West of Arras: Behind The Lines

We travel to the area Behind the Lines of West of Arras, visiting cemeteries where Casualty Clearing Stations were moved back to in 1918, discuss a small village where WW1 meets WW2, discover some original Great War graffiti on a farm building wall and visit on the of the most important Arras cemeteries covering all four years of the fighting and seeing the grave of Canada's most decorated ordinary soldier.

Pte Claude Nunney VC DCM MM: Claude Nunney website.

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Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:10):
Before we get to this week's episode, I wanted to
mention some sad news about thepassing of Canadian military
historian Tim Cook.
I never met Tim, and we onlyspoke on email, and I had hoped
to speak with him on thepodcast, but I knew that he was
unwell, but didn't realise howunwell, and he tragically passed

(00:31):
away this week, aged only fiftythree.
Tim's contribution to militaryhistory and especially the
subject of the Great War wasimmense, and his book on Vimy,
for example, is arguably one ofthe best, perhaps the best ever
written on that subject.
We've lost an important andsignificant voice in Tim, and

(00:53):
his death would have left a voidin his family's life, so this
week's episode, which has a lotof Canadian content, is
dedicated to the memory of TimCook.
Do try and seek out one of hisbooks and read it in his memory.
So where are we this week?
The landscape of the Great Waris not just restricted to those

(01:13):
fields of death where thefighting was at its peak.
To truly understand thatlandscape where past and present
sit side by side, we have tolook beyond just the
battlefields, to the sky aswe've discussed here before,
below to the troglodite warunderground, and also to the

(01:35):
areas behind the front, and notjust behind the British front,
but the German one too.
The area behind the lines isdifferent to the battlefields
because much more of itsoriginal features from over a
century ago survive.
So when we travel that landscapein the villages and the towns

(01:55):
and across the fields where thatinfrastructure behind the lines
was once located, we see alandscape of the present that
isn't that different to thelandscape of the past, and we
find perhaps far more remindersof that past, as I hope we'll
see in this podcast.
In many cases there are villagesand towns in these areas where

(02:19):
if you could take a veteranback, he would see little
changed in them.
They're like time capsules.
So it's important, I think, toconsider this area too, because
it shines light on some layersof that war's history that we
don't find on the front lineareas.
And in this podcast will be westof the city of Arras, that

(02:40):
beacon on the front line, in anarrow area close to the main
access, the old road between thetown of Saint Paul and Arras
itself.
I visited this area on a daytrip quite recently.
It's so easy to do so via theEuro Tunnel or even the ferry,
and it's less than a forty fiveminute drive down the motorway

(03:02):
to the first stop close to thattown of Saint Paul.
So much to find here, so much todiscover, and so much that's in
easy reach for our journeys tothat old front line.
And what we're looking at inthis episode is just the tip of
the iceberg, so I'm sure we willreturn to this behind the lines

(03:23):
area in future episodes.
So we begin having just come offthat motorway, down into this
area west of Arras, behind thelines, and we start at a British
cemetery from the First WorldWar, Pern British Cemetery, near
to the village of Pern.
One of the things that I'd liketo do when I make my own visits

(03:47):
to the old front line is to seesome places that I haven't been
to before.
Now I'm sure that you listeningto this will believe that I've
been everywhere, and I've beenlucky over more than forty years
now to explore this vast area ofthe Western Front and many other
fronts of the Great War beyondFrance and Flanders.

(04:09):
But I haven't been everywhere,and even within France and
Flanders, there are still manycemeteries that I've yet to
visit.
I always keep some so that I'vealways got something new to
find.
I think that sense of discoveryis really important, whether
you're at the beginning of yourjourney or whether you're a long

(04:30):
way into it.
So all of the cemeteries that wego to in this podcast, it was my
first visit to them.
Now Pern is a small villageabout thirty miles northwest of
Arras, so that kind of distancefrom the front line.
And in the early phase of thewar, this was a route for the

(04:52):
British Army coming to and fromthe front.
It was closer to the front thatLewes and Lenz than Arras
itself, but it was an area whereunits were billeted, going to
and from the line, and the roadsand the railways in this region
that passed close to Pern tookmen and material and supplies

(05:13):
and everything else to and fromthe coastal area.
The British, as we've said manytimes, invested in that
infrastructure behind the lineswhich kept their vast engine of
war moving.
So the fact that there's acemetery here is quite curious
if this was essentially abilleting, training, logistics

(05:34):
area.
How come there are burials?
Well, after the Germanoffensives of March and April
nineteen eighteen, that pushedthe line back.
And this area that we're goingto travel through in the first
part of our journey suddenlybecame important in a different
way as it was an area thatmedical facilities needed to be

(05:54):
moved back to.
A casualty clearing stationcovers a square mile of ground
and it needs to be quite somedistance from the front line.
And so the casualty clearingstations which had cared for the
wounded from the Arras sector,Lenz and Luz, they'd been much
nearer to that front, andfollowing the German advance

(06:15):
they needed to move back, andthis saw the movement of these
medical units to places likePern in that late spring of
1918.
So in Pern, the arrival of themedics happened in April
nineteen eighteen when the firstand the fourth Canadian casualty
clearing stations came here.
They were full of men from theCanadian Army Medical Corps,

(06:38):
medical officers to look afterthe wounded, some of whom were
surgeons because at a CCSsurgery would take place, there
would be x-ray facilities, bloodtransfusion, all kinds of quite
modern medicine, but not justmen, women too.
So this was an area whereCanadian nurses were active in

(06:58):
those final months of the GreatWar.
And then eventually with themovement of medical units around
the Western Front, Britishcasualty clearance stations used
the area as well, and burialscovering the kind of casualties
that were being brought intothis area begun here at Pern
British Cemetery in April 1918and continued until the end of

(07:20):
the conflict.
Post-war, when the cemetery wasmade permanent, it was one of
many designed by EdwinLutchen's, that principal
architect of the then ImperialWar Graves Commission, and the
cemetery sits on sloping groundin a kind of valley.
When I went there in October,there were the beautiful colours
of autumn across that valley.

(07:41):
The trees were changing colour,and I heard skylarks above me
and Chifchaffs somewhere furtherdown the valley.
There's over a thousand burialshere, in fact one thousand and
eighty, with eighteen casualtiesfrom the Second World War, and
that's quite common in this areabecause of the fighting at the
two tail ends of that conflictin France in 1940 and 44, which

(08:05):
we will mention a little bitfurther into the podcast.
Of those casualties, 1,034 areBritish, 26 Canadian, 10 Indian,
5 South African, and 3Australian.
Now having mentioned that thiswas a site which was started by
two Canadian casualty clearingstations, you might be surprised

(08:27):
that there's only 26 burialsfrom Canada here.
Well, just because it was aCanadian casualty clearing
station, that didn't mean thatthey just treated Canadians.
They were located at the end ofa line of medical evacuation
decided by senior medicalofficers of divisions, of corps,
even an army, and this was anarmy area during that last phase

(08:50):
of the First World War, whencasualties would be taken from a
specific area and evacuatedbackwards.
So although you might be aCanadian casualty clearing
station with Canadian medics andCanadian nurses, you could be
treating soldiers of any Britishand Commonwealth nationality
that came through the doorshaving been wounded at the front

(09:11):
line, and that was true ofBritish casualty clearing
stations as well.
The cemetery, as you wanderamongst the graves, very quickly
you realise that it's in dateorder, and that's really common
with medical cemeteries.
Cemeteries started close tomedical facilities like this,
because essentially they wouldprepare a burial ground, knowing

(09:31):
that some of the casualtieswould not survive their wounds.
And very often some of thepersonnel from the casualty
clearing station would bedetailed off to prepare graves
by digging a trench, and thatwhen men died they would be
brought in for burial, placed inrudimentary coffins, carried in
with a firing party, and thenlaid to rest with a proper

(09:54):
funeral service over theirgrave.
This far back from the front,that kind of thing was possible,
which of course was not possibleon the very front line itself.
And when we wander along thoserows of graves and we see the
units and we join up the dotsand look at the orders of
battle, we see that most of thecasualties come from the Lens

(10:19):
sector, so just north of Arras.
The city of Lens, Lens, had beentaken by British and then
Canadian troops in 1917 duringthe fighting in that area.
A new front line had beenestablished.
The Germans had pushed hardagainst that in the spring of
1918, and the front to the northhad collapsed, so it sat in a

(10:39):
kind of salient that was quitedifficult for the units to hold
there.
And what we see reflected in theburials in here are casualties
coming back from that.
Not necessarily big battles orbig actions, but men killed in
the day-to-day activities ofthat part of the front where
units are trying to hold theline to stop the Germans getting
any further in terms ofadvancing over that ground.

(11:03):
Now, when we look at thecasualties in here, and when I
come to a cemetery like this forthe first time, I like to focus
in on some of the casualties.

(11:30):
I mean all kinds of things.
You can really analyse that dataand come up with some
interesting results in terms ofcasualties during a particular
period, or focus on some of theindividuals that you find by
looking through that list.
And one of those that I cameacross was a chap called Robert
Charles Manning, D S O M C ofthe Royal Engineers.

(11:53):
He was a major in the 170thTunnelling Company, Royal
Engineers, and he died of woundson the 6th of September 1918,
age 29.
Born in County Dublin, he waseducated at Trinity College,
Dublin.
He moved to Canada before theFirst World War and worked as a
civil engineer there.
Canada was a new nation.

(12:14):
There was a discovery really ofCanada in that Edwardian period.
Men came from all over the worldto work there, to build new
villages and towns, to buildrailways and roads and bridges,
to blast tunnels throughmountains, and I guess that's
the kind of work that he wasdoing.

(12:34):
Robert Charles Manning was kindof a pioneer of Canada in many
ways, and when the war cameCanada responded, and men like
him responded as well.
He joined the first CanadianDivisional Cyclists in 1914,
went to France with the CanadianExpeditionary Force in february

(12:55):
nineteen fifteen, and then wascommissioned from the Canadians
into the Royal Engineers in May1915.
And quite a large number of thatoriginal Canadian Expeditionary
Force that came over in theearly phase of the Great War did
end up getting commissions inBritish regiments, many of them
with British backgrounds orconnections to regiments or

(13:17):
skills with direct relevance tothe unit they wanted to join.
In his case, as an engineer, hewas going into the Royal
Engineers.
So having worked as a civilengineer in Canada, he could
apply that knowledge to the taskahead of him, which was to join
one of the early tunnellingcompanies, the 170th, and work
with them beneath the WesternFront at Givenchy, Gavinci,

(13:40):
including the Brickstacks andthe Hohenzollern Redoubts in the
northern part of the Lewes area.
He was responsible for blowingmines in that area in 1915-16.
He'd been wounded in 1915,awarded the Military Cross for
his bravery as a tunneller thesame year, and later the
Distinguished Service Order in1917 for the same work, and by

(14:02):
the French was decorated withthe Legion d'honneur, France's
highest honour, for saving thecoal mines at Lens.
Now that's an interesting phrasethat appears in some of the
online research about him, but Ican't find the exact
circumstances of that.
I know that when Lens Lens wastaken, some of the mines that

(14:23):
the Germans had used to get coalfrom for their own war effort
were then taken over, and Frenchcoal miners then came in and
tried to restart them becausecoal was a precious resource and
France needed that for their ownwar effort, and he seems to have
been responsible for helpinggetting those coal mines that
had been ramsacked and used bythe Germans getting them back

(14:46):
into operation for the French.
But in that latter part of hisservice which brought him to
Pern, he was up on the Labassesector just as that front was
collapsing, was wounded there,and died of his wounds in the
casualty clearing station hereat Pern and being buried in the
cemetery overlooking that valleyfull of birds.

(15:09):
It's an interesting war and he'stypical of many of these
tunnelling officers.
Not one of the well known ones,but nevertheless so many stories
in that underground war of theGreat War on the Western Front.
Buried not far away is anotherdecorated officer, not from the
war below the battlefield, butthe war above it, connecting to

(15:32):
our recent series on the airwar.
And here we're standing at thegrave of Roderick Stan Dallas of
the Royal Naval Air Service andthe Royal Air Force.
And there is a direct link toour RFC RAF series because in
that we went to Wava in one ofthe episodes where Jimmy
McCudden is buried and wevisited the grave of Bob Little,

(15:54):
also Royal Naval Air Service andRAF.
And both of them, Bob Little andStan Dallas, whose grave we're
standing in front of now, wereAustralians who'd come to
Britain to join the airservices, both of them serving
in the RNAS, and both of thembeing the top scoring pilots,
air races, with Bob Little atthe top and Stan Dallas close

(16:19):
behind.
He was the second highest numberof aerial victories to an
Australian airman of the GreatWar.
So really important pilots, bothof these men, and it's good to
have mentioned their war andtheir part in that air war in
these recent episodes.
Stan Dallas, whose grave we'reat now, was born in Queensland,
and he travelled to England andjoined the Royal Naval Air

(16:41):
Service in August of nineteenfifteen.
He flew Newports and laterSotwith triplanes.
He was awarded the DistinguishedService Order, the Distinguished
Service Cross and Bar, and hebecame the commanding officer of
No.
1 Naval Squadron Royal Naval AirService in June of 1917.
When the RAF was formed by thecombination of the Roll Flying

(17:04):
Corps and the RNAS in April1918, he became the commander of
40 Squadron RAF and he was shotdown in No Man's Land near Liva,
which is a suburb of Lons on the1st of June 1918.
He crashed in No Man's Landbetween the British and German

(17:24):
trenches and was killedinstantly, but the infantry who
were holding the line thererescued his body from the wreck
of the aircraft and then wentback for his kit as well.
Didn't want to leave it to besouvenired by the Germans.
So his body was recovered andbrought back here for burial.

(17:44):
And a propeller from an SE5 oncemarked his grave here at Pern
Cemetery.
So one of those great combatantsof the sky above the
battlefields of the WesternFront and part of that R and E S
story, which we are going totell properly a little bit
further down the line.

(18:06):
So Pern is an interestingcemetery to begin our journey in
this behind the lines areabecause it has characteristics
that it will share with quite afew of the other places that
we're going to see on thisjourney.
But for now, we're going toclose the bronze gate outside
the main entrance to PernCemetery and get on the road

(18:26):
again and continue our journey.
The town of Saint Paul is abustling modern town today.

(18:47):
We popped in there for a coffeeon this journey.
But it's a town foreverconnected to the Great War in
all kinds of different ways, aconduit to and from the front
with roads and railways, but itwas also the place just after
the Great War that the bodies ofseveral unknown soldiers from
those key battlefields werebrought to to select the unknown

(19:10):
warrior who would go on to beburied in Westminster Abbey.
Now that's a story for anotherday, a story in its own right,
and we're going to pass throughSaint Paul and go out to one of
the small villages just beyondthe town.
And we've come to a little tinyvillage called Quazette.
Here in this small village,British soldiers have been

(19:32):
billeted in the Great War,they're drunk in the local
estaminaes.
But it's also one of thoseplaces, and and we like this, I
think, in the old frontlinepodcast, it's one of those
places where the First World Warmeets the second world war.
Not just because of thatassociation in the Great War,

(19:53):
but because as we come into theheart of the village, there's an
isolated grave here.
Now that's an interesting term,a bit of terminology that the
War Graves Commission use forgraves that are not in
individual cemeteries, whetherthat's a military cemetery or a
communal cemetery.

(20:14):
And it's a phrase that goes backto the Great War, and this is
really for me where those twowars overlap in this case,
because in the Great War therewere many, many examples of men
being buried in isolatedlocations, and in most cases
they were recovered and thenreburied elsewhere.

(20:34):
But if we jump to the 1920s,there were still quite a few
isolated burials, isolatedgraves on that old front line,
and two immediately come to mindfor me Falformont Farm on the
Somme, where three men of theLondon Regiment were in a shell
hole during the fighting forLousy Wood in September 1916

(20:57):
when a shell landed amongstthem.
They were killed instantly andthey were buried in that shell
hole and they are still buriedthere today.
No Commonwealth headstones, it'sa big stone plaque over the spot
with their names on right out inthe middle of a field.
And another one that comes tomind is the Morris Grave at

(21:19):
Metterin in northern France.
He was a regular officer killedthere in 1914, and he's still
buried on the spot where he waslaid to rest in 1914.
Again, not with a Commonwealthheadstone, but a very unusual,
quite elaborate burial site witha structure like a small
building with a clock on it,which for many years was in poor

(21:43):
order and was renovated by theWestern Front Association, and
it stands there right out in themiddle of the fields, right on
the spot where the October 1914fighting took place.
So these kind of graves existedin the First World War because,
in many respects, the nature offirst world war fighting kind of
encouraged this kind of burial.

(22:04):
But for the Second World War,particularly the second world
war in North West Europe, wewould see that as a rapid war, a
war of movement, and theisolated graves would be quite
unusual.
But actually, they're not.
There are two that I know of inNormandy, and for many years
I've been meaning to come tothis one here at Croisette.

(22:27):
And this is from the Liberationperiod.
This part of France ischaracterised with, as I
mentioned earlier, those twobookends of the French
experience of the Second WorldWar, the Battle of France in
1940 and the Liberation inSeptember 1944.
And you'll find many individualburials in communal cemeteries

(22:48):
and churchyards in this region,but this is the only isolated
grave where he's still buried onthe spot where he was killed in
1944.
So who is it?
Well this is the grave ofLieutenant Donald Ashworth
Creaton, MC, of the 11thHussars.
He'd served with C Squadron, andhe was killed here on the 3rd of

(23:09):
September 1944, age 23.
He has connections to Kent.
He was a vicar's son.
He was educated at Queen'sCollege, Cambridge, and he'd
fought in the desert and inSicily and Italy, and he'd been
awarded a military cross forbravery in the advance at
Montpinson in Normandy in Augustof 1944.

(23:30):
And he commanded a Daimler-Dingoarmoured car, which is the kind
of kit that the 11th Hussarswere using during what was
called the Great Swan.
This is where they were swanningtheir way across northern
France, having crossed theSeine, having crossed the Somme,
moving up towards Lille and theBelgian border, and although the
Germans were not makingconcerted lines of defence or

(23:54):
attempts at stopping the Britishwith big formations, what they
were doing, which was a typicalGerman tactic as they withdrew
across areas, they'd done it inthe Great War with the
withdrawal to the Hindenburgline, they left penny packets of
men with the right weaponry tobump British forces and slow

(24:14):
them down.
And in this area it wasn't justBritish, but Canadians up on the
coast and not far away GeneralMachex Poles advancing with
their tanks across this area aswell.
But here at Quazette, a DameLudingo, with Lieutenant Cretan
inside, came round the bend andthere was an anti-tank gun at
the junction close to where hisgrave is today, which was not in

(24:37):
action, and he was effectivelytaking the gun and the crew
prisoner because the crew wereactively surrendering, with
their hands up, saying Camaradno doubt, and he was getting out
of the turret of the DameLudingo with a sten gun in his
hand about to take themprisoner.
And this is what the war diaryof the eleventh Sus says.
At the west end of the village,Lieutenant Cretan, who was

(24:59):
leading, suddenly found himselfamongst a number of enemy with
an anti tank gun.
What occurred next is not fullyknown, but according to
civilians, the Germans promptlyput their hands up.
Lieutenant Cretan covered themwith his sten gun.
The dingo was just behind thetroop leader's car, but the
third car, Lieutenant Esch'sDaimler, had been stopped by

(25:20):
some fusiliers to tell him,rather late in the day, that
there was some enemy there.
Firing suddenly broke out aheadof Lieutenant Esch and he went
forward to investigate.
As he came round the corner, hesaw the crew of the dingo being
marched away by the Germans, andalso a vehicle on fire, which he
believed to be LieutenantCretan's car, although later it
was found to be a German lorry.

(25:41):
At the same time the anti-tankgun was swung round towards his
car, he reversed back around thecorner.
It took a long time to organisean attack on the enemy with the
infantry, and by the time itwent in the enemy had departed.
Lieutenant Cretan had been shotin the head and died instantly.
The armoured car and the dingoand the rest of the crews had
gone.
Lieutenant Cretan had amagnificent record of troop

(26:03):
leading in this regiment, whichhad started before the fall of
Tunis, carried on through Italyand since landing in France.
He was exceptionally brave andthorough and very accurate in
all of his reports.
His loss was a great blow to allwho knew him.
He was a first class officer inevery respect and most popular.
It seems likely that his deathwas a typical act of German

(26:25):
treachery.
Either it was one of those whohad surrendered who shot him, or
else some unseen enemy on whichthose who had raised their hands
promptly lowered them andattacked the remainder of the
troop.
The full story will not be knownuntil those who were made
prisoners are recaptured.
Now that's a war diary writtenat the time with contemporary

(26:46):
language and contemporary pointsof view.
But there's no doubt it was avery confused period of
fighting, that great swan asthey swanned across that vast,
vast area of northern Francewhich had once been so important
in the Great War.
So Cretan was buried by the sideof the road and a chaplain came

(27:06):
along to officiate the burial,and when his mother was informed
as to what had happened, as towhere he was buried, she made
arrangements to privatelypurchase the ground on which he
was buried and make a permanentburial there for him, a
permanent grave.
Now initially this would havebeen a cross placed by the
Graves Registration Unit on hisbattlefield burial.

(27:31):
But eventually, as I'll put somepictures of this onto the
podcast website so you can seeit, eventually she added a
proper stone memorial and a bigcross with an inscription and
even a photograph of him onthere as well, set in its own
ground with a fence and a hedgeround it and a gate that you
open to go inside.
So I think you could pass thisin a blink and not realise it's

(27:55):
a war grave.
There's no signage to itwhatsoever.
So it makes an interestingstudy.
Now I've been to the otherisolated burials that are in
Northwest Europe that are downin Normandy, and one of those to
Captain George Grey, who was aguards officer killed during
Operation Bluecoat, he has across made from the stone of the

(28:18):
House of Commons because he wasa member of Parliament, one of
several MPs killed in the SecondWorld War.
But at the back of his cross isthe original Grey's Registration
Unit cross.
And when I was visiting Cretan'sgrave at Croiset, the isolated
burial there, I remembered this,and there was quite a thick
hedge at the back of his stonecross there, and in the hedge

(28:42):
was his original Gray'sregistration cross.
And these were not like the onesin the Great War that were
mainly made out of wood, theywere pre-made metal crosses that
were normally painted white, andthen with bitumen based paint,
the name and details would bepainted on.

(29:23):
And if you type that phraseisolated grave into the
Wargraves Commission database,you'll see that most of them do
date from the First World War.
So in this tiny little villagein this vast area of northern
France, this is definitely oneof those places where the First
World War meets the second.

(29:51):
Leaving the village ofCroisette, we're gonna skirt
round the outskirts of SaintPaul, get onto the main road
going east.
And then drop down to anothersmall village, Ligny Saint
Flochelle.
And here on the far side of thatvillage, we find Ligny Saint
Flochelle British Cemetery.
It's right out in the fields,surrounded by farmland and

(30:14):
woods.
You can see for miles from here.
And as I often say about thesecemeteries of the First World
War, they're not here byaccident.
This one is because it was closeto yet another grouping of these
casualty clearing stations.
And as you go in up the quitelarge entrance with quite

(30:35):
formidable steps that take youup past the cross of sacrifice
into the level where theheadstones are.
The headstones are very closetogether here, not dissimilar to
Pern, and immediately you cansee that they too are also in
date order.
So this is another locationwhere, in that spring of 1918,

(30:55):
in April of that year, casualtyclearing stations that have been
much nearer to the front weremoved back to here to deal with
the wounded that was coming fromthat fighting.
And although most of thecasualties here come from the
Arras area, there are a few fromthe north from Lenz and a few to
the south from the Somme area aswell.

(31:17):
And in terms of the units, themedical units that operated
here, the 7th and the 33rd andthe first casualty clearing
stations worked in this sectorbetween April 1918 and the
Armistice.
And again, like Pern, itreflects fighting from a
specific area, a specificperiod, and from where the

(31:38):
wounded were brought back from,in this case mainly around
Arras.
Because of this, because it'sreally more connected to Arras
than Pern was, in terms of a1918 story, it connects us
especially to the CanadianCorps, because the Canadians, in
those 1918 battles, on the 8thof August 1918, had taken part

(32:02):
in the Battle of Amier, whenCanadian forces alongside
Australians and British to thenorth had broken the German
defences on the Somme, and thissignalled the beginning of the
end of the Great War.
The Canadians continued to fightin that area, and then the
Canadian Corps was moved up tothe Arras sector to take on the

(32:23):
ground close to the city ofArras that had been taken by the
Germans in the spring of 1918,pushed them back, and then
continue the fight into the mainHindenburg line.
And that's what the 347 Canadianburials in this cemetery, which
is more than 50% of the totalburials here, this is what they

(32:45):
represent that fighting, thatkey fighting to break the back
of the German defences at Arrasand push them through the
Hindenburg line and beyond,hopefully, to victory.
But aside from the Canadiansoldiers that are buried here,
there's also 282 British, oneSouth African, and 46 Germans in

(33:07):
a separate section of thecemetery.
Now it's not uncommon in thesebehind the line cemeteries to
have separate plots.
And German plots to bury theGerman wounded coming back who
died of their wounds in aseparate area of the cemetery is
again not unusual.
Here it's actually on adifferent level to the rest of
the graves, to one side of thecemetery at the back.

(33:29):
And I don't think this was anydisrespect to those German
soldiers, it was just how thoseburials were arranged at the
time.
But when we wander through thecemetery, we very quickly see
the Canadian nature of thisburial ground.
There are many cemeteries acrossthe Western Front which you
could describe as Canadianbecause their burials dominate

(33:52):
those cemeteries, and we know alot of those on the actual
frontline area itself.
Again, if we went east ofAmiens, into that area where the
Canadians broke out in August1918, we would see a lot of
examples of Canadian battlefieldcemeteries there and came north
to the Somme.
We'd see Adenat, Canada speltbackwards, Regina Trench,

(34:12):
Corselet, a lot of Canadianburials there, and many, many
other places besides.
But behind the front, that istrue too, particularly if the
cemeteries that you visit are onthe line of Canadian evacuation
of their wounded during thosekey periods.
And here it covers late Augustinto early September of 1918,

(34:33):
when the Canadian Corps, freshfrom its victory on the Somme,
pushed the Germans back east ofArras, advanced, for example,
over Orange Hill towardsMonchy-le-Pru, and then beyond
that was the quite substantialvillage of Vison Artois, and on
the high ground beyond that wasthe DQ line, the Drocor Cuillon

(34:54):
Switch line, a main part of theHindenburg line defences.
And the men who died of theirwounds and were buried here are
all part of that story.
And when you wander around, whenyou look at a cemetery that has
quite a substantial number ofCanadians in it, there are a lot
of inscriptions to look atbecause the Canadian government

(35:15):
paid on behalf of Canadianfamilies who wanted
inscriptions.
If they couldn't afford it, theCanadians would pay on their
behalf.
So proportionally, there's amuch higher number of
inscriptions on Canadian gravesas a consequence of this.
And there are some very touchinginscriptions here.
Private Lawrence Adams of the26th Canadians, he died of

(35:37):
wounds on the twenty ninth ofAugust nineteen eighteen, age
twenty nine, he was from Quebec.
It says very touchingly herelies our beloved baby boy
Lawrence.
Not far away is the grave ofPrivate George Halliday Simpson
of the twenty fifth Canadians.
He died on the twenty eighth ofseptember nineteen eighteen, age
twenty three, and he was fromAmherst, Nova Scotia.

(36:00):
His inscription is short butpowerful Son dear Son dear What
that must have meant to hisparents we can only imagine.
And these simple formations ofletters into words, into phrases
really tear at the heartstringswhen you pause and you read
them.
And they tell us so much aboutwhat grief was and what the loss

(36:25):
of a son, of a brother, of ahusband, of a father, what it
meant to families more than acentury ago.
And there are Canadian veteransburied here too, when you walk
along the rows and you look atthe regimental numbers and you
see the decorations they've gotfor early battles.
There are men who had fought atEape in nineteen fifteen,

(36:45):
Corselette on the Somme innineteen sixteen, and right
through that experience of theCanadian Corps, right up to the
battles that cost them theirlives around Arras in that late
summer of nineteen eighteen.
And among them is SergeantAdelaard Bastian DCM of the
eighty-seventh Canadian Infantrywho died of wounds on the fourth

(37:06):
of september nineteen eighteen,aged twenty-eight from Montreal.
His distinguished conduct medalwas for the fighting at Arras in
that DQ line, clearing theGerman trenches there and bomb
blocks, where the Canadians hadgot into the German positions
and they'd put up a block acrossa trench with the Canadians one
side and the Germans the other,and there were tiny little

(37:28):
battles involving a handful ofmen clearing their way through
those obstacles to capture thelarger objective of that wider
Hindenburg line.
And when we look at the recordsfor him, and Canadian records
are particularly good, it givesus the stark truth of his death.
In one record it states died ofwounds, gunshot wound to the

(37:49):
abdomen.
While taking part in militaryoperations on september second
in the vicinity of Deury, andwere near the jumping off
trench, Sergeant Bastian waswounded.
He was immediately attended toand taken to a dressing station
and later evacuated to No.
7 Casualty Clearing Station,where he succumbed to his wounds
two days later.

(38:11):
That paper trial that onceexisted for all soldiers of the
Great War is stark and honest inits language, and I guess
portrays a greater truth of thecost of war and what sacrifice
meant more than a century ago.
But amongst the Canadians thereare British dead too, as we've

(38:31):
said, nearly three hundred ofthem, and these were often units
attached to the Canadian Corps.
The Canadian Corps had fourCanadian divisions in it, but
very often it would have Britishunits attached to it, and Arthur
Curry, who was the commander bythis stage of the war, very much
liked particular Britishformations.
The Royal Naval Division was oneof them, and the Fourth Infantry

(38:54):
Division of the British Army wasanother, a regular army division
that had been out since Augustof 1914.
I mean not many of its oldcontemptibles left by this stage
of the war, but from Curry'spoint of view it had a good
fighting reputation.
And amongst the casualties fromthat unit that are buried here

(39:14):
is Major Geoffrey GeorgeBellamy, who was of the
Devonshire Regiment attached tothe 4th Battalion Machine Gun
Corps, who died of wounds on the1st of September 1918.
Now by this stage of the war theMachine Gun Corps had MGC
battalions that were divisionalunits where all of the guns
could be brought together to laydown machine gun barrages, to

(39:36):
enable units to attack orprotect a bit of ground.
It was a much more sophisticateduse of machine guns.
Major Bellamy was from Plymouth.
He was a student at ExeterCollege, Oxford University on
the outbreak of war, and amember of the Inner Temple as
well.
He enlisted in the DevonshireRegiment in 1914, transferred to

(39:58):
the Machine Gun Corps and waswounded with them at Messengs in
June of 1917, and then afterrecovery returned, became part
of this divisional machine gunbattalion and was wounded in the
attack on the Drocor Queontswitch line and died here of his
wounds.
And it's important, I think,that when we visit these

(40:18):
Canadian cemeteries in invertedcommas and we see British graves
amongst them, just like thecemetery itself, those graves
are not here by accident.
They tell us the wider story ofhow corps operated on the
battlefield, that even aCanadian corps might not just be
Canadian.

(40:38):
It relied on British units tosupport it, to fight alongside
it, and those men on both sidesof that divide from Canada and
Britain were proud to do that.
It was all part of thecamaraderie that existed, and
that I think transcendednational boundaries, something
that I think sometimes isperhaps lost occasionally in the

(41:01):
narrative of the First WorldWar, and we mentioned Tim Cork
in his writing at the beginningof this podcast, and he was very
good at that, explaining thewider picture of Canada's role
and its position within thewider British Expeditionary
Force in the Great War.
So for now we'll say goodbye tothe lads buried here at Ligny

(41:22):
Saint Flochelle.
Again, a cemetery not frequentlyvisited when I looked at the
cemetery visitors book.
There have not been many peoplethere, even during the summer.
But places like this, all partof our understanding, all part
of those layers of Great Warhistory.
And now we're going to continuewith our journey, cross over

(41:43):
that Sandpole, Arras Road, moveinto some of the villages that
get nearer to Arras itself.
And our next stop is not aburial ground, it's a village
behind the front, butnevertheless we can reach out
and touch those men who walkedthere in that past of the Great
War.

(42:09):
We've come to a small villagenow west of Arras.
We've moved nearer to thatfrontline area, probably about
twenty miles from the front, andfar enough back during the
conflict to be untouched by war,really.
The presence of war would havebeen everywhere.
In the early phase, Frenchsoldiers in their uniforms, and

(42:31):
then this vast sea of khaki asthe British army moved into this
area.
So it would have been clearly tothe villages of all these little
settlements in this part ofnorthern France, west of Arras,
it would have been clear thatthere was a conflict going on,
and in the distance would havebeen the rumble of the artillery
and the guns up on that veryfront line.

(42:51):
But the actual villagesthemselves largely were
untouched by damage in terms ofbombardments, because this far
back it was only really superheavy artillery that could reach
this kind of distance, or ashappened in that last period of
the Great War, German Gothabombers would come over into
these areas and bomb camps andammunition depots, so some

(43:15):
places could get damaged as aconsequence of it.
But largely in these villages,pretty much everything survives
from that period of the GreatWar.
It isn't actively preserved, butit wasn't damaged or destroyed,
so it didn't need to be knockeddown or rebuilt.
And that means there's a lot oforiginal buildings, and that's

(43:37):
important in terms of what we'reabout to discover and look at
now.
Now I'm not going to say exactlywhere this is for reasons that
will become apparent, but we'rein a typical little street, a
side street in one of thesevillages.
There are some houses, somemodern houses at one end of the

(43:58):
street built in the last coupleof decades, some older
buildings, a couple of farmbuildings ahead of us, and we're
standing outside a long barnwith a big wooden door and red
bricks with a line of soft stonerunning through the lower part
of it.
That soft chalk stone calledPierre in French is very common

(44:22):
in this region and was common inthe houses that were on the
battlefield, but of course allthose were destroyed, and we see
that kind of building style inthese places behind the lines.
So on this soft stone section ofwall that forms part of this
wider barn, we stop and wepause, and we note that

(44:42):
something appears to be writtento be carved on it, and it's
British graffiti from the GreatWar.
This is something that you willfind in almost every village in
this area, in any area behindthe front, but it's particularly
prolific here, and the owner hasasked for their privacy to be

(45:04):
respected, which is why I'm notsaying where it is.
I will put some pictures of someof the graffiti onto the podcast
website so you can see it, andas I walk along this wall, one
of the first ones that leap outis a name of a soldier and his
regiment carved alongside ahorse, a war horse, because this
soldier is Private H.

(45:25):
Y.
White of the first firstNorthumberland Hussars Yeomanry.
They were a territorial cavalryregiment that'd been in France
since the very beginning of thewar.
They'd been in the trenches, asdismounted cavalry, as infantry,
and when he came here with quitea few other members of his
regiment and carved this warhorse on this wall, they were

(45:46):
about to be an active cavalryregiment again, being at the
forefront of the British advancein those hundred days, doing
reconnaissance work, which manycavalry regiments had done in
that earlier phase of the GreatWar too.
And working along this line ofgraffiti, we come across a very
large ornately carved Canadianmaple leaf with the year 1918

(46:11):
beneath it, so again reflectingthe role of Canadian troops in
the fighting around Arras duringthat vital period of the Great
War.
And a few bricks away we findthe name A Nazard USA 1918.
Now, this is not in a mainAmerican Expeditionary Force
area, this is not an Americansector, but there were quite a

(46:33):
few American units detached fromthe main AEF and used with
British troops on the northernpart of the Western Front in
1918, and I would guess that hewas from one of those
formations, perhaps the 27th NewYork or the 30th Tennessee.
I looked, he's got an unusualname, Nazard.
He didn't serve in the CanadianExpeditionary Force, a lot of

(46:55):
Americans did, but he's not fromthat, so this must be a
doughboy, an American soldier,who stood in this street and
carved his name on the wallalongside his British and
Canadian buddies.
And then a few more stones up isa very ornate carving of the
badge of the Middlesex Regiment,the Diehards, with 1st 8th

(47:16):
Battalion underneath it.
They were a territorialbattalion, part of the 56th
London Division, who had takenpart in the fighting just south
of Arras in August of 1918, andalmost certainly this dates from
that period.
Close by we see some supporttroops mentioned, the East Lanx
Brigade of the Royal FieldArtillery and some soldiers'
names there.

(47:37):
There's quite a few machine guncorps names on here, including
James R.
Hampson of the 9th Machine GunBattalion, and men from the
Royal Naval Division as well.
So again, this reflects theBritish units attached to the
Canadians, because as wementioned earlier, the R and D,
the Royal Naval Division, wasattached to the Canadian Corps

(47:57):
in those battles beyond the DQline in that late summer, early
autumn of 1918, and they wouldremain attached to the Canadians
right up until the final battleat Mons in November of 1918.
Now, when I looked up some ofthe names that are on here,
pretty much all of them survivedthe war.
Instantly, I guess the thoughtis that these guys may have

(48:18):
died, but remember most men camehome.
But what we've got here, whyit's so important and why all of
this graffiti that we find inthese areas behind the lines is
so important, it's a snapshot intime, a moment in that great
war, in between battles, andthese men, like ghosts, they

(48:39):
live on through these carvings.
Their name, their stories havebecome part of this wider
landscape of the old front line,and this is just some of many
thousands of such names likethis, carved on walls, carved in
buildings, carved around theentrances to churches, all

(48:59):
across this region, andsomething we would never find
really on the actual front lineareas themselves, because any
building they could have puttheir name on was destroyed
there.
So that's why I think anotherreason why these places behind
the lines are so important toour wider understanding of what

(49:21):
we find on this landscape today.
And we'll continue our journeyout of this village, no doubt
passing through other villageswith as yet unseen, unknown
graffiti on buildings.
And if you found graffiti inyour travels in these places, do
let us know about it through thepodcast website or on the

(49:42):
Discord server, and there'slinks to both of those in the
show notes.
So we'll continue to our thirdand final casualty clearing
station cemetery, but one verydifferent to the others that
we've visited so far.

(50:03):
Every step of our journey takesus nearer and nearer to the
front line, but never to itprecisely.
We're still about fifteen mileswest of Arras, and we've come
into the village of ObignyOnatois, Obigny, to the British
troops, and we've gone to thesouthern area of that village,

(50:26):
where the main civil cemetery islocated in the open fields here.
So this is a civilian burialground for the people of
Aubigny.
When they pass away, this iswhere their family vaults will
be located.
But during the Great War,because of its position, its
vital position west of Arras,close to the St.

(50:46):
Paul Arras Road, and also closeto the railway links from St.
Paul to Arras, this meant it wasat a vital point where wounded
coming back from the front linecould be brought to by road and
then transferred onwards, eitherby road or railway, back to
hospitals much further away fromthe front.

(51:09):
So during the Great War, closeto the station, sidings were
built so that ambulance trainscould be brought in here, and
this became a hub for thereception of wounded.
So it's similar to the othercemeteries that we've come to in
that it came into existencebecause of the medical
facilities that were here, butthe difference with this one is

(51:33):
that it covers a much biggerperiod.
This cemetery is close to thesite of casualty stations when
it was being used by the Britishprior to that, the French
equivalent of that, but it's notjust in response, it doesn't
exist just in response to the1918 battles like the others
did.

(51:53):
In fact, its history covers allfour years of the conflict.
When the French army clashedwith the Germans around Arras in
1914, they too invested ininfrastructure behind the front,
especially when that front wentstatic in the autumn of 1914.
So French medical units were thefirst to establish themselves at
Albigny at this time, and thereare two main French burial sites

(52:18):
in this civil cemetery datingfrom the autumn of 1914 through
to early 1916.
Now this was my first visit toAlbigny last month when I came
here, and amongst the Frenchburials as I walked along the
rows of crosses and looked atthe Muslim graves of the

(52:38):
soldiers of French colonialunits who fought in this area.
I found those who'd been killedor died of wounds and were
buried here had come from thefront line around Arras itself.
There were men here who hadfallen in the fighting at
Corinthsi, a massive infantrybattle and mining offensive
there in 1915, and there werealso later casualties from the

(53:00):
attack on Notre Dame de Loretteand Hill 145, Vimy Ridge, when
the French were fighting there.
So this cemetery very muchreflected the units that were
fighting in the French TenthArmy in that sector at that
time.
The British Army then began totake over the Arras front, the
Arras sector, from about March1916 onwards, as the British

(53:23):
Expeditionary Force extended itslines south as the size of the
British Army on the WesternFront grew, and it was joined
not just by Canadians, but thenby Australians and New
Zealanders and South Africansand many others besides.
The front got longer and longer,and Arras became an essential
part of it.
And Albigny was then a placewhere the Royal Army Medical

(53:46):
Corps moved into and establishedsome of its first casualty
clearing stations in the Arrassector in this village.
The 42nd CCS opened up herefirst, and they used some old
French huts near the railwaystation and then they expanded
out into the fields close towhere the cemetery is today and
would spend the next two yearsin Albigny with their CCS

(54:11):
operating here through the wholeexperience of the British Army
and its Commonwealth, its Empireforces on the Arras Front.
They were joined on and off byother CCS as well, but the 42nd
CCS remained here throughout.
So in this cemetery, AlbignyCommunal Cemetery Extension,
there are 3,067 burials from theGreat War.

(54:35):
2,049 of those are from Britain,666 are from Canada, 50 from
South Africa, 4 from Australia,2 New Zealand, 222 from France,
and 64 German.
The Commonwealth plot is behindthe main civil cemetery, and the

(54:56):
headstones again are very closetogether, which is common in CCS
cemeteries because again theywould have dug trenches here,
and when men died they wereburied in coffins in the rows
where those trenches were, andgradually those graves would be
filled in by the burials.
There's also, as you walk round,separate plots for officers that

(55:16):
are quite discernible, and thisagain wasn't uncommon in
cemeteries that were away fromthe front line.
The kind of class structure,particularly of the British
Army, was reflected in the waymen were buried, and officers
would be separated when theydied from the men and be buried
in their own plots.
Up on the battlefield, officersand men shared the same

(55:38):
privations, and in thosecemeteries you'll see them
buried side by side.
But the further you get awayfrom the front, it's not
uncommon to see those old ideasof the separation of officers
from men to see that continue.
And here you'll see that veryclearly in a row of officers'
graves along one side of thecemetery, and then a separate

(56:00):
plot from 1917-18, although incertain parts of the cemetery
some officers are buried withthe men too.
When we look at the earlyburials that are in here,
they're from the 46th NorthMidland Division who were
holding the line around Lens,and also quite a lot from the
51st Highland Division, who werean early unit that took over

(56:20):
parts of the Arras Front in 1916before the time of the Battle of
the Somme.
And in the summer of 1916, asunits were released from Arras
to go down and fight on theSomme Front, the 60th London
Division came across to Franceand took over this sector around
Arras.
And these were wartime recruitedterritorial battalions, often

(56:43):
called second line territorialbattalions.
So, for example, there was the20th Blackheath and Woolwich
Battalion in this division.
Its original battalion was inthe 47th London Division, they
were the 1st 20th, and the onethat was in the 60th Div in this
unit was the 2nd 20th, andyou'll see that in the order of
battle for this unit.

(57:05):
They spent quite a time hereleading up to the autumn of
1916, and then went off toSalonica, and from Salonica they
went to Palestine and fought inthe battles in the desert and
were in the capture of Jerusalemthere, and one of its brigades
then returned to the WesternFront, the 2nd 20th being one of
the battalions that came back,and they ended up being attached

(57:26):
to another division and fightingin the battles on the Hindenburg
line.
But their early casualties arevery much represented amongst
that summer of 1916 period hereat Albigny Cemetery.
The Battle of Arras is very wellcovered, and we see lots of
units from that April and May1917 period, as well as the long
quiet period that followed theBattle of Arras and the German

(57:49):
attack in that sector in March1918, and then the final
breakout battles led by theCanadian Corps in that late
summer of the same year.
Indeed, for that final period,this is very much a Canadian
cemetery when we look at thedead from that August and
September 1918 period.

(58:10):
And one of the reasons I wantedto come here was to visit the
grave of a very special, aunique Canadian soldier from the
Great War.
Now I've had a lifelong interestin the Canadian Expeditionary
Force in terms of my widerinterest in the Great War for
all kinds of reasons, includingthe fact that I lived on a
Canadian battlefield atCorsulette for so many years,

(58:32):
and I've followed them aroundthe Western Front and other
places where they served for allof that time, for four decades.
And I've got a great admirationand respect for the Canadian
soldier in the Great War, andit's always good to pick up on
news stories or to finally getto stand at the grave of someone
that you'd read about a lot.
And in this case, that's exactlywhat I did at Albigny Cemetery.

(58:56):
Here I stood at the grave ofPrivate Claude Nunny, VC DCM MM
of the 38th Canadian Infantry.
He died of wounds on the 18th ofSeptember 1918, aged 29.
Claude Nunny was the mostdecorated, ordinary Canadian
soldier of the Great War.
He collected the full set, theVictoria Cross, the

(59:19):
Distinguished Conduct Medal, andthe Military Medal.
Aside from his bravery and longwar on the front line, for me
another connection was thatNunny was a Sussex lad from
Hastings on the Sussex coast.
Although, for some reason, inhis papers, he claimed he was
from Dublin.
His mother died when he was veryyoung, and he and his siblings

(59:41):
were sent to Canada as a homechild, a project to rehome
orphans, which today is seen asa very controversial one.
They were all split up when theygot to Canada, and Claude ended
up with a family in NorthLancaster, Ontario in 1905.
A decade later the Great Warcame and He was an original
member, an original soldierenlisted in the 38th Battalion

(01:00:04):
Canadian Infantry, which wasrecruited in Ottawa, and after
training, he found himself ongarrison duty on Bermuda in
1915, eventually reachingEngland in June 1916 as part of
the newly formed 4th CanadianDivision.
They then went to France and hefought at Corsolette in the
final battles there on the 18thof November 1916 in the attack

(01:00:27):
on Desire Trench, a tough battlein awful weather when snow
completely blotted out thebattlefield as the fighting
there came to an end.
And later in the attack at VimyRidge, he went into action there
with Captain Thane McDowellhelping him to capture some
German strong points on theridge and Germans in a tunnel
system beneath Vimy Ridge, as bythis time Claude Nunny was part

(01:00:51):
of a Lewis gun team and he laiddown supportive fire to McDowell
and his men who were going forthese objectives.
McDowell was awarded theVictoria Cross for his bravery
and Nunny the DCM.
He was then promoted to sergeantand later awarded a military
medal for a large trench raid atAvion near Lens in June of 1917

(01:01:11):
and was gassed the followingmonth, which got him out of the
line until the following year.
In the spring of nineteeneighteen, however, he faced
court martial for striking asuperior officer and after being
convicted was being sent bylorry to a military prison when
a German aircraft crashed closeby, and he and some of the other

(01:01:34):
prisoners leapt out of thelorry, ran across the field and
rescued the German air crew fromthe aircraft despite the flames.
He was very badly burnt duringthat rescue mission, and for his
bravery there, his sentence wassuspended, but he lost his
stripes and reverted to private,and after he'd recovered from

(01:01:55):
his burns, rejoined the 38thBattalion in the field in August
1918, just after their action onthe Somme.
And at the same time he learnedthat his brother Alfred, who he
possibly had not seen for manyyears since they had been sent
to Canada, he'd been killed withthe 44th Canadians on the Somme
on the 10th of August 1918.

(01:02:15):
Having been awarded the DCM andthe MM, he was one of the most
decorated men in the 38thBattalion, but his next action
would result in the award of theVictoria Cross.
This was part of the attack atDury on the DQ line that was
spoken about quite a lot in thispodcast, the Drocor Cuillon
Switch line, part of the mainHindenburg line, and his part of

(01:02:39):
that took place on the 1st and2nd of September 1918.
His citation reads On 1st ofSeptember, when his battalion
was in the vicinity ofVisenartois, preparatory to the
advance, the enemy laid down aheavy barrage and
counter-attacked.
Private Nunny, who was at thistime at Company headquarters,
immediately on his owninitiative, proceeded through

(01:03:01):
the barrage to the companyoutpost lines, going from post
to post and encouraging the menby his own fearless example.
The enemy were repulsed and acritical situation was saved.
During the attack on Septemberthe second, his dash continually
placed him in advance of hiscompanions, and his fearless
example undoubtedly helpedgreatly to carry the company

(01:03:24):
forward to its objectives.
He displayed throughout thehighest degree of valour until
severely wounded.
The VC was recommended on the9th of September, and by this
time he'd been evacuated to thecasualty clearing station here
at Albigny, but he knew of therecommendation for this award.
He knew that his name had beenput forward for the Victoria

(01:03:47):
Cross, but the wounds he'dsustained were so serious that
he finally succumbed to them onthe eighteenth of september
nineteen eighteen.
Claude Nunny was one of sevenCanadian soldiers awarded the
Victoria Cross for the DQ linebattle at Jurocor Queen Switch
Line Battle, and the only manfrom Hastings in Sussex to get

(01:04:07):
the Victoria Cross in the GreatWar.
Nunny was only five foot fiveand he'd been a house painter
before the war, but in uniform,with a weapon in his hand and
bravery in his heart, he'dstepped over that line from
soldier to warrior, as hisconduct and decorations clearly

(01:04:29):
showed.
Today he lies in this vastsoldier's cemetery, surrounded
by Canadian comrades who died inthe same battle, and alongside
men from many nations who foughtat Arras like he did in the
Great War.
Albigny is not frequentlyvisited.
It was my first time here, butlike so many places in this

(01:04:52):
landscape beyond thebattlefields themselves, there's
so much to find here, and somany layers of First World War
history.
Nani and men like him often hadlong wars, and today they guard
places beyond that zone ofdarkness where the vast engine

(01:05:12):
of war once raged.
But nevertheless, this is theirpart of that old frontline.
You've been listening to anepisode of the Old Frontline
with me, military historian PaulReed.
You can follow me on Twitter atSomcor, you can follow the

(01:05:35):
podcast at Old Frontline 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 supportingus, you can go to our Patreon
page, patreon.com slasholdfrontline, or support us on

(01:05:55):
buymea coffee atbuymeacoffee.com slash
oldfrontline.
Links to all of these are on ourwebsites.
Thanks for listening, and we'llsee you again soon.