Gallipoli Cemeteries

Railways were an essential part of the Great War, and the line which ran from Northern France to Poperinghe and Ypres became the route in and out of the battlefield for millions of men during the conflict. What can we learn of the history of the railways in Flanders and what do we find of it on the landscape of the Western Front today?

In August 1914 a force of more than 55,000 German soldiers descended on the Belgian city of Liege. Protected by a belt of steel and concrete forts, at Fort de Loncin the garrison of 550 men came under murderous German artillery fire resulting in a huge explosion that turned this site into a national cemetery and memorial, and came to stand for Belgian defiance in that first year of the war.

The website of the fort is here: Fort de Loncin.

We look at two exhibitions in two key institutions that connect us to the history of the Great War: the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres and Imperial War Museum in London. At Ypres we see an exhibition about the history of the war cemeteries in Flanders, and at the IWM a new gallery devoted to war art, photography and film.

Imperial War Museum - Restoration of the John Singer Sergeant Gassed painting.

In this latest episode of Despatches, we examine an original Trench Map from the Battle of the Somme in 1916, showing the battlefield around the village of Courcelette where the Canadians fought. What are Trench Maps, and what do they tell us about the history and landscape of the Great War?

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Returning to the History of the First World War we find on our doorsteps, we visit Shorncliffe in Kent to record an episode onsite. Here during the Great War were an Army Garrison, along with a major training centre. We discover the important role of the Canadians at Shorncliffe, the men of the Chinese Labour Corps who had their camp here, and also discuss the first Gotha Bomber raid on Britain by the Germans in 1917.

In this episode we look at so-called 'War Damage Postcards' published during the conflict and which depicts the smashed villages, towns and cities, and indeed landscapes of the Western Front. We ask what these postcards tell us about the conflict and the battlefields of the Old Front Line?

The images discussed can be found on the Podcast website here: https://oldfrontline.co.uk/2024/02/03/despatches-war-damage-postcards/

In this latest Despatches we discuss the passing of author Martin Middlebrook, and look back to another Great War icon, perhaps lesser known, John Giles. John founded the Western Front Association in 1980, wrote a series of books on the Western Front, and in 1982 took what was then a unique flight over the Old Front Line. We look back on that aerial survey and discuss what landscape means to us on the ground and from the air.

While the Great War was still on the British Government decided to produce a Next of Kin Memorial Plaque for all those who had died while on service in the conflict, which read 'He Died For Freedom and Honour'. Often called a "Dead Man's Penny" or 'Widow's Penny" or even 'Death Plaque", eventually over 1.1 million were produced for every British and Commonwealth service men and women who died. In this episode of Despatches, we examine their history and what these objects mean more than a century later.

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A staggering 12 million letters were going to and from the Western Front during the Great War. What was the history of the Royal Engineers Postal Section, how did letters and parcels get to troops in the front line, and how did censorship work for all those letters from the trenches?

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In our first podcast of 2024 we return to Flanders to look at some of the history behind the original burials at Tyne Cot Cemetery near Ypres, the largest British and Commonwealth cemetery from either World War. Was there really once an Advanced Dressing Station here, and if not what does the archive evidence tell us about how this site evolved?

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