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.

Got a question about this episode or any others? Drop your question into the Old Front Line Discord Server or email the podcast.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

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.

Got a question about this episode or any others? Drop your question into the Old Front Line Discord Server or email the podcast.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

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.

Got a question about this episode or any others? Drop your question into the Old Front Line Discord Server or email the podcast.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

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.

Got a question about this episode or any others? Drop your question into the Old Front Line Discord Server or email the podcast.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

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.

Got a question about this episode or any others? Drop your question into the Old Front Line Discord Server or email the podcast.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

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?

Got a question about this episode or any others? Drop your question into the Old Front Line Discord Server or email the podcast.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

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. 

Got a question about this episode or any others? Drop your question into the Old Front Line Discord Server or email the podcast.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

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.

Got a question about this episode or any others? Drop your question into the Old Front Line Discord Server or email the podcast.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Our World War was a three-part BBC Drama series for the Great War Centenary in 2014 covering the fighting at Mons in 1914, the Somme in 1916 and the Battle of Amiens in 1918. It pioneered a new approach to film making about the Great War but a decade on is it still relevant and what does it tell us about the Great War?

The Paddy Kennedy interview is in the archives of the Imperial War Museum.

Got a question about this episode or any others? Drop your question into the Old Front Line Discord Server or email the podcast.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

In our latest round-up of Questions and Answers we look at Memorials to non-white soldiers on the Western Front, whether 'battle bars' were ever planned for WW1 British and Commonwealth campaign medals, the award of the 'Blue Max' to German soldiers, and were ordinary soldiers told about the explosion of huge mines like the one under Hawthorn Ridge on the Somme. 

Reading List:

Kevin Brazier - The Complete Blue Max: A Chronological Record of the Holders of the Pour le Mérite

Erwin Rommel - Infantry Attacks

Ernest Jünger - Storm of Steel

Christina Holstein - Walking Verdun

Got a question about this episode or any others? Drop your question into the Old Front Line Discord Server or email the podcast.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show