From Bully Beef to Hardtack and Plum and Apple Jam... what did the British Tommy in the trenches of the Western Front eat? How was it supplied, how good was his food, how did it reach him, and having had a meal, how did he go to the toilet? 

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We return to the 'Forgotten Front' in Northern France where the British operations on the Western Front took place in 1915, and there were long periods of static trench warfare. Here we visit the site of the Cuinchy 'Brickstacks' - huge stacks of undelivered bricks that formed towers on the battlefield here. 

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In this episode, we follow Great War poets Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon into the trenches near Fricourt at the 'Bois Français' during the months before the 1916 battle and learn about how the death of a much-beloved comrade affected them both.

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Christmas Day in 1914 - a day we more commonly associate with a Christmas Truce between the British and Germans. Who died and where, and how many? 

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In a special Trench Chat, we are joined by Matt Dixon, host of the Footsteps of the Fallen Podcast. We talk about Matt's interest in the Great War, what led him to produce the podcast and the books he is currently working on. 

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In this episode, we go 'off the beaten track' at Vimy Ridge and look at two unusual cemeteries on the battlefield here - Lichfield and Zivy Crater Cemeteries - where the Canadians buried their dead in some old mine craters in April 1917. 

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In this episode we are Behind the Lines on the Somme, starting in the small village of Heilly, and looking at how soldiers were billeted in places like this, we then walk down to the railway station and examine the use of railways on the Somme and establishment of medical facilities for the wounded. We end at Heilly Station Cemetery, a vast city of the dead from the Somme battles of 1916.

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In this episode, we return to Flanders, and walk from the Lille Gate on the edge of the city of Ypres via 'Shrapnel Corner' to Bedford House Cemetery, one of the largest in this area and laid out in an unusual way. We end on the old Ypres-Comines Canal where the German Army was stopped south of Ypres in April 1918.

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In the second of our episodes recorded while on a Leger Battlefield Tour, we travel to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Experience at Arras and then down to the Somme battlefields to see the Lochnagar Crater, the Ulster Tower, the trenches in the Newfoundland Park and end at 'Mighty Thiepval'.

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In an episode released between Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday, we pause to Remember. We reflect on the veterans back in the 80s and 90s, and think about what visiting the battlefields of the Great War means to us more than a century later. 

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