Remembering the Forgotten Front

What was the “Forgotten Front” of Northern France? In this episode, we explore the stretch of battlefield from Armentières on the Belgian border through La Bassée to the ground near Loos, scene of the Big Push of September 1915: fought 110 years ago this weekend. We uncover the history, walk the landscape, and share the stories of the men who fought and fell on this often-overlooked part of the Western Front.

The Road to La Bassée Poem on the Great War Forum: The Road to La Bassée

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Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:10):
This weekend the podcast goes out marks the 110th
anniversary of the Battle ofLoos in 1915 and a decade ago I
was on that battlefieldcommemorating the centenary of
Loos and visiting dozens oflocations with people who had
family connections to them andthat's always a privilege to do.

(00:32):
This wasn't just people who hadfamily members who were killed
at Loos in 1915 but in manycases the there were people
where grandfathers andgreat-grandfathers survived, and
the stories of their deeds havebeen passed down through those
families, and a century on, theywanted to stand on that same

(00:52):
ground.
This year, I won't make it outto Luz, but Luz and those wider
battlefields across northernFrance have always particularly
fascinated me, and we've coveredquite a lot of them in episodes
of The Old Front Line.
They've area that has becomecommonly known as the Forgotten

(01:14):
Front, the battlefields betweenFlanders and Arras, and an area
generally much less visited.
There are, of course, manyForgotten Fronts of the Great
War, from Salonika toMesopotamia and Palestine, but
this is not those.
This is a part of the WesternFront.

(01:38):
So, what is the Forgotten Frontand what does it mean and what
does it tell us I guess aboutthe battlefields of the Great
War and the experience andhistory of the Great War on the
Western Front.
Back when I started my originalold frontline website which is
way back in 1999 in the earlydays of the internet and I was

(02:02):
still living of course then atCorselet and in those days we
accessed the internet viadial-up believe it or not and
I'd been reading somethingduring the preparation of
putting that website together,which contained information
about the battlefields and whatto see, what you could find, and
reading some material on thatground between Armenteers and

(02:26):
Lewes, I saw a reference to itas a forgotten part of the
former battlefields.
So I added a section to thatwebsite called the Forgotten
Front, and that term kind oftook hold, and I've seen it used
frequently ever since which isgreat because it gives an area
part of that landscape of thefirst world war an identity and

(02:50):
it also perhaps provokes peopleto go and study it and visit it
too but when we refer to theforgotten front what do we mean
what area does it cover so inthis episode we'll have an
overview of the forgotten frontlook at some of the areas it
covers and look at its geographyif you like and hopefully this

(03:14):
will push me on a bit thiscoming winter I'll get myself
back to working on my book myBattleground Europe book on the
subject of the Forgotten Frontand finally finish it off
especially as I've beenpromising this book for so long
but but and this isn't an excusethere is a thing called the Old

(03:36):
Frontline podcast and that hassomehow gotten in the way way of
me finishing this book.
Writing a book is a mighty taskand a time-consuming one as
well.
But the book's about 80-85%finished so I'm going to try and
crack on.
Anyway, back to the podcast andit's time once more to strap on

(04:00):
our virtual boots, pull on ourvirtual pack and head out onto
that area of northern Francethat overlooks the Belgian
border, True North.
on that forgotten front andbegin our journey there.
In the years after the FirstWorld War, the Battle

(04:23):
Nomenclature Committee dividedup the battles of the Great War
so that historians, futurehistorians, current historians
then, could make sense of thosefour long years of conflict.
And this is what historians doto understand the past.
They often use names that to themen on the ground at the time

(04:46):
probably wouldn't have made muchsense, but those are the names
by which we know these battlesmore than a century later and in
some ways when we look at a partof the western front like this
it's good to do that with theforgotten front so what we'll do
here with this podcast is divideit into two battlefield areas

(05:08):
and one area behind the linesbecause that part of the old
front line away from the mainbattlefield area is just as
important as the mainbattlefields themselves as as
we've often said on thispodcast.
The first area that we're goingto look at covers the ground
from near the town of Armentiersdown to the ground around the

(05:32):
town of La Bassaye.
And that makes sense, I think,because to the north, to the
northeast of the town ofArmentiers, there is a border,
the border with Belgium, wherewe're kind of beginning our
virtual journey.
And to the south, near LaBassaye, is a natural feature,
in fact a man-made featurecanal, the La Bassée Canal which

(05:53):
divides that bit of ground,divides it from a military point
of view as to where the Britishlines were in the early period
of the war but also thegeography of that part of
northern France because beyondthe La Bassée Canal into the
next sector you begin to see achange in that geography as
we'll discuss so starting inthis northern area what are the

(06:16):
key features when we look atthis part of the Forgotten
Front.
Well in terms of the geographyfrom Montmartre down to the La
Bassée area from the Belgianborder you've got an area of
farmland there moving out acrosswhat is essentially the
flatlands of French Flanders andlong Roman roads in this area

(06:42):
which is typical of this part ofnorthern France criss-crossed in
places by rivers and streams andall also canals and then when we
look at the the wider geographycoming across what is
essentially a very flatlandscape we see the dominance
of any kind of high groundthat's there and when we speak

(07:03):
about high ground in this arealike we would do if we were in
Flanders in Belgium we'relooking at high ground that is
only tens of meters above sealevel and whoever occupies that
high ground in this kind oflandscape will have dominance
And this area, this first area,from beyond Armentier down

(07:24):
towards Le Basset, is dominatedby a low ridge, in this case the
Albers Ridge.
Now when we look at theestablishment of the line here,
looking at the history side ofthis, there's heavy fighting
here in October 1914.
This is the period of the Germanso-called Race to the Sea, as

(07:45):
German forces are moving throughnorthern France and also to the
north in Flanders as well,heading towards the Channel
Coast.
The British and the French,what's left of the Belgian army
is fighting in all of thoseareas and here around Armentier
there are British soldiers inthis case utilising that low
ridge, that Albers Ridge as partof their defence taking over

(08:08):
farmland and villages justbeyond it as the Germans advance
from the direction of the cityof Lille and the eastern side of
that ridge, the other side of itessentially is where a lot of
small and some quiteconsiderable engagements are
fought in that early period ofOctober 1914.
Now, the Germans have numbersbehind them.

(08:32):
The British being pushed back,losing heavy casualties in some
of these battles, means theycan't hold on to this ground
indefinitely.
So in that early phase of thefighting here, that high ground
is lost, the Germans takecontrol of it, and the British
pull back into similarsituations kind of farmland
beyond, crisscrossed by thesestreams and rivers with roads

(08:56):
and small villages and dig in inthat area.
That is where, in this part ofnorthern France, British troops
begin to dig their firsttrenches as their comrades to
the north beyond Armentier,across that border, are doing
exactly the same thing inFlanders near to Ypres.
And this season, that earlyphase, that first winter of

(09:17):
1914-15, the of the initialBritish line on the Western
Front and the deadlockessentially of trench warfare as
the mobile war comes to an end.
And that deadlock, that staticwarfare would mean that this
sector becomes one of the mainBritish and later Commonwealth

(09:41):
Empire areas of learning aboutthe static nature of trench
warfare on the Western Front.
It becomes what some units calla nursery sector where units
arriving on the western frontfor the first time from training
in Britain in the early phase ofthe war are put into what is a

(10:02):
static front like this with nomajor battles going on they can
learn to take over trenchesunderstand how the trench system
operates what happens on a dayto day basis and they can do
that while limiting theircasualties if they were just
thrown into battle for the firsttime they then that would
probably be a disaster.

(10:22):
But if they're on a quiet,so-called quiet front like this,
they can understand what trenchwarfare, in theory, what trench
warfare is all about.
And that was done a lot in thatearly period of the war, and
continued well into 1916, whenAustralian and New Zealand
forces, for example, came toFrance from Egypt, having served

(10:44):
in Gallipoli the previous year.
So it's an important part of thein that respect because it saw a
high rotation of units and manymany soldiers who went on to
fight in the big battles likeSomme and Ypres and Arras and
many other places besides didtheir kind of grounding if you

(11:04):
like in trench warfare insectors like this if not this
actual sector that we're goingto virtually walk down now it
was also aside from being for abig long period of the war a
quiet static front it was alsothe scene of some of the initial
British offensives on theWestern Front between March and
September 1915 the British facedwith static trench warfare

(11:29):
didn't intend just to sit thereand do nothing and what you see
in that early part of 1915 is anattempt to get to grips with
trying to break the deadlock ofthe Western Front and sometimes
achieving small breakthroughsoften at a high cost but
learning the lessons of thatkind of offensive fighting as it

(11:51):
develops, as the whole frontdevelops and the way of fighting
on the Western Front develops inthat early period of the Great
War.
And while after that there arelong years with no major battles
with one or two exceptionstaking place, fighting returns
to this front in 1918 with avengeance with the German

(12:12):
offensive in what became knownas the Battle of the Lys in
April 1918 and although theGermans didn't effect the
breakthrough the totalbreakthrough that they wish they
push the lines right back intoareas where they'd never been
any fighting at all and therewas a period of static warfare
again until the allies musteredfor a counter-offensive and this

(12:33):
ground saw fighting again inSeptember 1918 leading to the
breakout of trench warfare inthis area and the advance over
open ground to roll up citieslike Lille which had been behind
the German lines since Octoberof 1918 So that's a kind of
overview of what we find herefrom a geographical point of

(12:55):
view and from the kind ofhistory point of view.
Not untypical of many of thesequieter fronts along the Western
Front in the Great War.
But what do we find on thesebattlefields today as we make
our way along this first part ofthe Forgotten Front from
Armentiers down to the La BasséeCanal?
Well first we have to kind ofstep over the border a bit into

(13:16):
Belgium because there is amemorial between 1914 October

(13:51):
1914 and the end of the war nowthe area that it covers is
denominated by two rivers one inBelgium just to the north of
Ploegstert and near to the townof Messines and then to the
south it is the Leys River theLeys Brook and in that area the

(14:11):
missing from that sector arepretty much all commemorated on
the Ploegstert memorial to themissing I say pretty much much
all, because there is anothermemorial to the missing in this
area, the Le Touré Memorial, andthat commemorates 13,500 British
soldiers who fell in thisgrounds.
We're going to travel along nowfrom Armentier down towards Le

(14:34):
Basset, but covering a narrowertime frame, in this case from
October 1914 to the 24th ofSeptember 1915, when the Luz
Memorial, which we'll also see,takes over.
Now there's a bit of a crossoverin this area, this first area
between the Ploegstert Memorialand the Le Touré.

(14:55):
In some respects there are somemen commemorated on Ploegstert
who probably should be on LeTouré and some men commemorated
on Le Touré who are commemoratedon the Ploegstert Memorial.
And this kind of thing happenedquite a lot.
The vast casualties that weresuffered in the Great War and
the attempt to get this rightwasn't always successful in the

(15:18):
days where They relied, ofcourse, on paper records.
But for this initial area, theseare the two memorials to the
missing that dominates.
When we look at those earlyBritish offensives like Neuve
Chapelle, Vesterberg and AlbersRidge, this is where we find the
missing on those two greatmemorials.

(15:39):
Now, in terms of Armentier, thefront line was just outside the
town in small little villagesclose to junctions of roads and
sometimes railway lines and inthat typical landscape
crisscrossed by these smallrivers and streams and you'll
find there quite a lot ofbattlefield cemeteries which are

(16:02):
sited close to where quite a lotof the front lines were located
this flat landscape there was abig problem with digging in here
if you dug deep trenches theywould often flood so a lot of
the trench systems here werebreastworks with positions built
up above ground level and in InArmentiers itself, Armentiers,
home of the famous Mademoisellefrom Armentiers, this was a

(16:25):
place which the British Armyused in this northern sector as
its main route to the frontline, its kind of command and
control area.
So there were headquarters here,medical facilities, ammunition
and supply depots to takematerial out onto the front line
area on the outskirts of thetown.
Men came and went from thetrenches through the town itself

(16:49):
through the main square todaynot as famous as Ypres or Albert
but the main square was known as11 o'clock square because the
clock tower of the town hall hadbeen hit by a shell and was
stuck on 11 o'clock untileventually of course that clock
tower and the clock with it allcame down with the amount of
shells that eventually droppedon Armenteers so for the

(17:12):
soldiers in this sector for theveterans that I interviewed back
in the 80s and 90s for examplethey would often refer to this
as the Armenteers sector that'swhat they kind of identified
they didn't always know thenames of the villages where they
actually were and when we getout into those areas there are
some names that stand out morethan others there's Bois Grenier

(17:35):
which was an area where theBritish took over in 1914 having
been pushed back by the Germanadvance dug in there took over
that village and we kind of seean echo of the of the landscape
and the infrastructure of frontline with some cemeteries right
out where the forward trencheswere and then others in the town

(17:56):
itself and typical of thecemeteries in this area in that
they don't contain the graves ofmen killed in big offensives
necessarily in fact the majorityaren't they're men killed in
those day to day activities oftrench warfare snipers, rifle
grenades, trench mortars comingover, random artillery barrages,

(18:18):
both sides tunneled on thissector quite a lot there was a
lot of mining activity beneaththe battlefield and in some
cases mines were blown soldierswere killed in the explosion of
those so the kind of reasons andcauses of death that we find
amongst casualties buried inthese cemeteries are much more
varied than if we went to thebig offensive cemeteries in

(18:40):
places like Ypres and the Sommeand when we get down to the
ground beyond these villages andup onto the Albers ridge we can
begin to see the dominance ofthat so-called high ground.
Again, we're only tens of metresabove sea level, but we can see
down into villages like BoisGrenier and Fleur Bay, and we

(19:02):
can see why the Germans were sokeen to possess this kind of
high ground here, because of theview that it gave them.
And up on top of it, when wetravel along the roads that take
us across that Albers Ridgeinto, for example, Albers
Village, which is the villagethat gives the ridge its name.
We find a lot of German concretestructures from the First World

(19:24):
War, from fairly small sheltersthat sheltered men and
equipment, to artillerypositions, to mortar positions,
to much bigger concretestructures that were observation
posts, to concrete towers thatwere built up inside silos and
factory buildings, many of whichare still there.
The concrete towers, thebuildings themselves, long since

(19:47):
blasted away.
And as you're coming to Albersfor example, I remember the
first time I went there the sunwas on the other side of the
village and as we drove in therelooked to be this old kind of
cottage on the outskirts of thevillage itself and as we got
nearer to it we realised that itwas a bunker that had been built
inside a cottage, the cottagelong since blasted away but the

(20:09):
shape of it was still there inconcrete and that was quite
accessible in those days and wewent in there, got up into the
upper sections where the Germanshad an observation post and the
wooden mount for periscopes or atelescope was still in there in
those days.
Little had it changed since thetime of the aftermath of the
First World War.

(20:29):
So there's a huge number ofthese concrete structures.
I was once told that there areat least 2,000 of them between
Armentier and Le Basset on theGerman side of the battlefield.
And the interesting thing, onthe British side, who
traditionally didn't buildconcrete structures because this
was a static front, you seequite quite a lot of British
bunkers here which is a kind oftestimony to the fact that the

(20:52):
British accepted that thereprobably wasn't going to be a
great advance here until thatpoint in the war when fronts
like this would collapse and thewar was probably coming to an
end and that was true becauseall of this was finally broken
and traversed and pushed backand moved beyond in those final

(21:12):
months of the conflict in 1918.
Now we've said that after theBritish offensives here in that
early part of 1915 from NeuveChapelle through to Albers and
Fester but it was a quiet sectorfor such a long time but there
were occasions in which therewere major battles and
engagements Frommel is a goodexample of that where in 1915

(21:34):
the British attacked as part ofthe Battle of Albers Ridge
towards the left flank of thatassault and there were a lot of
casualties in the fighting here,mines blown some breakthrough
into the German positions butthose attacks forced back and
then the Australians had asecond advance in this area in
July of 1916 when the 5thAustralian Division alongside

(21:58):
the British 61st Division madean attack on Flamel Village as
part of one of thosediversionary battles for the
Battle of the Somme.
For the Australians this was oneof the most costly periods of
their military history with astaggering number of Australian
casualties leading many yearslater to the memorialisation of
this ground with theconstruction of an Australian

(22:21):
memorial park with ground givenby local farmers and the
formation of an association hereto build a monument the stunning
Cobbers memorial that bronzefigure of an Australian soldier
carrying in one of his matesover his shoulders that was part
of the stunning work byAustralian sculptor Peter
Corlitz and an area that I thinkfocused quite a lot of

(22:42):
Australian attention and studyinto this period of the
Australian involvement on the akind of a forgotten battle
within a forgotten front and itled as well to the incredible
search for the missing in thisarea and the discovery of a mass
grave of Australian soldiers andthe construction of the first

(23:04):
Great War Commonwealth WarCemetery Pheasant Wood Cemetery
since the 1930s when the bodiesof those soldiers who were
recovered many of whom wereidentified were laid to rest
there and there's a fantasticmuseum alongside that as well
which you can visit as part oftraversing this sector of the

(23:24):
Forgotten Front but as we comedown off the top of the ridge
into the area beneath it we comedown into some of those key
villages that key groundconnected with those early
offensives on the Western FrontNeuve Chapelle being a good
example of that we've done someprevious podcast episodes about
the Indian Corps at NeuveChapelle this was one of those

(23:46):
areas where they went intobattle for the first time and in
1914 and then in the March 1915battle played a massive role, a
major role in the attack here insweeping up the German ground
and breaking through into thepositions beyond.
Neuchapel was in fact quite asuccessful battle for the first
British offensive on the WesternFront but the success couldn't

(24:09):
easily be exploited.
This is one of the greatproblems for First World War
commanders was breaking throughthe enemy lines.
How do you exploit exploit it bybringing up enough men, enough
ammunition, enough equipment topush that on to wherever it's
going to take you.
In most cases, it ended with asmall amount of sudden success

(24:32):
and then back to stalemate.
And the line then settled downaround Neuve Chapelle for a big
chunk of the rest of the war.
And just down the road, beyondthe crossroads, La Bonne
crossroads at Neuve Chapelle,you come up to the ground where
the Boer's Head is located.
Something I've spoken about manytimes.
The day Sussex died, the SouthDowns Battalions diversionary

(24:54):
attack there on the 30th of June1916.
And again, that's also in anarea where troops attacked on
the 9th of May 1915 in theBattle of Albers Ridge.
The 5th Royal Sussex Async PortsBattalion famously advanced
there into the German positionsand that with the Battle of 1915
with the 2nd and 5th Battalionsadvancing at Albers Ridge and

(25:15):
then the South Downs in 1916with the attack on the Boar's
Head it became a corner of theForgotten Front that was
certainly forever part of Sussexand certainly forever part of
that Sussex heritage leadingduring the centenary in fact in
the approach to the centenary Ithink the twinning between
Wadhurst which had lost so manymen there in 1915 and the

(25:36):
village of Albers which givesthe wider area and the
battlefield its name and thenaround the corner you have
Festerbert and Givenchy in thatfinal part of this sector
leading down towards the Lebasaycanal and it's quite easy just
to drive through those areasthey're pretty unremarkable
really and in fact what we findon some of the buildings in

(25:57):
those villages is more evidenceof the second world war quite a
lot of battle damage from may1940 as british units pulled
back towards the coast towardsdunkirk for example but of
course the whole area if youlook at the commonwealth war
graves commission maps or if youlook at google maps you'll see a

(26:18):
unit memorials the landscape hasnot really changed so with
trench maps or with the digitaltrench maps like linesman you
can get out onto thesebattlefields and make a lot of
sense of them in terms of theirearly war history and when the
whole front became static hereand as you get down towards
givenchy the terrain begins tochange it moves out of that kind

(26:40):
of flat land that ground where alot of the trenches were
breastworks built up aboveground level givenchy givenchy
Givenchy-les-Labassais is nearto the Labassais Canal.
It sits on a bit of a rising bitof ground and was a position
that was especially suitable forthe war underground, for

(27:01):
tunnelling.
And it became an area chokepoint for that, where mine after
mine after mine was being blownthere, including some very
sizeable charges.
The Red Dragon Crater, the RedDragon Mine, blown by the
Germans underneath the positionsof the 2nd Royal Welsh Fusiliers
in June 1990.
1916 described in some detail byfrank richards in old soldiers

(27:24):
never die that's where he wasdecorated with the distinguished
conduct medal for his braveryand also the place where beneath
that battlefield at the sametime william hackett was down
there the royal engineers withhis tunnellers the tunnel system
that they've been working on wascollapsed by the explosion of
the red dragon mine and hestayed at his post trying to get

(27:46):
the lads out until the wholesystem and he was killed and
eventually awarded theposthumous Victoria Cross for
his bravery the only tunnellerin the Great War to get that
distinction commemorated todayby a modern memorial that
overlooks the site where the RedDragon Crater was it's quite an

(28:06):
effective memorial in that it'sgot the symbol of the tunnellers
which is the T in a bit of glassand as you look through that
glass it takes your eye out tothe bit of the field where the
Crater was crater was andbeneath it where Hackett and the
other tunnellers were doingtheir work and where his brave
deed took place.

(28:26):
So there's much to find reallyas you traverse this and again
in some of these areas likeFesterbutt there is a good
example of a British bunkerthere, a massive one, covered in
ivy these days but stilldiscernible and if you look at
some of the early editions ofRose Coombe she shows pictures
of a French woman still livingin that bunker in the 1960s and
70s.
It's quite a sizable commandheadquarters signals bunker I

(28:51):
suspect but one of a number andthe 55th West Lancs division who
operate in this area quite a lotin both 1917 and 18 and we see
their service reflected in thedead from that division that we
find in the cemeteries in thisarea but we also see quite a lot
of concrete structures thattheir engineers built with the
divisional flash the Rose ofLancaster kind of carved into

(29:16):
the concrete that's somethingthat you'll in quite a few
locations here and for them inApril 1918 during that German
offensive this was part of thefront that they were defending
at that time and while the wholefront to the north from north of
Givenchy all the way up pastArmentiers up into Belgian

(29:38):
Flanders while all of thatcollapsed the 55th West Lanks
Division held the ground herearound the Labasse Canal and in
this sector the Germans did notaffect a breakthrough so when it
came to memorializing thedivision territorial division so
a lot of local connectionsbattalions recruited locally

(29:59):
with a good old comradesassociation after the war one of
the earliest divisionalhistories that was published in
1919 only a small one but reallygood one fold out maps and
photographs and that as i'veoften said leads to a divisional
memorial which where are wegoing to build the memorial to
the 50 55th West Lancs Division,our finest hours at Givenchy.

(30:21):
Givenchy is going to be theplace where it goes up and
that's where you'll find ittoday.
And there was a hugecommemoration when that was
unveiled with a lot ofex-members of the battalions of
the 55th Division and men whowere still in what was by then
the Territorial Army came out inuniform and the memorial was
unveiled.

(30:42):
Not as well known as others butnevertheless it kind of marks an
important period in the historyof territorial units in the
Great War, and also theincredible battle that was
fought here in April of 1918 aspart of the Battle of the Lys.
Now in terms of La Bassée town,we're coming up to our dividing

(31:03):
line now in this first sector ofthe Forgotten Front, divided as
we've said by the La BasséeCanal.
La Bassée is the nearby town.
It was swept up in the untilthat final phase of the war in
the autumn of 1918.
But it was a town that could beseen from many of the British

(31:24):
trenches.
So again, a little bit likeArmenteers, when soldiers spoke
about the front that they wereon, if they were down here, they
often called this the LabasseFront.
And you'll read that in memoirsby Frank Richards, who we've
already mentioned, and RobertGraves, goodbye to all that, and
many, many others besides.
But whenever I come here,whenever I've brought groups to

(31:46):
this area, I don't always read alot of war poetry to groups
because not everyone likes warpoetry certainly some of the
more complex poetry by Sassoonand Graves and Owen it's
difficult for some people tounderstand but many years ago I
came across a poem written aboutthis part of the front and it
was written in 1934 by two GreatWar veterans Bernard Newman and

(32:10):
Harold Arpthorpe they had comeback and they wrote this poem
subsequently and it's called TheRoad to Le Basse and it reflects
on what they found in the 30s,20 years after the Great War,
and how that made them feelabout what had happened there in
the four years of the Great Waritself.
Now, it's quite a long poem.

(32:31):
I'm not going to read the wholething, but I will put a link to
it on the show notes for thisepisode if you do want to read
it.
I would recommend that.
But this is the two stanzas thatI think really kind of stand out
for this, and this is the firstof them.
I went across to France againand walked about the line The
trenches have all been filledin.
The country's looking fine.

(32:52):
The folks gave me a welcome andlots to eat and drink, saying,
Hello, Tommy, back again.
How do you do, Insy Pink?
And then I walked about againand mooched about the line.
You'd never think there'd been awar.
The country's looking fine.
But the one thing that amazedme, most shocked me, I should
say, there's buses running nowfrom Bethune to La Basse.

(33:15):
And I wondered what they'd thinkof those mates of mine who died.
They never got to Le Basset,though God knows how they tried.
I thought back to the momentswhen their number came around,
and now those buses rattlingover sacred, holy ground.
Yes, I wondered what they'dthink of it, those mates of mine
who died, of those busesrattling over the old pavé close

(33:39):
beside.
Carry on, that's why we died, Icould almost hear them say, to
keep those buses always running.
And it's written in very simplelanguage, but I think it
expresses a lot about what someveterans saw as the meaning of
sacrifice.

(34:01):
That they've come back, as thesetwo men did, 20 years after the
war, found the landscapechanged, life gone back to
normal, buses running across theold battlefields, and when they
stand in the cemeteries, theycan hear the voices of their
mates saying, that's what wefought for, for life.
to return as normal.
And we'll stop now on thisboundary of this first part of

(34:22):
the Forgotten Front and thenresume our journey just beyond
it into the second area ofBattlefield.
Having crossed the LebasséCanal, we've now come into the
second and final area of theForgotten Front on the actual
battlefields themselves, whichextends from here, where we are

(34:46):
now, to the ground around theBethune Lens Road to the south.
Now, these are delineations madeby me.
They're not any officialdelineation of this front, but
when I came to look at this andwhen I came to write the early
part of the book that I'mworking on still, I thought, how
can I divide this front up andthese are the kind of obvious

(35:07):
boundaries the Belgian border tothe north and then the ground
from Armenteers to the LabasseCanal and then from the other
side of the Labasse Canal downtowards the Bethune Lens Road
and then beyond that you'regetting closer to Arras in the
next part of the frontessentially.
Now this was an area taken overafter those early battles on the

(35:28):
northern area of the ForgottenFront in 1915 as the size of the
British Expeditionary Force grewIt was put under pressure to
extend its line, extend itsposition along the Western
Front, and gradually in 1915,the length of the front that the
British held, which initiallyhad been about 30 miles from
Saint-Éloi, just the south ofYpres, down to that area close

(35:51):
to La Bassaye, that was thenextended to take in this area
that we're coming into now, intothe ground close to Lens, Lens,
and near to the villages ofLoos, which is in German hands.
which was in British and priorto that French hands so this
became a new part of the Britishline and some units were

(36:13):
detached from this area of thewestern front and sent further
south because the intention wasto move the British line further
and further south as possibleand some of those units in 1915
as the front was beingestablished here were down on
the Somme for example some southof the river Somme and others in
the area around Albert forexample but that's a story for

(36:34):
another of the day.
Now prior to this becoming aBritish sector of the Western
Front this is an area where theFrench army had fought in 1914
and 1915 in those early battlesin this part of the front but
involving the French army sowhen we look at the names of the
villages here and they becomesynonymous with long periods of

(36:55):
trench warfare and some of theoffensives here in 1915 there
are also places where Frenchsoldiers were falling often in
great numbers in those earlierbattles like Combray Quincy,
Vermeule and Mazingarbe forexample and we find evidence of
that French part of the warhere, the involvement and the
casualties in memorials andcemeteries in this area where

(37:19):
the French dead are buried andthe French dead are commemorated
on unit memorials in one or twolocations here as well.
So again like the northern partof the front what are the key
features when we look at thispart, this next battlefield area
of the Forgotten Front, wellit's different terrain for a
start we've previously been in akind of flat area dominated by a

(37:41):
ridge here we're at the start ofa chalk seam and also a very
deep coal seam here, it's one ofthe richest coal fields in
France and we can see evidenceof that coal mining industry
right across this landscapetoday just as the soldiers of
both sides could see that over100 years ago in 1914-15 it's

(38:03):
very flat and open there's notmuch woodland here the fields
are vast vast open spaces and tothe south beyond that lens
Bethune Road is the start ofeven more high ground towards
the city of Arras and thebeginning of the rolling down
land that extends east of Arrastowards Combray and to the south

(38:27):
down towards what became knownas the Somme battlefields.
In the northernmost area wherewe've our journey now close to
the Le Basset Canal there werethe villages of Combrin and
Quincy and in front of Quincywere the brick stacks this was a
massive brick factory with hugeundelivered piles of bricks

(38:49):
we've done a previous podcastepisode on the brick stacks and
the brick stacks suddenly becamepart of the battlefield these
massive towers that both sidestook over and fought over on and
off for a big chunk of the restof the war with assaults on
individual brick stacks withgoing up the sides of them on
ladders and men fighting eachother on the top to very deep

(39:12):
trenches here because you couldbe spied on from the top of the
brick stacks by the enemy andyou could do the same to your
enemy so soldiers need to be inmuch deeper trenches here to
avoid detection from movementand anything else and we see an
attempt to try and break thestalemate here push back from
these brick stacks with Frenchmemorial to the units that

(39:35):
fought here in 1915, and quite abig plot of French dead in
Cambryn Churchyard, which isalso a Commonwealth War Graves
Commission cemetery from thenext period of the war.
And that then takes us across tothe area where the Battle of
Loos was fought in September andOctober of 1915, taken over by

(39:55):
the British in the months beforethat, and we've got that vast
area of open fields where thebattle was fought in 1915,
dominated at the time by keyGerman features, the
Hohenzollern Redoubt, as theBritish called it, this massive
German defensive system nearOsh-le-Mine, where there was a
big network of trenches, therewere slag heaps, the Germans had

(40:18):
observation posts in, dominatingthe ground there, and there'd
been a lot of mining activitythere in the early period of the
war, carried on up to thebeginning of the Battle of Loos.
It was part of the northern,main northern area of the
assault, where the 9th ScottishDivision, part of the 1st 100th
thousand of Kitchener's army thefirst men to enlist went into
action on the 25th of September1915 with the other units that

(40:40):
attacked that day but this wastheir kind of battlefield with
huge casualties with staggeringlosses with ordinary soldiers
killed right through to theirdivisional commander being
killed in the battle here MajorGeneral Thessiger whose body was
never recovered and his name ison the Louvre's memorial to the
missing and as we come to thesouth of where the Hohenzollern

(41:02):
Redoubt was we're those big openfields we can see, I mean one
author described it asunfavourable ground and when you
see these fields as they aretoday and you try to imagine
units attacking across that openground you can see what kind of
difficulties there were and herewe've got some of the kind of
famous features like the RoutoirFarm the farm that was just

(41:25):
behind the British lines where alot of units assembled in the
middle part of the assault onthe Loos battlefield in
September 1915 and in the fieldsjust beyond it was a single tree
known as the lone tree it was akind of landmark on the
battlefield soldiers could seeit from the trenches when they
went forward in the battle theywere attacking close to it Harry

(41:45):
Coates who I've mentioned manytimes on this podcast went over
the top of the London Scottishnear that position on the 25th
of September 1915 and was gassedas he went forward saw his best
mate gas beside him and killedand he always remembered his
cold dead eyes staring outthrough the gas mask eyepieces
and realising the best mate wasgone then he took a whiff of gas

(42:06):
himself and was evacuated backand when the battle moved
forward a bit and that groundwas taken a lot of soldiers
souvenired bits of the lone treeI think the London Scottish
Museum has got a chunk of it intheir collection for example not
swiped by Harry Coates and itdisappeared by wars ending and
then jumping on many many yearssome members of the Western

(42:28):
Front Association who had got apersonal connection to that bit
of ground replanted it and it'sstill growing there today and
there's a little memorial plaquein front of it and it's one of
those kind of landmarks reallyon the Loos battlefield today
again 10 years ago for thecentenary I stood there with a
group and we had fantasticweather fantastic visibility

(42:51):
across that ground and you canreally kind of bring the Loos
battlefield to life I think fromthat location and seeing as you
can because there is no coverall of the key features from the
Routoir Farm behind you Vermellbeyond that and then back out
onto the battlefield area youcan see Dud Corner Cemetery in
the Lewes Memorial to the souththe Bethune Lens Road you can

(43:14):
see the spire of the church andthe town hall in Lewes Village
and see how that village sits ina bit of a hollow and then you
can see the rising ground beyondit leading up to what was known
on the maps as Hill 70 where thenext phase of the battle took
place and where the GuardsDivision went into action for
the first time in the Great Warhaving brought all of the guards

(43:35):
units into one formation theywent over the top in that battle
took part in the attack on hill70 and one of the more famous
casualties amongst the Irishguards who were with them in
that battle was John Kipling theson of Rudyard Kipling one of
those incredible stories ofgrief and the great war with one
father's search for the fate ofhis son and where his son might

(43:59):
be buried he does have a markedgrave today but his name remains
firm on the Louvre's memorial,and again that's a kind of tale
for another podcast another day.
The area to the south of theLens Bethune Road, which we've
kind of said is a demarcationline, we can't entirely forget
because that was also part ofthe Louvre's battle in 1915.

(44:19):
The village of Cité Maroc,Nuit-les-Mines, Aix-Noulet, that
kind of is the southernboundary.
Once you get beyond Aix-Noulet,you're getting much nearer to
Notre-Dame de Lorette, thebeginnings of the high ground
around Souchet, the start ofVimy Ridge and then of course
beyond that Arras so you'rereally moving into the next bit
of the Western Front but just tothe south around Cité Maroc in

(44:42):
that area there where there wasa very large slag heap known as
the Double Crassier that waswhere the southern part of the
Luz Offensive went in the 47thLondon Division London
Territorials went into battlethere and it was a scene of for
example footballs being kickedforward into battle by the men
of the London Irish Royalrifles, a famous incident and

(45:06):
one of many times during theGreat War in which football was
featured in an assault on Germanpositions.
This, I think, probably one ofthe earliest written examples of
that taking place.
And this southern area is wherewe get a very, very good kind of
evidence of the coalfields whichdominate this part of northern

(45:27):
France.
The double crassier was reduced,I And then the coal mining
continued beyond right up to the1970s.
So the size of it is much biggerthan it was in 1915.
And then there are other slagheaps in the distance beyond it.
And we can't disguise the factthat we are in a former coal

(45:50):
mining area.
You can get up onto the top ofthe double crassier today.
And there are incredible viewsfrom there.
It's a bit of a walk comingaround the back of it.
But it's well worth it becauseyou get this incredible view
right across the whole expanse.
of that loose battlefield nowwhat do we find on this part of
the forgotten front this nextbattlefield sector of this part

(46:13):
of northern france well similarkind of things in many respects
the landscape is different butwe see evidence of the great war
with cemeteries and memorials ofcourse i mean as i say many many
times they're not there byaccident they are beacons really
to the history of the great warand the cemetery is kind of
pointing to the fact that thatis often where the fighting was

(46:34):
at its fiercest so if we go backto that northern area where the
brick stacks were located thebrick stacks have long since
disappeared over the yearslocals have told me that they
were used to fill in the shellholes and trenches and repair
roads and all that kind of stuffbut I must say in walking the
fields where the brick stackswere once located I have found
bricks that are obviously fromthat period so they haven't

(46:57):
entirely disappeared but it isquite a small area and it's on
the edge of a kind of urbanurban area now there was a big
power station built there manyyears later and the geography of
that has changed but when youwalk the pathways there and
you've got a map a trench mapwith you you can see how
incredibly close the front lineswere you can literally walk

(47:19):
along a track on the edge ofwhere that power station was
look across a field and onlytens of yards away that's where
the walking the ground and thenwhen you get down to the
Hohenzollern Redoubt area nowthat has changed a lot over the
years that I've been visitingthat part of the battlefield

(47:42):
there's a big clear up there inthe 90s where they took away a
huge amount of ground hugeamount of archaeology was
exposed I remember seeing skipsfull of trench shields and
rifles with bayonets still onand all kinds of battlefield
detritus and a lot of very smallkit just lying about all over
the place I mean there was nobattlefield archaeology in those

(48:05):
days sadly so I'm sure a lot ofstuff was lost I don't remember
reading about the recovery oftoo many human remains so
whether there wasn't really muchdiligence in that I don't know
but it's an area where you canstill walk and still again get
some sense of the terrain therea lot of the mine craters that
were part of that landscape havebeen filled in by rubbish over

(48:28):
the years but when you go out toQuarry Cemetery it was just
behind where the British FrontLine was located and the dead
were buried in a quarry there.
You are right on the Britishfront line and you can see again
how exposed that position wasand units like the 9th Scottish
Division and then latterly the46th North Midland Division who
went into the attack there inOctober.

(48:48):
You can see how unit after unitcould easily get chewed up there
as indeed they did in those 1915battles.
And although there isn't thekind of density of cemeteries
here they tend to be on thelarger scale once you get out
into the main battlefield areawith a very high proportion of
the dead at the Battle of Loosin September, October 1915,

(49:09):
having no known grave and beingcommemorated on the Loos
Memorial to the Missing.
Nevertheless, you can go to StMary's ADS Cemetery and find
Kipling's grave there, JohnKipling, if indeed it is his
grave.
You'll see the high percentageof unidentified soldiers buried
in there and just across thefields is Lone Tree Cemetery and

(49:31):
the Routoir Farm, which whichhas still got some of its
original walls, some of itsoriginal structures.
It's a very interesting Britishobservation bunker in the
grounds of the farm.
It's not on public land, butvery often the farmer will open
it up and let you have a look.
And just from beyond the farmitself, you're back into the
next bit of the battlefield,looking up towards where Dud

(49:54):
Corner Cemetery and the LewesMemorial is located.
And again, you've got this kindof sense of the vastness of the
fields there, and you've kind oflook and you imagine those units
going into battle in September1915.
As you come down into LewesVillage past Dud Corner and the
Lewes Memorial where the thedead are commemorated the

(50:15):
missing commemorated on thewalls of the memorial and many
casualties within the cemeteryitself.
Lewes Village sits in a bit of ahollow there's a small museum in
the town hall that's worth goingto see there is the Lewes
British Cemetery which has nowgot a new extension which we've
on a previous podcast on and asyou get beyond Luz coming up

(50:37):
onto Hill 70 you're coming intothat ground that was known as
the Field of Corpses where someof the follow-up units in
September 1915 went into theattack men from the 21st and
24th divisions and sufferedterrible casualties from the
German defences that were in akind of a U-shape with these
Stutzpunks these strong pointsthat looked down onto this open

(50:57):
ground laid down heavy fire andcaused catastrophic casualties
to so many many of the men andthe units that tried to advance
across that ground in 1915.
So again, it's an area that Ithink we can get a lot from.
I'm working on this book,covering this bit of ground
myself, but there are otherBattleground Europe books

(51:18):
covering the Loos area, coveringsome of these places that we've
spoken about.
The late John Cooksey wrote somereally good guides to this part
of the Western Front as well.
So this is kind of differentground, not as well known, not
as well trod, as Ypres or theSomme but really worth getting
to grips with I think tounderstand how war fighting on

(51:39):
the western front thedevelopment of the offensive
began with these early battlesreaching a pinnacle with the
battle of Luz in September 1915and the lessons learned from
that would then obviously beapplied onwards towards the next
offensive which would be theSomme in the following year in
1916 and as we stand on thissouthern boundary and we're

(52:01):
close to Lens to Long justbeyond that urban area is Vimy
Ridge and if you're on top ofthe observation platform at Doug
Corner Cemetery or standing ontop of the double crassier you
might get a glimpse of VimyRidge and Notre Dame de Lorette
beyond that's the next part ofthe Western Front again bits of

(52:26):
that not as well visited asother parts but I think we've
come to the end the edge of theForgotten front where the
fighting was and now it's timeto look at the ground behind the
lines.
When we discuss the landscape ofthe First World War in places

(52:49):
like France and Flanders, it'seasy just to focus on the areas
where the fighting was, the veryfront lines.
But the battlefield more than acentury ago did not exist in
isolation.
It was only made possible bythose long lines of logistics
that fed it with men, withammunition and war material.

(53:10):
When I started looking at theForgotten Front for the book
that I'm writing on this part ofthe Western Front, I wanted to
include something about thosebehind the lines areas because
they are so important to ourunderstanding of how the war was
even possible and I found myselfdrawn into a fascinating aspect
of the Great War that when Icame to write about it, so far

(53:34):
it's one of the longest chaptersin the book because there's just
so much there.
So when the British Army came toFrance in August 1914 some of
its earliest units that arrivedon French soil were not
infantry, they were not cavalry,but they were support units like
the Army Service Corps and theRoyal Engineers.

(53:55):
It invested in thatinfrastructure to make the front
line possible from the verybeginning and continued to do so
for the rest of the conflict,creating this vast network of
supply by 1918 from roadways tocanals to railway transport
systems and enabling the BritishExpeditionary Force, which by

(54:18):
1918 didn't just include menfrom Britain, but from every
corner of that vast BritishEmpire, now the Commonwealth,
and it enabled the BEF to moveeverything it needed to fight
and sustain its war and itsunits easily and fluidly across
northern France.

(54:39):
When the British sector oftrench lines was established in
1914-15, as we've said, runningfrom Saint-Loire, south of Yves,
to the Le Basse Canal area thearmy looked at that area behind
the front to find what it neededto keep its men in these newly
dug trenches in this static warthat the Great War had become

(55:00):
that meant it needed ports tobring shipping into to bring new
men to fight that war and tobring ammunition and supplies
and everything else that wouldbe needed it needed main towns
in that area that it could useas jumping off points to get to
that battlefield area to createcommand and control centers

(55:23):
signaling and also use buildingsthat could be made available to
treat the wounded for example itneeded transport networks
whether that was road rail orcanal and it found them all in
plentiful numbers in this areabeyond the forgotten front back
up towards the coast from theports of Boulogne and Calais, to

(55:48):
the town's inland likeSaint-Omer, Lilles,
Ayers-sur-Lalise and Bethune, tothe old Roman roads that had
once taken legionnaires fromGaul to Britain, to the often
medieval canals which wouldbecome the waterways of supply
and medical evacuation, to therailways which crisscrossed the

(56:09):
countryside and the coal miningareas and industrial landscapes
of this part of France, railwayswhich would carry British trains
manned by special Britishpersonnel from the railway
operating division it was anarea that the ordinary soldier
found he could get lost in tooso it wasn't all about fighting

(56:29):
soldiers didn't spend all oftheir time in the very front
line they spent a lot of timeout on rest even from the early
periods of the war and the quiettowns and the villages behind
that front with their estaminetsand the French people that they
met which to boys from Barnsleyor country lads from the South
Downs would have felt like theywere from a world apart meeting

(56:52):
these people from rural northernFrance so different to them in
many respects but a lot ofcommonality as well in terms of
human nature kindness and theway they treated each other but
these soldiers when you readtheir memoirs they valued their
time there they valued that timeaway from the front in this vast

(57:14):
area between the front and thecoast exploring, discovering,
talking to people and forgingrelations of all kinds and
perhaps finding an escape fromthe war for a while.
It became a part of the front,behind the front that perhaps
meant just as much if not moreto them than the battlefields

(57:37):
where so many of their comradeshad died.
The towns and villages provedthat they had everything that
the soldiers of all nations thatwould come there as the wider
empire came to the ForgottenFront too.
It had everything that theyneeded, from food to young
women, shops to buy extras, andstudios to have your photograph

(57:58):
taken on active service.
And those photographs taken inplaces like Bethune, where there
were a lot of photographicstudios, they look very
different to the images ofBritish Tommies that we see in
training.
They're images that I've alwaysbeen drawn to in decades of
collecting original images ofthe first world war coming
across those active servicephotographs where the men are in

(58:21):
one of these studios behind thefront i think it gives us an
insight into how they looked andhow they felt about being there
you can sense a great deal ofpride you can sense that they're
now part of a wider army andthey've been on active service
they've done their training butthey've now proved themselves
and you can see that sometimesin their demeanor i think when

(58:42):
you look at these photographsand again that's kind of a
subject for another podcastperhaps but as well as soldiers
having free time to roam thearmy when it looked at this area
it needed it as part of itsinfrastructure as we said so it
created vast depots here tostore food to store equipment
war material and ammunition andthen having the means by which

(59:06):
to move them and if you'd havecome into this back area at any
point during the war it wasn'tjust the rumble of gunfire in
the distance that have told youthat a war was going on.
You'd have seen evidence of thewar everywhere with columns of
men marching to and from thefront line and vehicles of all
types moving this material,ammunition, food, water,

(59:31):
everything, moving it around.
But it wasn't just one-waytraffic.
It wasn't just about feeding thewar, although that was its
principal reason for all thisinfrastructure, to give them any
ammunition, to give them thebombs, the bullets and the bay
it's to continue to fight andthen when there were losses put
more men into the field andcontinue with the fight but of

(59:52):
course when there were lossesthis is when it becomes two-way
traffic because those lossesthose casualties the wounded and
then in periods when there's nota lot going on the sick as well
because when there were coldconditions in the front line
many soldiers would get sickthey came back to this area back
through this area to be treatedin the medical facilities so as

(01:00:13):
the war was fed the casualtiesthe broken men from the
battlefield would be broughtback the other way to the
dressing stations the casualtyclearing stations and the field
hospitals nearer the coastestablished right across this
region and it became an areafrom the very beginning where
women did their bit too fromnursing in the medical

(01:00:36):
establishments to laterlabouring with the Queen Mary's
Army Auxiliary Corps and tendingto the graves of the fallen and
I think in 1940 when the Britisharmy first moved into this area
the thought of so many womenbeing involved in military units
serving on this area behind thefront would have been

(01:00:57):
unthinkable really but by 1918the war had changed everything
including women's role in themilitary and because of the
medical facilities cemeteriesabound in this area too of men
who died of their wounds womensome of those women who served
in the different units that werehere killed in bombing raids in

(01:01:20):
the latter part of the war orwho went on to die of influenza
as influenza swept across Europein the autumn of 1918 on into
the spring of the following yearand these are cemeteries that
often when we visit them in thisarea behind the lines reflect
the culture of the day in theway that front line cemeteries
don't so when you areconstructing a cemetery that is

(01:01:44):
near to a field hospital, youcan create different plots.
And what you find is cemeterieswith Jewish plots, with separate
plots for officers, so kind ofkeeping up the class system.
And when women are killed,they're normally buried with the
officers because they're seen inthat same kind of status.
I remember reading an accountthat said, oh, we can't have
women just buried with the men.

(01:02:06):
That wouldn't be right andproper.
I mean, that's obviously thekind of culture, the mindset of
more than a century ago.
And the cemeteries also tend tobe in chronological order.
So you can often see the effectsof the fighting on the medical
establishments in these areas bycoming across rows and rows of
graves, all with dates very,very close together, often

(01:02:29):
indicating, reflecting anoffensive taking place on the
front line.
Because the cemeteries contain amuch higher proportion of
identified soldiers, so on abattlefield, many soldiers,
their identity discs, their paybooks will have been removed
bodies are found later there'sno way of telling who they are
and they're buried as unknownsthese are cemeteries created

(01:02:52):
largely from medical facilitiesso a man comes in from the front
and he's still got his dog tagson he's got his pay book he's
got his personal papers so thechances of him being
unidentifiable are pretty slimnow there are some but that's a
pretty rare occurrence sobecause of the fact that these
are mainly identified soldierswhat they do when we look at

(01:03:13):
them because we know who theyare what kind of backgrounds
they came from what units theywere with it gives us this
fascinating insight into the menand women and units that
operated behind the lines inthis sector during the Great War
and indeed the nationalitiesinvolved which become more and
more numerous as the war goes onand by 1918 just about every

(01:03:36):
corner of the British Empire isrepresented amongst those who
are operating in this areabehind the Forgotten Front and
as well this area was a placewhere commanders commanded.
It was a place where, forexample, Sir John French, the
original commander-in-chief ofthe British Expeditionary Force
in 1914-15, had a headquartersin Saint-Omer, and across the

(01:03:59):
region, army, corps and divisionheadquarters were set up in all
kinds of different buildings,from old barracks to schools to
old citadels, and they were allused by these different units as
the war progressed.
And by 1918, within thoseheadquarters, many had women

(01:04:20):
personnel working as clerks.
So again, this was a massiveturning point in the history of
the British Armed Forces.
While many believe the armynever really learned anything
during the Great War, especiallywhen we watch things like
Blackadder, great comedy, it'snot a documentary, this vast
area behind the Forgotten Frontalso contained large numbers of

(01:04:42):
training schools.
The artist's for exampleestablished one of the first
machine gun schools near SantaMaria in 1915 but later as
training became much moreformalised specialist schools
were established which trainedsoldiers to use weapons from
rifles to machine guns tobayonets trench mortars to train

(01:05:05):
them against the effects ofpoison gas so there would be gas
training schools where soldierswent to learn about the latest
gas equipment that soldierscarried from masks the small box
respirators there are areaswhere they'd learn tactics
trench fighting trench clearingtrench raiding all that kind of
stuff and then specialistschools to enhance their skills

(01:05:27):
such as signaling schools thatwere established behind the
front and much much more so youcan see how big and complex this
infrastructure was getting asthe war went on and training in
the army that needed traininglike this to fight and win the

(01:05:48):
battles it fought in those finalweeks of the conflict but while
those crisscross paths in thisregion of northern France behind
the front line of the forgottenfront could have taken a Tommy
everywhere and anywhere in thedistance that far distance like
a long forgotten thunder was therumble of the guns the rumble of

(01:06:12):
the barrage the rumble of theWar, that massive engine of
conflict fed by men and metal,that forgotten front, that part
of the old front line.
you've been listening to anepisode of the old front line

(01:06:35):
with me military historian paulreed you can follow me on
twitter at somcor you can followthe podcast at old front line
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 and if you feel like
supporting us you can go to ourpatreon page patreon.com slash

(01:06:59):
old front line or support us onbuy me a coffee at
buymeacoffee.com slasholdfrontline.
Links to all of these are on ourwebsite.
Thanks for listening and we'llsee you again soon.