In this episode we travel to the last major battlefield of the Great War on the Western Front - the Sambre Canal. Here we follow the story of the infantry and the engineers who attacked the Canal on 4th November 1918, including the 2nd Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment. We also see what remains of the battlefield today.

The interview with Josh Grover MM is on the IWM website here: Josh Grover MM interview.

Recommended Book: Decisive Victory by Derek Clayton.

Thread on the Great War Forum: Royal Sussex Regiment at Lock No 1.

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Our questions and answers in this episode look at what happened to trench systems when they met a road, was the Battle of the Somme a victory, how France remembers the Great War, and the role of the Army Service Corps in the conflict.

Somme Book Recommendations: Gary Sheffield Forgotten Victory and also Paddy Griffith Battle Tactics on the Western Front.

Book Recommendations: Michael Young Postcards of the Army Service Corps and Michael Young Army Service Corps 1902-1918.

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Continuing our journeys along the roads which crisscross the landscape of the Western Front, we travel to Flanders in Belgium, and take the old Roman road between the city of Ypres and the town of Menin which follows the story of four years of conflict here in the First World War and discuss once more the 'culture' of The Old Front Line.

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This week we discuss the background to the names British soldiers gave their German counterparts - names like Fritz and Bosch - we examine the role Portugal had on the Western Front and discuss where they are memorialised, look out how modern development has changed The Old Front Line and who was Princess Patricia of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry?

You can find the Old Front Line YouTube Channel here: Old Front Line on YouTube.

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In this episode for the fifth anniversary of the Podcast we travel back to the Somme and look at the story behind the naming of Tara and Usna Hills overlooking La Boisselle, and discuss two First World War objects found in a Somme junk sale.

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In this episode we cover subjects from how the British and Commonwealth soldier named the 'Battle of the Somme' in 1916 to how Irish soldiers on the front line in France thought about the Easter Rising in Dublin in April 1916, to the flooding of the Yser Plain in 1914 and how infantry signallers went over the top in the Great War.

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From a recently recorded livestream on the battlefields of Ypres in Flanders, join us on a walk around the reconstructed First World War trenches in Bayernwald - 'Bavarian Wood' - called Croonaert Wood on the British trench maps.

You can watch the livestream from the Bayernwald Trenches on the Old Front Line YouTube Channel.

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This weeks subjects include how trenches in the First World War got their names, what happened to the pay of Missing soldiers and were men who were Prisoners of War paid at all, why did the Western Front stop at the Swiss border, and what happened to the soldiers and units positioned on the flanks of big attacks and operations?

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We visit the Hindenburg Line battlefields of 1917 where the Battle of Cambrai was fought. We see the battlefield around Metz-en-Couture, visit the cemetery here and grave of Patrick Shaw-Stewart, and then walk down in Gouzeaucourt seeing a rare British bunker from WW1 and a memorial to the 11th Engineers of the US Army, ending on the high ground where the Welsh Guards counter-attacked in December 1917.

The book mentioned was Children of the Souls by Jeanne MacKenzie. 

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Our latest Questions and Answers cover the military importance of Ypres in WW1, the French Cemetery and Memorials at Notre Dame de Lorette in Northern France, weather on the landscape of the Western Front, and the role of Women in the British Army in France and Flanders.

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