In June 1916, Lord Kitchener of Khartoum was on board HMS Hampshire, heading for Archangel in Russia for top-secret talks.

About 1 mile from the Orkney Islands, HMS Hampshire exploded and sank to the bottom of the sea, killing 737 of the 749 souls on board, including Kitchener himself.  For the Great War generation, this was their 9/11 or Kennedy assassination. There was a genuine fear that without Kitchener, there was no hope that the war would be won.

But, no sooner had the Hampshire sunk than rumours began circulating about the events of that evening.  Why did armed soldiers stop people from heading to the shore to try and rescue the survivors? Why did the Stromness lifeboat not launch?  In this episode, we look at one of the great conspiracies of the Great War and try to get to the bottom of exactly what happened that night. 

Support us: www.buymeacoffee.com/footstepsblog or www.patreon.com/footstepsofthefallen

Our latest episode begins in Couin military cemetery where a top hat and white gloves marks the final resting place of Edwardian theatre's greatest dandy, Basil Radford, or as he was more commonly known Gilbert the Filbert.  Before his untimely death on the Somme, Radford was one of a huge number of entertainers and theatre stars who served in the Great War and used their talents to entertain the men when not in the lines.

How did men entertain themselves when not in the trenches? The birth of the concert party was largely down to the work of one remarkable woman, who used her influence and theatrical skills to manage over 25 travelling entertainment parties who provided amusement to hundreds of troops.

We hear the story of an aviation-loving actor who stole an entire Red Cross building to create a theatre behind the lines.  Hear about how the King of Spain's intervention led to the release of one of France's greatest crooners from a German prison camp, Ivor Novello's unique approach to being discharged from the air force, and why you should never play cards for money when someone's fiddling with a hand grenade nearby.

This episode is dedicated to the memory of Stephen Runnacles. 

Support the podcast: www.buymeacoffee.com/footstepsblog or www.patreon.com/footstepsofthefallen

In this second episode about the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing, it's an absolute pleasure to sit down and chat with Georgia Brusby, who served as an Intern for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission at Thiepval through the summer and autumn of 2019.

Her passion and enthusiasm for history and the Memorial come through as we talk about the importance of remembrance, some of the remarkable stories of the men who are commemorated there, the dangers of low flying wreaths, and the hidden history inscribed on the door that none of us get to see.

Please vote! www.britishpodcastawards.com/vote

Support the podcast: www.buymeacoffee.com/footstepsblog or www.patreon.com/footstepsofthefallen

In this first episode of a two-part podcast, we visit the largest British war memorial in the world, Sir Edwin Lutyen's geometric masterpiece, the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing.

Bearing the names of over 72,000 British and South African soldiers who died on the Somme and have no known grave, the memorial stands as a testament to the volunteer Army who responded to Lord Kitchener's famous "Your country needs you!" appeal and who were killed in their thousands on the fields of Picardy in the Somme campaign.

We hear the story of a 20-year-old Irishman who won the Victoria Cross laying his life down for his friends and a 51-year-old international rugby-playing Vicar who enlisted to encourage others from his small parish in Kent.  We hear about the remarkable design of the memorial the trials and tribulations of French bureaucracy to get the memorial built, and how millions of years of history lie beneath your feet when you stand next to the magnificent War Stone under the memorial. 

Please vote! www.britishpodcastawards.com/vote

Support the podcast: www.buymeacoffee.com/footstepspod or www.patreon.com/footstepsofthefallen

On the 29th of September 1918, men from the Staffordshire Brigade successfully smashed through the German lines in the most heavily defended area of the Western Front, around the canal at Ricqueval.

It was a remarkable success for a Brigade so unfairly criticised for its actions at Gommecourt in 1916 and was a fine example of planning, coordination, and derring-do.  The battle didn't go entirely the Allies' way.  Men from the 107th American Infantry suffered more casualties that day than any other US Battalion during the entire War, and the tanks supposed to support the attack were destroyed and rendered largely useless. 

We hear about one of the most iconic pictures of the Great War, the actions of the man known as the Tally Ho VC, and the macabre discovery in the south entrance of the Bellicourt tunnel that propagated rumours about the existence of "the Bone Factory". 

In this episode, we visit the famously preserved trenches at Sanctuary Wood near Ypres.  This remarkable landscape of trenches and dugouts is a must-see for any battlefield visitor.  The museum attached to the cafe contains a remarkable and often chilling set of stereo-scope images that show the Great War in a level of violent detail very rarely seen.

We examine the work of a Royal Engineers officer by the name of William Livens, whose hatred of the Germans drove his life's work, to design and develop weapons to kill as many Germans as he could.  Dangerous to know, he turned his barracks bedroom into a bomb factory and made flame throwers in the officer's mess. He is best known for his invention of the Livens Projector, the standard British trench mortar, and he was twice decorated for bravery. 

We meet once again, Bernard, a stalwart of The Roundabout Appreciation Society, a man who never let the vagaries of Belgian weather get him down, and whose visit to Sanctuary Wood nearly ended in disaster thanks to a dropped umbrella and being strangled by his own anorak.

Support us: www.buymeacoffee.com/footstepsblog or www.patreon.com/footstepsofthefallen

In this special episode of Trench Talk, I have the pleasure of sitting down with Belgian archaeologist Simon Verdegem and talking about his career specializing in the excavation of WW1 sites. 

We talk about his introduction to archaeology and the poignant discovery of the remains of a New Zealand soldier in excavations in Messines.  We look at the hugely successful Dig Hill 80 project at Wytschaete, and some of the incredible archaeological finds that came out of the project., including a rare signallers lamp and a harmonica.

Simon talks about the problems of identifying the dead, and why, despite the small percentage of soldiers whose mortal remains are finally identified, he remains as enthusiastic today about recovering the dead as he was when he began his career. We reminisce on the top finds of his archaeology career and consider what next for the battlefields of Flanders.  

In January 1917, a  German encrypted message was intercepted by a small relay station in Cornwall and passed to the secretive world of the code breakers inhabiting the dingy Room 40 in the Admiralty building in London's Whitehall.

In the room were some of the finest minds in England, led by the enigmatic and charismatic Oxbridge scholar Albert "Dilly" Knox.  The team, including a man known as "The Dormouse" and a cake-loving Vicar called Monty, decrypted the message, and its 166-word content was political and diplomatic dynamite, that changed the entire course of the Great War.

Known to this day as The Zimmerman Telegramme, the explosive contents caused the previously neutral United States to join the war on the side of the Allies.   What did the telegramme say? How did the British intercept it, and why did the contents change the course of World War One?  Find out in this latest podcast, where we look at the single greatest intelligence triumph of the First World War. 


Support us: www.buymeacoffee.com/footstepsblog or www.patreon.com/footstepsfothefallen

In this episode, we begin our journey through the footsteps of the fallen in Brighton, where one Autumn afternoon in 1915 the Constabulary were called to a disturbance on the seafront, following the appearance of a large collection of saber-wielding men.

On arrival, however, they found calm, with the genteel folk of Brighton swapping cigarettes for chapatis with the Indian soldiers who were happily cooking their dinner in the seafront gardens.  Who were these men, and how did they find themselves in Brighton?

We look at the history of the Indian Army, their baptism of fire on the Western Front in Belgium, and hear the story of Khudadar Khan, the first Indian soldier to win a Victoria Cross during the Great War.  We hear about how the theft of a German officer's sword, turned one Punjabi soldier into the scourge of the Germans, and discover all about the mysterious medicinal qualities of Indian treacle. 

Support the podcast: www.buymeacoffee.com/footstepsblog or www.patreon.com/footstepsblog

In our latest episode, we walk the battlefield in one of the lesser-known killing fields of the Somme, Trones Wood.

While diminutive in size, the wood was a fearsome obstacle, whose capture was essential for the wider assualts planned on the Somme front, starting on the 14th July.

For a period of five days, the British and Germans fought brutally for control of the wood, and it was a remarkable attack by the men of the Northamptonshire Regiment, that finally wrested control of the wood from the Germans.  Described by many veterans as the worst place they ever saw during the Great War, Trones Wood cost the British over 4000 casualties, and won the Northants their first Victoria Cross of World War One.