench,
they would have done exactly thesame thing, possibly had some
more pioneers or engineersattached to them to do those
kind of tasks, and the wholething would be repeated until
the whole line or whatever theobjective was captured.
And I recently, too, the podcastsupporters gave a talk about the
(21:43):
Battle of Messines, and that's aclassic example of this, where
the whole ridge is captured inone day effectively, and unit
after unit leapfrogs their waythrough, captures the ground,
and importantly, mostimportantly, holds it against
German counter-attacks to allowmore units to come up to give
them support to keep themomentum of the battle going,
(22:06):
and the exploitation of havingbroken through the enemy lines
can be maximized by doing thatkind of thing.
So it was something that wasdeveloped essentially in
reaction to what trench warfarewas.
It was fairly primitive in theearly years of the war, but it
got better as that trench wardeveloped, and both sides fought
battles within those trenchesand learned how to do this kind
(22:30):
of thing.
And one other final element ofit is once you've captured an
enemy position, behind you isthe old no man's land, and
beyond that is your originalfront line, and you need to join
that up.
So again, pioneers or engineersor perhaps men detailed from
your unit are then sent forwardto dig a new communication
trench across no man's land toconnect up your old front line
(22:53):
with the position that you'vecaptured.
Occasionally they would usetunnellers or mining and boring
companies to place a pushpipemine under that old no man's
land, blow a charge and createan instant, often shallow
trench, which could then beexpanded upon to create a new
communication trench linkingthese two positions.
(23:15):
So again, this was all part ofkind of perfecting the way of
warfare in that trench warfare,those trench battles, those
classic trench battles on theWestern Front during the Great
War.
And I hope, Dan, that's givenyou a little bit more insight
into how that kind of fightingtook place.
Moving on to question numberthree.
(23:37):
This one comes from John inKent.
John asks, a recent article inthe London Times newspaper
quoted research by Microsoft,which suggested that the role of
historians was one of the jobsmost at risk from artificial
intelligence.
In fact, it was listed as numbertwo under the threat below
interpreters and translators.
(23:59):
I'm playing devil's advocatehere as I'm a big fan and
subscriber to the old frontline,but what do you think it is that
makes the podcast AI proof?
Well, that is a really good andinteresting question, John.
Essentially, I guess the easyanswer is me.
I guess that I make it AI proofbecause AI hasn't lived my life,
(24:22):
it hasn't had my experiences, ithasn't spoken to all those
hundreds of veterans, walkedprobably the equivalent of
thousands of miles acrossbattlefields of the First World
War and done all that researchin dark and dusty archives and
just about everywhere else thatI've been.
But that is kind of an easyresponse, really.
(24:44):
I think that the important thingis to understand that artificial
intelligence is here to stay.
We can't turn back the clock onthat, but we need to be wary of
it.
And I've been a very earlyadopter of technology from the
very beginning.
I had a computer in 1979, and Ilearned how to program and code,
(25:04):
and I've used technology forhistorical research ever since.
I remember when I was atuniversity, they had some BBC
computers which you could rundatabases on, and I put in
details of Royal Sussex men andwas able to pull out all kinds
of information showing trends incasualties and how certain
battles affected Sussex in acertain way.
(25:25):
I put in all my research on theSouth Downs, and that enabled me
to come up with the figures forhow many towns and villages in
Sussex were directly affected bythe losses at the attack on the
boarshead on the 30th of June1916, for example.
So I've used that kind oftechnology for a very, very long
time, and then computers, PCs,Mac, and everything else came
(25:46):
along, and all of this helps.
And look at how much material isout there for us to consult
online now compared to you knowwhen I first started, which was
pretty much all archive-relatedresearch, it's so much easier
now.
Now, AI, and I looked at it fromthe very, very beginning when it
first came in, does potentiallyhave some use because it can
(26:08):
again shortcut this kind ofthing to enable us to get to an
answer and to discover andunderstand things perhaps a lot
quicker.
But what I realize in the earlydays of AI is it was incredibly
unreliable and inaccuratebecause it was only based on a
small amount of evidence.
So if you asked it things, itwould often get things wrong,
(26:31):
and it continues to get thingswrong because again, its
knowledge base, while that'sgrown, is still only limited.
It doesn't have access to wardiaries, it doesn't have access
to transcripts, certainly not atthe moment, transcripts of
podcasts, for example, so itcan't crawl those and get
information, and there's allkinds of other things that it
(26:51):
doesn't have access to.
So what it can tell you is onlyof limited use, and one thing
that you'll see cited in many ofthe responses to AI-generated
material is things likeWikipedia.
Now, Wikipedia is a lot betterthan it used to be, but it still
(27:12):
contains a lot of errors.
So I think we have to be prettycautious about this.
And one of the things that I dida while ago, I was looking at it
from the kind of work that I doin my 9-5 job, which is running
ledger battlefield tours.
I thought, wonder what it woulddo if I asked it to develop and
design a new battlefield tour.
(27:33):
So I asked it, I asked it todesign a tour looking at the
significant places at EAP andFlanders in the First World War.
And because it didn't reallyunderstand where locations were,
part of its answer took it downto the Somme and Arras, and it
didn't understand that they hadno connection to EAP or
Flanders.
So that was an interesting partof the response.
But one of the things that itcame up, it recommended
(27:55):
Langamark as a location to goto, and it made reference to the
Langamark massacre of Britishsoldiers in 1918.
So I asked it, What is this?
and it came back that on thewalls of the memorial
surrounding the Camaradengramand the mass grave at Langamark
was the names of two Britishsoldiers, and it believed, it it
(28:19):
gave this as fact, that they hadbeen part of a massacre of
British soldiers there innineteen eighteen.
So I asked it for more details,it couldn't really pull out much
more than that, except that thiswas an incident during the
German offensive of Aprilnineteen eighteen, when German
troops had swept across thatregion, taken British soldiers
(28:40):
prisoner, and then shot them outof hand.
Now the two men that itreferenced had not even died in
April nineteen eighteen, theydied much later in the war.
They'd once been buried incemeteries near to the Belgian
city of Tournay, so quite someway from Eap, so they'd not been
originally buried at Langamark,so they couldn't be part of any
Langamark massacre, and when Iasked AI what was its sources
(29:05):
for this Langamark massacre, itcouldn't really tell me.
Now at the time I just put thatdown to a misreading of some
facts, but I've seen cases ofthings unconnected to military
history or history full stopwhere AI has kind of invented
things, which is a worryingaspect of its implementation,
(29:26):
and it's been challenged on thisand then admitted that it had
made these things up.
So again, this is all part ofbeing cautious about the use of
AI.
But going to the heart of yourquestion here, John, saying that
historians are at risk from AI,I guess on one level they are.
(29:47):
There's huge amounts of AIgenerated material already on
YouTube to do with the first andthe second world war, much of it
inaccurate, much of it really oflittle use, but it's consumed in
vast amounts.
And earns the creators a lot ofmoney, and it becomes a kind of
self-fulfilling prophecy becauseof that.
(30:07):
And I think it's important thathuman historians like me
challenge this on a regularbasis.
I saw on Twitter the other daysomeone trailing on, I think
near to Remembrance Sunday, amovie that they'd made about the
First World War.
It was a fictitious story, ithad a kind of fantasy element to
it, but it was a very poordepiction of the history and the
(30:32):
subject of the First World War,but very quickly could be
accepted as fact.
So it's important to challengethat, as I did, as others did,
and I think that that is reallyimportant to do so.
Now, one of the things that I dosee on a positive side as a
trend on YouTube at the momentis a desire from the audience of
(30:53):
the people who watch YouTube forauthenticity.
They're kind of already gettingfed up with AI generated
material and they want realpeople.
Now I'm not any kind of TV staror any kind of glamorous-looking
individual.
I'm a middle-aged guy, but Iknow my subject.
And what I've found with myYouTube channel is people
(31:15):
respond to me just standing in afield or walking down a lane or
coming through a trench andtelling them the story of where
I am, what it is, how it fitsinto the history of the Great
War.
And that is encouraging becauseit's saying that an audience
doesn't want this generatedmaterial, artificially generated
(31:36):
material, it wants the authenticreal deal.
And what I can bring to it, ofcourse, is all those things that
I've done.
The archaeology that I've seen,the places that I've visited,
the people that I've met onthose journeys, and then going
back to the veterans, all of thestories that I can tell that
they told me that often link usto these locations that we visit
(31:59):
on these battlefields.
And perhaps a hundred years fromnow, maybe not even a hundred,
perhaps AI might be able toreplicate all of that, I don't
know.
But I certainly think for now,authenticity and the human
connection to the subject ofsomething like warfare, which is
about humans, which is aboutordinary men and women in the
(32:22):
extraordinary circumstances ofconflict.
I think that an audience willalways want that authentic voice
telling them those stories.
They might be momentarilyentertained by fancy graphics
and little short video clips,but most people, if they're
serious about a subject, want totake that one step or more
(32:45):
further, and I guess that'swhere the human element, the
human delivery of history, inthis case Great War history,
that's where it comes to thefore.
And long, long may thatcontinue.
So thanks for that question,John.
I'm sure AI and the wholesubject of AI and what it can do
(33:05):
for us, because it can do thingsfor us.
For example, I've used it toread French handwriting in war
diaries.
It's really difficult, even forme as a French speaker, to read
some of that original materialthat's in French war diaries
from the period of the FirstWorld War.
But AI can learn how to read it,it can then transcribe it into
digital text, and then it cantranslate it for you, of course,
(33:28):
but you can then do your owntranslation of it as well.
So there are uses of it, but wehave to, I think, be wary of it
and be wary of it not gettingout of control in terms of what
the narrative of the First WorldWar or any subject that it
chooses to explain, we mustalways, I think, challenge what
we see, because challenging andasking questions is all part of
(33:53):
what history really is.
So moving on to our fourth andfinal question in this special
fortieth QA episode, we've got aquestion from Angus Cole on a
subject that I've often receivedquestions about, and it's about
time I guess that I answered oneof these, and that's about
(34:13):
generalship in the First WorldWar.
So Angus Cole asks, What areyour thoughts on the generals in
Allied command, both British andFrench, and the roles that they
played in the Great War?
Were they right to be vilifiedand viewed as incompetent and
thus responsible for the wasteof so many lives, or were they
strategists trying everythingpossible to bring the war to a
(34:36):
speedy conclusion with as fewcasualties as possible?
Well, this is a great questionthat generalship command in the
First World War is perhaps oneof the most controversial
subjects of the First World War,and one that kind of polarizes
people in all kinds of ways, andsomething that has evolved and
(34:57):
re-evolved and will no doubtre-evolve again as time goes on.
And going back to our previousquestion, who knows what AI
might contribute or not to thissubject.
But it really deserves its ownpodcast.
I mean, I know I say this aboutso many questions in the QA's,
but this one does.
Generalship is is long overdueas a subject for us to cover in
(35:19):
the podcast, and we will get tothat.
But in terms of your question,Angus, I think the thing, as
I've often said on this podcastto remember, is that in 1914
everybody was prepared for war,just not the war that they found
themselves fighting very, veryquickly.
They go to war in 1914 for a warof movement, for a rapid war, a
(35:43):
war that they'd trained for,with swift movement of infantry,
with cavalry playing a role,with railways taking troops to
locations to fight battles invast open plains, and all of
that happens in the early monthsof the First World War, but very
quickly, through a whole seriesof circumstances, the war
(36:03):
becomes static, and both sidesin the west and in the east dig
in very, very quickly indeed,and it becomes this vast siege
war, static war on a massive,unprecedented scale.
And the generals who have beentrained for the kind of war that
they'd gone to fight in 1914were now faced with a conflict
(36:27):
that they really didn't trulyunderstand.
Some understood it more thanothers, others for a long time
refused to understand it, tryingto bring back elements of the
old style of warfare.
But it was clear that this wasnot only a new century, the
early years of a new century,but the early years of a new way
(36:47):
of warfare, a modern war, anindustrial war with the capacity
to create armaments andequipment on an industrial
scale, move industrial scalearmies around using industry and
railways, and then use theweapons created by that industry
to kill and wound people, injurepeople on an industrial scale as
(37:11):
well.
And this was something that alot of senior commanders on all
sides really struggled to gettheir heads round, and it took
those early years of the war,once the war went static, and
both sides had attempts to tryand break that static nature.
The British with attacks on thenorthern part of the Western
(37:32):
Front in early 1915, the Frenchat different parts on their
line, the Germans using gas atEpe in April 1915.
All of these were attempts totry and end that static war.
And one of the things that theyoften found difficult was the
exploitation of a breakthrough.
Breakthroughs could be achieved,but men were often in the wrong
(37:56):
place to exploit that.
Reserves were too far back.
There were situations in whichtroops did much better than
expected, but those could notbe, those situations could not
be exploited because thegreatest issue that these men
had, not from just thebeginning, but throughout the
entire war, even when they gotmuch better at this, was command
(38:17):
and control.
Without radio, without theability to talk as a commander
directly to your troops in thefield, it was really difficult
to coordinate things.
They were fighting a modern warwith modern weapons, often with
modern approaches, but withantiquated communication
systems, fixed communications,flags, lamps, all of this kind
(38:41):
of stuff, not radio sets.
There was no ability to transmitand receive voice.
So that really hampered theability of commanders to
properly do their job.
And while we see the developmentof war fighting on the Western
Front carry on from the battlesof 1915, in the case of the
(39:03):
British, on into the experienceon the Somme through to the
fighting on the Hindenburg lineand at Messines and at
Passchendale and at Combray, andlessons are learned again and
again and again.
There is a cost to thatlearning, and the cost is always
in human lives.
At the time, this was consideredacceptable.
(39:26):
It wasn't that people weresomehow cold to these losses,
indifferent to them.
Far from it.
When you read the papers ofsenior commanders, they're
mindful of these losses.
The losses affect them veryoften greatly, and you see that
in their diaries and in theirletters.
But it was considered acceptablein the scale of the kind of
(39:47):
conflict they were fighting.
More than a century on from it,we see it as less acceptable.
One of the legacies, I guess, ofthe First World War is the wider
public's inability to accept theconsequences of conflict, which
are casualties.
That's something that westruggle with in the modern
world.
And it's not that the value oflife was less a hundred years
(40:09):
ago, far from it.
It is just that that attitude, Iguess, came out of the
experience of the Great War,with that million dead of
Britain and the Empire and allthe other nations that suffered
so terribly, that created alegacy that made future
commanders think about thoselosses in a different way.
But what you clearly see is anarmy that goes to war prepared
(40:31):
for war, finds itself fighting avery different kind of war,
learns from that, adapts to it,and in the case of British and
Empire troops and the Frenchfighting alongside us, adapts to
enable victory in that finalphase of the First World War.
They put those lessons that arelearned with such high losses
(40:52):
and such high cost to practicaluse on the battlefield, and in
the case of the British Army,create a truly modern army that
fights that battle at Amiens,for example, in 1918, and then
fights its way through theHindenburg line and beyond to
the open warfare of the last fewweeks of the conflict.
(41:13):
And in terms, and I'm not goingto name individual generals
because that really is a podcastin its own right, but in terms
of high command, the bestgenerals, in my view, are the
ones that enable people beneaththem who have combat experience,
who have seen and taken part inbattles, they enable them to
come up with the ideas and theapproaches and the tactics and
(41:35):
the weaponry required to createvictory, to create the ability
to smash an enemy line, breakthrough it, and exploit that
breakthrough and end theconflict.
The best commanders enable thosemen.
The men at the very top don'talways come up with these ideas
or these war-winning approaches,but the best ones enable those
(41:59):
beneath them who have some ideato develop those ideas, and as
commanders they bring all thattogether into a unified plan.
It's a complex subject.
There's lots of books that willtell you that commanders of the
Great War were butchers andbunglers on one side and some of
the most incredible commandersthat have ever existed on the
(42:20):
other side, and there's a ton ofmaterial out there from Alan
Clark's ridiculous book from the1960s, The Donkeys, through to
the work of people likeProfessor Gary Sheffield and my
old mentor John Terrain, whowrote Haig the Educated Soldier
back in the 60s, I think, whichkind of pioneered a new view of
the First World War during atime when popular culture, like
(42:44):
Oh What a Lovely War, was stillpushing that agenda of butchers
and bunglers and waste and menbeing sent to pointless and
futile deaths.
And that is something that stillis very, very strong to this
day, and many will never acceptthat commanders like Haig or
Rawlinson or Goff were goodcommanders.
(43:04):
I mean it is an endless, endlessdebate, but there's plenty of
material out there for you toget your teeth into, and it's a
subject that we will definitelyreturn to in the main podcast
somewhere down the line.
So with that, fantasticquestion.
We've gone on slightly longerthan usual, but it is a 40th
(43:24):
episode.
I hope you found this week'sQA's of interest.
Thanks to all of you who'vesubmitted questions for this
episode and for all of theprevious episodes, and we've got
plenty of material sitting inthe inbox waiting to be answered
over the course of the next fewmonths.
But keep those questions comingin.
I absolutely love receivingthem, and you can send them in
(43:47):
via email or the Discord server,and there's links to both of
those in the show notes for thisepisode, and there's a few other
ways of doing it as well.
So thanks for those, and untilwe meet again for some more QAs
here on the Old Frontline.
(44:09):
You've been listening to anepisode of the Old Frontline
with me, Military Historian PaulReed.
You can follow me on Twitter atSomcore, you can follow the
podcast at OldFrontline Pod.
Check out the website atoldfrontline.co.uk where you'll
find lots of podcast extras andphotographs and links to books
that are mentioned in thepodcast.
(44:30):
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buymea coffee atbuymeacoffee.com slash
oldfrontline.
Links to all of these are on ourwebsites.
Thanks for listening, and we'llsee you again soon.
Incredibly, this is our fortieth question and answer
episode.
Forty episodes of the QA'sstaggering.
It's something that I startedafter a suggestion from a
regular listener who lives inTunbridge Worlds, who spoke to a
friend of mine and mentionedthat in some of the other
podcasts that they listened to,unconnected to the First World
(00:32):
War, they had regular Q ⁇ Asessions, and would that be
something that I'd consider?
And I wasn't really sure how itwould be received, but I was
already getting a lot ofquestions which I was answering
by email, and this is somethingthat happens on battlefield
doors, obviously not by emailbecause the people are sitting
(00:54):
in a coach with me, someone atthe front asks a question, and
the answer probably will be ofinterest to a wider audience.
So I then get on the microphoneand I talk to everyone.
And this is kind of the samething, but to a much bigger
audience through the podcastitself.
But the QA episodes have becomeincredibly popular.
(01:16):
Some of our highest peakingepisodes in terms of listener
figures have been QA episodes.
So I think that what people likeis having essentially four
different elements of Great Warhistory in one episode.
A lot of diverse topics thatprobably wouldn't necessarily
(01:36):
make an episode in their ownright, but it gives us a chance
to talk about those subjects.
And I must say that the qualityand diverse nature of the
questions that you've sent inare really what makes these
episodes.
So thank you for that.
Thank you for helping me reachthis milestone of 40 QA
(01:57):
episodes, and please, pleasekeep those questions coming.
And this week as well has been aweek in which the BBC on BBC 4
have repeated my very firsttelevision programme that I made
for mainstream television, andthat was the Forgotten
Battlefield, which was filmed inthe summer of 2001 following the
work of the diggers and thenbroadcast the following March.
(02:20):
And following the BBC setting upa YouTube channel and putting
extracts from some of theirfactual programmes on there
relating to history, a clip ofForgotten Battlefield got 1.7
million downloads in just a fewweeks.
So that prompted the BBC toengage in a conversation about
(02:42):
Forgotten Battlefield and themshowing, re-showing that episode
from 2002, which has not been onmainstream television since I
think about 2007.
It's currently, as I broadcastthis in mid-November, it's still
on iPlayer, and I think it isfor about a month.
So if you haven't already had achance to check it out, I would
(03:04):
recommend it.
It's an archaeology programshowing the archaeology of the
battlefields at Eap, that areauncovered by the diggers all
those years ago, and showingthings that really have not been
seen before or since, andprobably will not be seen in
that kind of documentary again.
And for me personally, it wasincredible to kind of think back
(03:27):
over all those years andremember what I saw there.
And not long after it wasrebroadcast last week, I nipped
over to EAP with John HayesFisher, who's the producer
director of that program, whowe've worked together for many
years in other televisionprojects and are now working
together on the Old FrontlineYouTube channel.
And we popped over on one of ourregular day trips and we went to
(03:50):
EAP and we revisited theForgotten Battlefield and stood
at some of the graves of thosethat the diggers recovered,
including the two Royal Welshfusiliers.
So it felt as if that wholestory really had kind of come
full circle.
Anyway, that's a bit of catch upon the podcast.
Now let's move on to in thisspecial fortieth episode, let's
(04:11):
move on to this week'squestions.
Question number one comes fromIan Henley.
Ian asks I once went to a sitemaybe in the Reims region called
the Mandamassage, an amazinglypreserved hillside trench system
that could have been abandonedyesterday.
Do you have a list of top sitesthat perhaps are overlooked for
(04:31):
a visitor?
I'm always trying to findsomething I've not visited
before, so on our last trip wewent into the trench system in
Thieved Val Wood.
Well thanks for this one Ian.
It's always good to start a Q⁇ A session with something
relating to the battlefieldsthemselves and especially this
fortieth episode.
And you've raised a reallyinteresting point there about
(04:52):
sites where we can find thearchaeology of the Great War,
the remains of the Great War,and what that then tells us
about the history of the GreatWar.
Where can we find those kind ofsites beyond the very well-known
ones?
And even on that British sectorof the Western Front, you've
mentioned Thief Val Wood, whichyou have to visit by
appointments with a guide fromthe Ulster Tower who takes you
(05:17):
into the reconstructed trenchsystem on the edge of the wood,
and you see mortar pits anddugout entrances.
It's a fantastic visit, and I'mglad you got a chance to go in
there.
And if any of you are over onthe Somme battlefields, go to
the Ulster Tower, make thatappointment, join the tour and
take a visit into the wood.
It is absolutely fascinating todo so.
(05:39):
But in terms of some othersites, I've looked at this in a
few podcast episodes,particularly on what I call the
French part of the WesternFront, that area beyond the
Somme.
And indeed, there is an episodecalled Beyond the Somme that
hopefully inspires people totake that journey beyond the
British sector of the WesternFront to see what was really the
(05:59):
bulk of that Western Front, tosee some of these amazing
places.
But if I'm going to look at kindof an overview and let's say
pick five locations that perhapsare not as well known where we
can find a connection to theFirst World War, we'll start in
Flanders, not near to Epe, butmuch nearer to the coast to the
(06:21):
north, along the old railwayline at Parvise.
Parvise was a village north ofYape, about halfway between Yape
and the coast itself, where thatsection of the Western Front,
held at different points byFrench troops, and then the
Belgian army ran across the flatlands there, the flat ground,
(06:42):
which had been flooded followingthe opening of the sluice gates
up on the Issa Canal, which hadflooded the Issa Plain and
flooded that wider area of NorthFlanders.
And on a flat landscape that wasflooded, any kind of rising
ground gave you some kind ofadvantage.
And trench systems, of course,could not be dug, not as such.
(07:05):
And what both sides in that areadid is they used elevations on
the terrain to occupy them asoutposts or static lines.
So the railway line at Pervise,north of the village, was on an
embankment, and that could thenbe defended.
And you can walk this.
The railway line was, I think,torn up in the 60s or 70s.
(07:26):
It doesn't run up to the coastanymore, it's a walkway, it's a
cycle path, it's a bridle way,and it takes you up onto that
bit of the landscape of theFirst World War in that area.
Now, Parvice was an importantvillage just behind the front
line, and there were two Britishnurses who worked there, Elsie
Knocker and Marie Chisholm.
(07:46):
They occupied the so-calledcellar house of Parvise, which
was a cellar in one of thebuildings there, where they had
their own kind of privatemedical unit really to help the
Belgian soldiers in that part ofthe front because the Belgian
army had lost a lot of itsmedical units in the early phase
of the First World War.
I mean, that is a subject foranother day for its own podcast.
(08:06):
But the area around thatvillage, when you walk up along
the railway line, you can seethe importance of even a slight
rise on an embankment like that,and more importantly, there's a
lot of remains of the defencesthere, concrete structures that
were built by Belgian soldiersfrom headquarters through to
firing positions, and as you getfurther up that railway line
(08:30):
towards Ramskapel, you'll findsome bigger and bigger concrete
structures.
And in some of the villages likeParvice, there are observation
towers which you can still visitas well.
So that is a really importantpart of the front.
That Belgian sector of theWestern Front, north of Eap,
where you will reach out andtouch quite a lot of the past on
(08:51):
that landscape, and it'sactively now preserved, which is
a really good thing.
Coming down to the Somme, whichmany people visit on a regular
basis, and they go to thetrenches at the Newfoundland
Park or book a tour to TiepvalWood.
What visitors do less of iscross the river Somme and go to
places like Soyer Corps, forexample, which is a village in
(09:13):
that flat Sonterre plain, wherein a wood there there is a
German trench system from 1916,which was actively preserved in
the 1990s, and where you canwalk around a section of the
battlefield where the Frenchfought the Germans in that 1916
battle, and that is managed bythe wider Somme Tourist
(09:36):
Authorities and the effectivelythe County Council, and it gives
us a good insight into thefighting in that part of the
Somme battlefield.
So that's on that northern partof the front that we would more
closely associate with theBritish and Commonwealth forces.
Once we get into that Frenchpart of the Western Front,
beyond the Somme, there are somany places to choose from,
(10:01):
really.
And if I was to say what are thebest places where we can find
really interesting, meaningful,and incredible trench systems
from the First World War.
I mean, there are lots of themif you care to look, but let's
look at three of those tocomplete a kind of list of five
with Parvice and Sawyer Corps,and then these next three in the
(10:22):
French sector.
One would be the Bois Brule,that is near to the village of
Marbot in the Saint Mielsalient, and this was where the
French met the Germans in thefighting at the beginning of the
First World War, where a trenchsystem was established in that
Bois Brule, and there were quitesubstantial attacks there in
1915, which resulted in heavylosses on both sides.
(10:45):
And when the front went staticand remained static for quite a
long time, the Germansreinforced their trench system
there with concrete positions,so you can go into that Bois
Brule and you can walk throughthose German trenches with
concreted fire steps, firingpositions, parapets.
I mean it is really quiteincredible to see.
(11:07):
And the wider wood beyond, ifyou follow the German line up
through that forested areathere, there are bunkers,
further trench systems, it justgoes on and on.
And there was a German hospitalbuilt into a bunker system there
that was later damaged.
That is also preserved.
There's some original Germancemeteries in that area as well,
(11:28):
where you can see some of theearly graves and even some unit
memorials as well.
So it is a place where you willliterally be tripping over the
past of the Great War on thatmodern landscape.
And also in the Bois Brule is asection of recreated French
trenches, and that's the imagethat I'm going to use for the
(11:49):
thumbnail for this episode,where the French army some years
ago went in there, the modernFrench army, and created a early
war system of French trenches togive the visitor an idea of what
the French positions in thatarea look like facing the German
ones that which have kind of notquite preserved themselves, but
because there's a lot ofconcrete there, they've lasted
(12:11):
much longer.
The French trenches, which wereshallower and more basic, have
kind of disappeared into thewooded area.
There are shallow depressions,but here they've actually
recreated part of the line.
So it's a place you can go to toliterally see both sides of the
battlefield.
And if we continue beyond thatSaint Miel salient, heading
towards Pont à Mousson, you'llcome to the Bois de la Pret.
(12:33):
And the Bois de la Pret, a nameprobably unfamiliar to most of
you, was again the scene ofheavy fighting at various points
during the First World War, anarea where there is a vast
French cemetery from the SecondWorld War full of prisoners of
war who were brought back fromGermany to be buried there, but
there are First World Warburials in the area too.
(12:55):
And once you go into the Bois dela Pret itself, there are some
original memorials, but thewhole wood there, almost the
forest, is literally full oftrench systems with original
barbed wire, barbed wirepickets, positions everywhere.
When I first went there in the1980s, the amount of ordnance
lying around was quitestaggering.
(13:17):
There were helmets and waterbottles and mess tins and all
this kind of stuff lying aroundin shell holes.
I mean, all of that hasgradually gone over those nearly
40 years.
But the site itself really isquite incredible, and there are
literally miles and miles andmiles of trenches in the Bois de
(13:39):
la Pret.
There are probably more trenchesin that one wooded area than on
the whole of the British sectorof the Western Front preserved
within wooded areas there.
So it just gives you an idea ofhow vast and how important and
how dense the trench systems arein some of these places.
And the Bois de la Pret issomething that we will
definitely be returning to, andI'm hoping to make a visit down
(14:02):
there to record some stuff forthe YouTube channel in the near
future.
But we're going to end towardsthe end of the Western Front
with our fifth and finallocation, Le Lange.
We're sticking with the subject,the theme of trenches, because
Le Lange is up on the VosgesMountains, where the trenches
there are cut into the rock.
It is really absolutelyincredible to go there and see
(14:26):
the views across thatmountainous region.
I went there once, and most ofthe high points around me were
covered in snow.
It's a position which was onGerman soil in 1940, and it was
one of the symbolisms, theimportance of this is the French
took the war to German soil byinvading that bit of
Alsace-Lorraine by attacking it,and French troops came up this
(14:50):
incredible slope towards theGermans on the high point at La
Lange, captured part of theGerman line.
Both sides shared one trench andthey gradually fought their way
over that trench system.
The whole area on the crest ofthat part of the Vosges
Mountains was then preserved,and you can walk through a
massive trench system withloopholes and firing positions
(15:13):
and communication trenches, andthere's a fantastic museum close
by which tells the story of theGreat War at La Lange and in
that wider area of the Vosges,that end, if you like, of the
Western Front.
So there's much more I could sayand many more places that I
could recommend, Ian, buthopefully that's given you a
(15:37):
little bit of a taster, a littlebit of an insight, and hopefully
prompted you to perhaps go andfind at least some of those
places on your next visit to theold front line.
So moving on to question numbertwo, and this one comes from Dan
Fettel.
It's kind of following on withthat theme of trenches.
Dan asks, I was wondering whathappened when an enemy took over
(15:58):
a trench, what changes wouldthey make in the immediate
aftermath to make it their own?
How would the support andcommunication trenches affect
their ability to defend it?
Now you make a really good pointhere, Dan, because when an
attack goes in and it'ssuccessful, the German
positions, if it's an attack bythe French or the British, or
(16:18):
the Allied positions, if it's anattack by the Germans, they
would be captured, and you'venow moved your line forward.
What do you do to the trench ortrenches that you've captured to
turn them into your newpositions?
And this is something thathappened many, many times on the
Western Front.
If we'd take just one area andfollowed that through with
(16:42):
trench maps, we would see howpart of a line would essentially
develop over the course of thefour years with the
establishment of the line, withlocalized attacks, then perhaps
a big attack, and the line wouldbe pushed back at times, then
following later offensives, itmight be pushed back again, and
there's this kind of pendulumeffect, the toing and throwing
(17:04):
across many of those first worldwar battlefields right along all
450 miles of the Western Front.
But in an attack, when a forcehas captured an enemy position,
they've captured a trench whichis then set up to face their
positions.
So the bit where the enemy wouldfire from, the parapet, is
(17:25):
facing towards their old lines.
So that has to change.
So the first thing that wouldhappen is they capture that
forward trench, that first linetrench, and then immediately set
about making it defensible byturning the parapet into the
parados, and the parados, theback of the trench, into the new
parapet, because that's nowfacing towards the next line of
(17:48):
enemy trenches where the enemywill no doubt still be.
So the attacking in the earlyphase of the war, the attacking
troops probably had thatresponsibility.
They'd go forward, capture atrench, and immediately work on
that trench to make itdefensible.
But as the war went on, it wasrealized that if you give one
(18:09):
unit all of the tasks, thechance of success is reduced.
So units would go forward withattacking troops to help them
with those kind of tasks.
So what you see, for example, onthe first day of the Somme is
British units going over the topwith elements from their
divisional pioneer battalion,often broken up into companies.
(18:29):
So four companies can be splitbetween four different attacking
units, and they go forward tohelp with this kind of work
because they're soldiers,they're infantry soldiers,
they're trained to fight, butthey're pioneers, so they're
carrying equipment with them,picks and shovels and other
engineering equipment that theycan then use to quickly turn
that captured enemy trench into,in this case of the first day of
(18:53):
the song, into a new Britishtrench which can then be
defended against thecounter-attacks.
So while the infantry havecaptured the trench and now
defending it, the pioneers havegone forward and they're helping
to make that a properlydefensible position.
And in some cases, fieldcompanies of the Royal Engineers
(19:13):
would also be used to do thesekind of tasks as well.
And there were three of thosefield companies in every
infantry division, so they werealways available to assist in
this way.
And I think what it shows is theimportance of tools.
We we looked at the kind ofweapons of trench warfare in one
episode, and it's not just aboutthe bombs and bullets and the
(19:33):
bayonets, tools are just asimportant.
If it's a war, a troglodite warwhere you're digging in, the
ability and the tools that helpyou dig in are just as
important.
So the shovel becomes just asimportant as a personal weapon,
especially in situations likethis where you're capturing
enemy ground and you're turningthose trenches into your own.
(19:57):
Now, if you've captured theenemy front line, as you've
mentioned in your question, Dan,ahead of you are the support
lines and the reserve lines andthe communication trenches.
So the next task, because you'veprobably got two former German
communication trenches, if it'sa British attack, coming into
the line that you've captured,you need to block those straight
away.
(20:17):
So a bomb block would becreated.
They get rubbish, detritus,sandbags, tear them off the
parapet and the parados, andcreate two blocks which they
would immediately post men to.
And some of the guys that Iinterviewed in the 80s were
involved in this kind of work.
One of them was a Lewis gunner,and his job was when they
captured one of these positionsto set his Lewis gun up, facing
(20:39):
straight down this communicationtrench on a slightly elevated
position.
The bomb block was created.
There were men behind itdefending it, but he had a clear
line of fire.
And when the Germans launched acounter-attack to try and take
that bomb block, knock it down,get back into their old trench,
he was able to lay downautomatic fire that stopped them
(21:00):
from doing it.
So what we see then are thesekind of mini battles taking
place as these positions arethen captured, turned around in
terms of the defence, and thenheld against enemy attacks.
And that then gives them astaging point to carry on this
attack.
Later on in the war, otherbattalions would have passed
(21:21):
through them in this leapfrogmanner to go for the next line,
and when they got to the supportline, the next line of trench,
they would have done exactly thesame thing, possibly had some
more pioneers or engineersattached to them to do those
kind of tasks, and the wholething would be repeated until
the whole line or whatever theobjective was captured.
And I recently, too, the podcastsupporters gave a talk about the
(21:43):
Battle of Messines, and that's aclassic example of this, where
the whole ridge is captured inone day effectively, and unit
after unit leapfrogs their waythrough, captures the ground,
and importantly, mostimportantly, holds it against
German counter-attacks to allowmore units to come up to give
them support to keep themomentum of the battle going,
(22:06):
and the exploitation of havingbroken through the enemy lines
can be maximized by doing thatkind of thing.
So it was something that wasdeveloped essentially in
reaction to what trench warfarewas.
It was fairly primitive in theearly years of the war, but it
got better as that trench wardeveloped, and both sides fought
battles within those trenchesand learned how to do this kind
(22:30):
of thing.
And one other final element ofit is once you've captured an
enemy position, behind you isthe old no man's land, and
beyond that is your originalfront line, and you need to join
that up.
So again, pioneers or engineersor perhaps men detailed from
your unit are then sent forwardto dig a new communication
trench across no man's land toconnect up your old front line
(22:53):
with the position that you'vecaptured.
Occasionally they would usetunnellers or mining and boring
companies to place a pushpipemine under that old no man's
land, blow a charge and createan instant, often shallow
trench, which could then beexpanded upon to create a new
communication trench linkingthese two positions.
(23:15):
So again, this was all part ofkind of perfecting the way of
warfare in that trench warfare,those trench battles, those
classic trench battles on theWestern Front during the Great
War.
And I hope, Dan, that's givenyou a little bit more insight
into how that kind of fightingtook place.
Moving on to question numberthree.
(23:37):
This one comes from John inKent.
John asks, a recent article inthe London Times newspaper
quoted research by Microsoft,which suggested that the role of
historians was one of the jobsmost at risk from artificial
intelligence.
In fact, it was listed as numbertwo under the threat below
interpreters and translators.
(23:59):
I'm playing devil's advocatehere as I'm a big fan and
subscriber to the old frontline,but what do you think it is that
makes the podcast AI proof?
Well, that is a really good andinteresting question, John.
Essentially, I guess the easyanswer is me.
I guess that I make it AI proofbecause AI hasn't lived my life,
(24:22):
it hasn't had my experiences, ithasn't spoken to all those
hundreds of veterans, walkedprobably the equivalent of
thousands of miles acrossbattlefields of the First World
War and done all that researchin dark and dusty archives and
just about everywhere else thatI've been.
But that is kind of an easyresponse, really.
(24:44):
I think that the important thingis to understand that artificial
intelligence is here to stay.
We can't turn back the clock onthat, but we need to be wary of
it.
And I've been a very earlyadopter of technology from the
very beginning.
I had a computer in 1979, and Ilearned how to program and code,
(25:04):
and I've used technology forhistorical research ever since.
I remember when I was atuniversity, they had some BBC
computers which you could rundatabases on, and I put in
details of Royal Sussex men andwas able to pull out all kinds
of information showing trends incasualties and how certain
battles affected Sussex in acertain way.
(25:25):
I put in all my research on theSouth Downs, and that enabled me
to come up with the figures forhow many towns and villages in
Sussex were directly affected bythe losses at the attack on the
boarshead on the 30th of June1916, for example.
So I've used that kind oftechnology for a very, very long
time, and then computers, PCs,Mac, and everything else came
(25:46):
along, and all of this helps.
And look at how much material isout there for us to consult
online now compared to you knowwhen I first started, which was
pretty much all archive-relatedresearch, it's so much easier
now.
Now, AI, and I looked at it fromthe very, very beginning when it
first came in, does potentiallyhave some use because it can
(26:08):
again shortcut this kind ofthing to enable us to get to an
answer and to discover andunderstand things perhaps a lot
quicker.
But what I realize in the earlydays of AI is it was incredibly
unreliable and inaccuratebecause it was only based on a
small amount of evidence.
So if you asked it things, itwould often get things wrong,
(26:31):
and it continues to get thingswrong because again, its
knowledge base, while that'sgrown, is still only limited.
It doesn't have access to wardiaries, it doesn't have access
to transcripts, certainly not atthe moment, transcripts of
podcasts, for example, so itcan't crawl those and get
information, and there's allkinds of other things that it
(26:51):
doesn't have access to.
So what it can tell you is onlyof limited use, and one thing
that you'll see cited in many ofthe responses to AI-generated
material is things likeWikipedia.
Now, Wikipedia is a lot betterthan it used to be, but it still
(27:12):
contains a lot of errors.
So I think we have to be prettycautious about this.
And one of the things that I dida while ago, I was looking at it
from the kind of work that I doin my 9-5 job, which is running
ledger battlefield tours.
I thought, wonder what it woulddo if I asked it to develop and
design a new battlefield tour.
(27:33):
So I asked it, I asked it todesign a tour looking at the
significant places at EAP andFlanders in the First World War.
And because it didn't reallyunderstand where locations were,
part of its answer took it downto the Somme and Arras, and it
didn't understand that they hadno connection to EAP or
Flanders.
So that was an interesting partof the response.
But one of the things that itcame up, it recommended
(27:55):
Langamark as a location to goto, and it made reference to the
Langamark massacre of Britishsoldiers in 1918.
So I asked it, What is this?
and it came back that on thewalls of the memorial
surrounding the Camaradengramand the mass grave at Langamark
was the names of two Britishsoldiers, and it believed, it it
(28:19):
gave this as fact, that they hadbeen part of a massacre of
British soldiers there innineteen eighteen.
So I asked it for more details,it couldn't really pull out much
more than that, except that thiswas an incident during the
German offensive of Aprilnineteen eighteen, when German
troops had swept across thatregion, taken British soldiers
(28:40):
prisoner, and then shot them outof hand.
Now the two men that itreferenced had not even died in
April nineteen eighteen, theydied much later in the war.
They'd once been buried incemeteries near to the Belgian
city of Tournay, so quite someway from Eap, so they'd not been
originally buried at Langamark,so they couldn't be part of any
Langamark massacre, and when Iasked AI what was its sources
(29:05):
for this Langamark massacre, itcouldn't really tell me.
Now at the time I just put thatdown to a misreading of some
facts, but I've seen cases ofthings unconnected to military
history or history full stopwhere AI has kind of invented
things, which is a worryingaspect of its implementation,
(29:26):
and it's been challenged on thisand then admitted that it had
made these things up.
So again, this is all part ofbeing cautious about the use of
AI.
But going to the heart of yourquestion here, John, saying that
historians are at risk from AI,I guess on one level they are.
(29:47):
There's huge amounts of AIgenerated material already on
YouTube to do with the first andthe second world war, much of it
inaccurate, much of it really oflittle use, but it's consumed in
vast amounts.
And earns the creators a lot ofmoney, and it becomes a kind of
self-fulfilling prophecy becauseof that.
(30:07):
And I think it's important thathuman historians like me
challenge this on a regularbasis.
I saw on Twitter the other daysomeone trailing on, I think
near to Remembrance Sunday, amovie that they'd made about the
First World War.
It was a fictitious story, ithad a kind of fantasy element to
it, but it was a very poordepiction of the history and the
(30:32):
subject of the First World War,but very quickly could be
accepted as fact.
So it's important to challengethat, as I did, as others did,
and I think that that is reallyimportant to do so.
Now, one of the things that I dosee on a positive side as a
trend on YouTube at the momentis a desire from the audience of
(30:53):
the people who watch YouTube forauthenticity.
They're kind of already gettingfed up with AI generated
material and they want realpeople.
Now I'm not any kind of TV staror any kind of glamorous-looking
individual.
I'm a middle-aged guy, but Iknow my subject.
And what I've found with myYouTube channel is people
(31:15):
respond to me just standing in afield or walking down a lane or
coming through a trench andtelling them the story of where
I am, what it is, how it fitsinto the history of the Great
War.
And that is encouraging becauseit's saying that an audience
doesn't want this generatedmaterial, artificially generated
(31:36):
material, it wants the authenticreal deal.
And what I can bring to it, ofcourse, is all those things that
I've done.
The archaeology that I've seen,the places that I've visited,
the people that I've met onthose journeys, and then going
back to the veterans, all of thestories that I can tell that
they told me that often link usto these locations that we visit
(31:59):
on these battlefields.
And perhaps a hundred years fromnow, maybe not even a hundred,
perhaps AI might be able toreplicate all of that, I don't
know.
But I certainly think for now,authenticity and the human
connection to the subject ofsomething like warfare, which is
about humans, which is aboutordinary men and women in the
(32:22):
extraordinary circumstances ofconflict.
I think that an audience willalways want that authentic voice
telling them those stories.
They might be momentarilyentertained by fancy graphics
and little short video clips,but most people, if they're
serious about a subject, want totake that one step or more
(32:45):
further, and I guess that'swhere the human element, the
human delivery of history, inthis case Great War history,
that's where it comes to thefore.
And long, long may thatcontinue.
So thanks for that question,John.
I'm sure AI and the wholesubject of AI and what it can do
(33:05):
for us, because it can do thingsfor us.
For example, I've used it toread French handwriting in war
diaries.
It's really difficult, even forme as a French speaker, to read
some of that original materialthat's in French war diaries
from the period of the FirstWorld War.
But AI can learn how to read it,it can then transcribe it into
digital text, and then it cantranslate it for you, of course,
(33:28):
but you can then do your owntranslation of it as well.
So there are uses of it, but wehave to, I think, be wary of it
and be wary of it not gettingout of control in terms of what
the narrative of the First WorldWar or any subject that it
chooses to explain, we mustalways, I think, challenge what
we see, because challenging andasking questions is all part of
(33:53):
what history really is.
So moving on to our fourth andfinal question in this special
fortieth QA episode, we've got aquestion from Angus Cole on a
subject that I've often receivedquestions about, and it's about
time I guess that I answered oneof these, and that's about
(34:13):
generalship in the First WorldWar.
So Angus Cole asks, What areyour thoughts on the generals in
Allied command, both British andFrench, and the roles that they
played in the Great War?
Were they right to be vilifiedand viewed as incompetent and
thus responsible for the wasteof so many lives, or were they
strategists trying everythingpossible to bring the war to a
(34:36):
speedy conclusion with as fewcasualties as possible?
Well, this is a great questionthat generalship command in the
First World War is perhaps oneof the most controversial
subjects of the First World War,and one that kind of polarizes
people in all kinds of ways, andsomething that has evolved and
(34:57):
re-evolved and will no doubtre-evolve again as time goes on.
And going back to our previousquestion, who knows what AI
might contribute or not to thissubject.
But it really deserves its ownpodcast.
I mean, I know I say this aboutso many questions in the QA's,
but this one does.
Generalship is is long overdueas a subject for us to cover in
(35:19):
the podcast, and we will get tothat.
But in terms of your question,Angus, I think the thing, as
I've often said on this podcastto remember, is that in 1914
everybody was prepared for war,just not the war that they found
themselves fighting very, veryquickly.
They go to war in 1914 for a warof movement, for a rapid war, a
(35:43):
war that they'd trained for,with swift movement of infantry,
with cavalry playing a role,with railways taking troops to
locations to fight battles invast open plains, and all of
that happens in the early monthsof the First World War, but very
quickly, through a whole seriesof circumstances, the war
(36:03):
becomes static, and both sidesin the west and in the east dig
in very, very quickly indeed,and it becomes this vast siege
war, static war on a massive,unprecedented scale.
And the generals who have beentrained for the kind of war that
they'd gone to fight in 1914were now faced with a conflict
(36:27):
that they really didn't trulyunderstand.
Some understood it more thanothers, others for a long time
refused to understand it, tryingto bring back elements of the
old style of warfare.
But it was clear that this wasnot only a new century, the
early years of a new century,but the early years of a new way
(36:47):
of warfare, a modern war, anindustrial war with the capacity
to create armaments andequipment on an industrial
scale, move industrial scalearmies around using industry and
railways, and then use theweapons created by that industry
to kill and wound people, injurepeople on an industrial scale as
(37:11):
well.
And this was something that alot of senior commanders on all
sides really struggled to gettheir heads round, and it took
those early years of the war,once the war went static, and
both sides had attempts to tryand break that static nature.
The British with attacks on thenorthern part of the Western
(37:32):
Front in early 1915, the Frenchat different parts on their
line, the Germans using gas atEpe in April 1915.
All of these were attempts totry and end that static war.
And one of the things that theyoften found difficult was the
exploitation of a breakthrough.
Breakthroughs could be achieved,but men were often in the wrong
(37:56):
place to exploit that.
Reserves were too far back.
There were situations in whichtroops did much better than
expected, but those could notbe, those situations could not
be exploited because thegreatest issue that these men
had, not from just thebeginning, but throughout the
entire war, even when they gotmuch better at this, was command
(38:17):
and control.
Without radio, without theability to talk as a commander
directly to your troops in thefield, it was really difficult
to coordinate things.
They were fighting a modern warwith modern weapons, often with
modern approaches, but withantiquated communication
systems, fixed communications,flags, lamps, all of this kind
(38:41):
of stuff, not radio sets.
There was no ability to transmitand receive voice.
So that really hampered theability of commanders to
properly do their job.
And while we see the developmentof war fighting on the Western
Front carry on from the battlesof 1915, in the case of the
(39:03):
British, on into the experienceon the Somme through to the
fighting on the Hindenburg lineand at Messines and at
Passchendale and at Combray, andlessons are learned again and
again and again.
There is a cost to thatlearning, and the cost is always
in human lives.
At the time, this was consideredacceptable.
(39:26):
It wasn't that people weresomehow cold to these losses,
indifferent to them.
Far from it.
When you read the papers ofsenior commanders, they're
mindful of these losses.
The losses affect them veryoften greatly, and you see that
in their diaries and in theirletters.
But it was considered acceptablein the scale of the kind of
(39:47):
conflict they were fighting.
More than a century on from it,we see it as less acceptable.
One of the legacies, I guess, ofthe First World War is the wider
public's inability to accept theconsequences of conflict, which
are casualties.
That's something that westruggle with in the modern
world.
And it's not that the value oflife was less a hundred years
(40:09):
ago, far from it.
It is just that that attitude, Iguess, came out of the
experience of the Great War,with that million dead of
Britain and the Empire and allthe other nations that suffered
so terribly, that created alegacy that made future
commanders think about thoselosses in a different way.
But what you clearly see is anarmy that goes to war prepared
(40:31):
for war, finds itself fighting avery different kind of war,
learns from that, adapts to it,and in the case of British and
Empire troops and the Frenchfighting alongside us, adapts to
enable victory in that finalphase of the First World War.
They put those lessons that arelearned with such high losses
(40:52):
and such high cost to practicaluse on the battlefield, and in
the case of the British Army,create a truly modern army that
fights that battle at Amiens,for example, in 1918, and then
fights its way through theHindenburg line and beyond to
the open warfare of the last fewweeks of the conflict.
(41:13):
And in terms, and I'm not goingto name individual generals
because that really is a podcastin its own right, but in terms
of high command, the bestgenerals, in my view, are the
ones that enable people beneaththem who have combat experience,
who have seen and taken part inbattles, they enable them to
come up with the ideas and theapproaches and the tactics and
(41:35):
the weaponry required to createvictory, to create the ability
to smash an enemy line, breakthrough it, and exploit that
breakthrough and end theconflict.
The best commanders enable thosemen.
The men at the very top don'talways come up with these ideas
or these war-winning approaches,but the best ones enable those
(41:59):
beneath them who have some ideato develop those ideas, and as
commanders they bring all thattogether into a unified plan.
It's a complex subject.
There's lots of books that willtell you that commanders of the
Great War were butchers andbunglers on one side and some of
the most incredible commandersthat have ever existed on the
(42:20):
other side, and there's a ton ofmaterial out there from Alan
Clark's ridiculous book from the1960s, The Donkeys, through to
the work of people likeProfessor Gary Sheffield and my
old mentor John Terrain, whowrote Haig the Educated Soldier
back in the 60s, I think, whichkind of pioneered a new view of
the First World War during atime when popular culture, like
(42:44):
Oh What a Lovely War, was stillpushing that agenda of butchers
and bunglers and waste and menbeing sent to pointless and
futile deaths.
And that is something that stillis very, very strong to this
day, and many will never acceptthat commanders like Haig or
Rawlinson or Goff were goodcommanders.
(43:04):
I mean it is an endless, endlessdebate, but there's plenty of
material out there for you toget your teeth into, and it's a
subject that we will definitelyreturn to in the main podcast
somewhere down the line.
So with that, fantasticquestion.
We've gone on slightly longerthan usual, but it is a 40th
(43:24):
episode.
I hope you found this week'sQA's of interest.
Thanks to all of you who'vesubmitted questions for this
episode and for all of theprevious episodes, and we've got
plenty of material sitting inthe inbox waiting to be answered
over the course of the next fewmonths.
But keep those questions comingin.
I absolutely love receivingthem, and you can send them in
(43:47):
via email or the Discord server,and there's links to both of
those in the show notes for thisepisode, and there's a few other
ways of doing it as well.
So thanks for those, and untilwe meet again for some more QAs
here on the Old Frontline.
(44:09):
You've been listening to anepisode of the Old Frontline
with me, Military Historian PaulReed.
You can follow me on Twitter atSomcore, you can follow the
podcast at OldFrontline Pod.
Check out the website atoldfrontline.co.uk where you'll
find lots of podcast extras andphotographs and links to books
that are mentioned in thepodcast.
(44:30):
And if you feel like supportingus, you can go to our Patreon
page, patreon.com slasholdfrontline, or support us on
buymea coffee atbuymeacoffee.com slash
oldfrontline.
Links to all of these are on ourwebsites.
Thanks for listening, and we'llsee you again soon.
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The Burden
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.