Companionship and Life Beyond the Front

Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up history and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like How William Conquered England What it was like to live in the Georgian era And you can even hear the voice of Richard III We got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week And there's always something more to discover Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit history at. com slash subscribe the worst time and place in history Maybe Life in the trenches of World War One It wasn't just about facing the enemy, it was about surviving all sorts of other things. the filth, the disease, the frostbes The psychological challenge Imagine mud stretching as far as the eye can see Wooden planks barely keeping your feet from sinking sandbagged walls rising only a few feet around you Wols in which remains of the unburied dead stuck out. The air is thick with smoke. The thrumb of artillery shakes the ground beneath your feet. Around you, soldiers lived shoulder to shoulder There are rats and filth. You know that at any moment a shell could explode, a rifle bullet could tear into you, or a deadly cloud of gas could drift over that p for four long years millions of men endured this harsh Caustrophobic reality W even the smallest injuries or illness Proove fate In today's episode, we're going to be exploring How soldiers manage to survive this relentless environment what threats lurked in the trenches beyond enemy fire, And the human ingenuity, the resilience, the comamraderie that kept them alive through one of history's deadliest wars and not just alive In fact for some of them, even enjoy I'm joined by Joshua Levine, author of lots and lots of wonderful books, mostost pertent to today's discussion voices of the song and that draws on firsth accounts to document the day to day struggles of trench life and a heat of combat during Let's get into it Josh Leiving, good to see you. Lovely to be here Dan, thanks. Let's take the biggest question the way first. We talk about trench warfare, we talk about the Western frront. So from let's say Late nineteen fourteen to sort of nineteen sixteen, that era What is a trench? What would it looked like? So well let's define what a trench is in the first place because it's not You know, necessarily straightforward. a trench is digging in in order to defend yourself from whatever the enemy is throwing at you. whether it's coming at you, whether it's firing at you. has been around for thousands of years. It's a really basic fundamental idea and Over the years it became more elaborate. You did have trench systems. But they werere only ever intended to be temporary, you know, in the American Civil War and the Boa War, the years leading up to the First World War But at the time of the First World War None of this none of what happened was in any way anticipated. It was going to be a mobile war At the beginning, it was a mobile war But you had the Germans held up as they were advancing of them on And then you had them building a series of trenches British response, built trenches. and I've got this extraordinary account that I found in the National Archive from an observer, so someone's flying alongside a pilot the airplanes at this point were doing reconnaissance lookingooking down and on the ae onn the thirteenth of September, so you know, really Soon into the war, seeing the Germans builduilding trenches That's really that's the kickoff point for the firstirst World Wars we know it. So then the British would build or the Allies would build trenches That began the race to the sea And what that meant was basically trying to outflank, trying to outflank trying to outflank. But every time an outflanking move was made, another trench was built. So trench, trench, trench, trench, trench all the way to the North Sea one side and frontier of Switzerland on the other side. So what overver four hundred miles you're talking about? The firepower revolution has happened. so the air is so full of supersonic shell fragments shrapnel and rifle bullets, machine gun bullets that actually to stay alive, you have to go underground. And if you think about the developments that have been made at A a time of incredible development in terms of weaponry So what were some of these developments? Well, you know, in terms of artillery, You know, guns didn't have to be recalibrated. you know, in the old days they would you know, jump backwards and you'd have to mount them set them up again. didnid't have to do that now So, you know, your rate of fire was so much quicker and also, you know, the power, the strength of them You know, I was I was trying to work it out the other day that one of the, you know, the stock Field gun, British field gun, the eighteen pounder. I think you could f could fire If you put it in Charing Cross, I think I'm right in saying it could hit gold as green. Not saying you'd want to but you could. And and even the machine guns, you know, the The development of the machine guns. You know, you had the Vickers gun, which was the heavy gun on British side, the Lewis gun, which was the light machine gun could be carried by one man could be five from shoulder, five from the hip or set up on a bipod. You know, that could that could reach Camdenown, I worked out. You know, These were and firing hundreds of rounds So one man, effectively is now able to hack the punch of an entire battalion of infantry in the one hundred years previously. And if you look at communications, for example, field telephones, which relied on wires muchuch easier to go backwards. You know if you're advancing, you basically lose communication the developments in defences like barbed wire which could channel people into killing zones as they came forward All of these developments were really helping the defenders You know, they weren't they weren't useful particularly to the attackers. And in a situation like that, the ultimate defense is a trench. You know, you can get into a trench You can you're not safe. You know, in the early years in the later years, if for sheell you know, as artillery becomes more and more important and there's more and more of it and the economies of the nations gear up to building more and more guns You know, a shell lands in your trench If land's near you, you know, you're for it. And there are snipers everywhere You always have to be careful of snipers. There are a lot of ways to die in a trench But they're a hell of a lot safer than being above ground. So this is why they developed and this is why the war became O of stasis for so many years. And our sort of image of the First Wars people Not even necessarily the big offensives, the big battles. It's just people the way they lived and just sort of fought attritionally in these trenches for months for years on end Tell me would Is it that is that a myth? Is it true? wouldould units be living in this sort of muddy trench? No I think that is one of the myths that, you know, people arrived in the trench, they stayed in the trench and they came out of the trench on Amisttersay, you know, that's not what happ happened. I mean and there were practical reasons for the rotation Well basically you would be in the front line trench. four, five, six days at most, then you would probably go back to the support trench, which was behind. So the front line trench basically you had You had a fire step. it would be what? It would be, you know, a bit taller than a man It would have a fire step that you would stand on in order to see over the top to see what was ahead. You'd probably have a periscope there. It would be quite heavily revetted, it would be built up with sandbags, it would be built up with wood. and you would have you might have funk holes at the front, which were Dug out almost like a bunk bed, like one of Scandinavian bunk. J just a little hole really that a man could squeeze into And they were actually discouraged because they were sort of undermining the trench it, but people did it because They did it And you would have dugouts, not particularly elaborate dugouts, but you know, enough for officers for for whatever, really. I mean, people like to say, oh yes, this was for X, this was for Y Youve as a huge system of trenches is covering hundreds of miles over O four years. I mean, they did they were used for what they were used for. And so you speent not that long actually A couple of days. You spent a few days in the front line. I bet you'd get muddy and filthy You would get absolutely muddy and filthy. And I get it depended way of course depended the time of year. and it depended on many, many things. But yes, I mean, it is true to say that a lot of the time You were living in filth. You were living with rats. you were living with lice you might have trench foot You know, Trenchfoot was You know, the boots were leather. they were perfectly good. I think they got better boots in nineteen fifteen But know twenty thousand people had trench fooot by the end of nineteen fourteen. Your feet got wet Cold They never dried out, and they almost started to rot You know, people ended up with gangrene, they were losing toes, they were losing. And so you know, you had you had foot inspection you know, in the morning, where officers it's surreal picture where officers were sort of inspecting the feet of their men It's almost like, you know, the pope kissing the feet of the people. And they would rub whale oil in into their feet, into their socks The boots you know, changeed slightly so they were rough on the outside so you could rub oil in and make them more waterproof. In certain very wet areas, Flanders, for example people were given rubber waders or rubber boots. So that was, you know, that and then after after they'd more or less eradicated it It was it actually became a crime. It was considered a self inflicted wound to have to have trench French fever, you got from the feces of lice u And basically you had to realize you'd be scratching and species will get inside or the poison would get inside. And that It was a really nasty disease. It took a while to incubate. and then you were you know high fever and pain for five days, it would go, it would come back And then was one these kind of things probably move on to this, but you know, because you werere out of action, potentially for three months, didn't kill you People saw it as almost as good as a blighty wound. You know, you were out of the line for three months. You felt terrible you weren't going to die. So you know, there was that There was the mud, there was the cold. the unburied dead from previous attacks? Unburied dead. Unburied dead inside the trenches. You know sometimes the walls were built up There was a story of one man It was talking about walking down one of the communication trenches. you know, to get to the front line And he said there was an arm sticking out. And we never moved it because it became a sort of friend You know, we we some people shake his hand Some people would say, you know, hello chum And it became part of the grim humor, but, you know, it it also shows that there were people inside the, you know, the fabric of the trench One man said, you know, he moved into a French had recently been a French trench And he was doing some wiring. one night front and he fell in to basically and some bodies, some decomposed Bodies And he said it was the most disgusting feeling He sort of pulled himself out of it, I think he said of like jam And he pulled into I mean, can you imagine just these astonishing And we haven't really talked about enemy fire particularlyet, but that's the condition in the frontline trench. You mentioned the communication trench. so they have a lot of time on their hands. that are a lot of bodies so they're digging back to a second line of trenches and even a third line are they? And but so the troops are sort of rotating through. So after some time in the front line, you might go back to the second line. So you'd have a very different experience and then beyond the third line, you might go back to have a bit of R and R way back. So Your experience on the Western frront would be very different depending on your rotation. Absolutely. and You know, like I said, there is this idea you are always there stand to and you're always ready to go over the top of course that's not true The support trench, which would be I don't, about a hundred yards behind you'd have been a kind of reserve troop and there would be supplies in there that'd be soldiers ready to move forward if necessary. You'd have a reserve trench, quite a lot further back, five hundred yards further back and there you might have a regimental aid post, you know, the first of the the medical posts, you might have a command post, you might have a I don't know, some kind of bit of a biger kchen perhaps some. Yeah, you get absolutely punhing out some hot. And then the re and then you have communication trenches leading all the way back and You know it was a proper maze. If you were arriving in the trenches, you would hopefully have a guide bring you forward because you know, it's very complicated to know exactly where Trenches had names. you know, communication trenches had names, the junctions had names, you know From wherever the local troops were from. If there were Scottish, they'd be M Glasgow names, London might be Pigerly circus and And So is a complicated business, you would go back to the reserve trench you would go behind the lines where as you say, you would have some, you know, you'd have a bath for one thing you'd be able to clean up, you'd be able to go and see a concert party. could you know, there were things you could do And then you might get some leave, you know everyvery year, eighteen months, you might get to go home. And that's another story again because you were living such a different life. to anyone at home that it could be a great relief to be home or it could be a massive culture shock and a disappointment. And they're year round and in a way, it's that rotation that allows you because in winter, Some of those front lone trenches If you kept men in them for a long time, they die. So But it's the fact that we got this sophisticated system massive state funded state backed sophisticated modern nation states are able to keep theseort people in these tes. Ke a city to keep keepep a city in the field. Not even a city because it's over such a wide you know, it's in a way bigger than the city and And yeah, so so they had to keep that Absolutely going You know, you had massive you know, bakery behind the lines that would be delivered. you'd have people coning L railway bringing supplies raailway. Well, light railway and then, you know, heavy railway, you know, going back to the ports and So you had a so let's give examples of this. You had a system med you had a kind of a medical system and a postal system working in reverse of each other So essentially If you were wounded, you have the stretcher bearerars picking you up, they would take you, know back to the regimental aid post. you would then go back to a whole series further medical posts U you know, advanced posts, main posts, then back to a spot where you could actually have surgery. And then back to a main hospital and then back to the port where you'd be taken back to England All of this was so carefully worked out. Now it didn't always work bit like the health service. didn't always work But it was there for you And so, you know, you would only get you know, the preliminary spots, you'd get triage basically. You know, you might you get at the regiment or the first one you get some morphine And then more could be done for you. The Thomas Slint I don't know if you've heard this Thomas Blint. You know, it's extraordinary development where You know, if you had a femur injury It was really a death sentence before this. You know, you would be carried and you'd have the ends or the bones againgainst each other, the pain would be astonishing and you would lose so many people today to gangreen and to whatever else This was a a splint, you know, it would It would keep the leg Steady And it meant that people could be carried long distances and they could live incredible development. or, you know it was it was actually pre war, but it was perfected at this time And this was all part of the medical. system that would allow you to be taken further back as was necessary until you could actually be operated on. Now Don't get me wrong. The purpose of all this was to bring you back into action as quickly as possible. You know, this wasn't you know, to give people a nice, you know, bit of rest and and But having said that, it was done well And a lot of people ended up you know, back in England with with honorable discharges. I've just found recently fantastic story of a man who was sent all the way back, you know, in great pain, ended up in a hospital in England and he was visited every day by one of these sort of do good you go to women sort of you know a certain class, you visit him. And she kept asking him U whereere were you hurt? Where were you wounded? And he tried to put her off by saying, u you know, in France and she said, No, no, whereere are we? And eventually he got fed up and he said, Madam If you were wounded where I was wounded, you would not have been wounded at all.. And she left and she never came back. And so, you know, this is the idea. you know, all these different kinds of wounds, injuries, some were able to come back. So you know, for example, if you had trench fever taken off for a bit of a You a bit of rest and then they were brought back as soon as possible. But if you had something more serious You ended up as one of those unfortunate people back in back in England who, you know, after the war ended up begging on the streets. So you know, it But the reverse of that was the postal system Because the authorities were very clever in the same way that they rotated They didn't rotate because they wanted people to have a decent time. They rotated because they knew if you were in the front line for too long. You were useless. You know, you weren't getting any sleep. You were getting, if you're lucky, four or five hours of broken sleep a night lying on the on the fire step So You know, you were doing all of these incredibly stressful jobs. So you had to be you were no use. You had to be brought back and allowed to have more rest Well, another thing that was very practical was the postal system. It kept morale up if people were getting letters from home on a regular basis or getting or chocolate or hero dogs knitted by your hero yes. We can come ono that, but but or socks. Exactly socks. Whale oyil, I don't know where that came from, But you know, then they were going to be happier You wanted people clearly, you didn't want people complaining all the time. They could do that anyway. but you didn't want them to do it too much. So this postal system was astonishing. You know, you would have millions and millions of letters arriving a day They were, you know, they'd be brought to a sort a couple of central hubs in London. City Regions Park and then brought to the coast and then brought over in steamers and then brought again in stages, very much like going back in the hospitals. they'd be brought to basasically a sort of trench post office, a sort of front line post office, and be delivered into the trenches and I think that's remarkable actually. And all of this set up in such a short period of time. when it mattered They could do it and And it also gives you a sense of what the authorities had to set up quickly. know how the economy had to change, how industry had to change, how everything had to be changed when a very large portion of the British public were now living in France It's amazing what we can do we put our m extraordinary. It's a shame. it tends to be in the face of war and Joshua, more from you in a secondcond. don't go away folks. This Dannows History. we're talking about trench warfare That gives a sense of the trenches. It's that a dangerous, often boring place to be att the best of times Let's talk about the worst of times. Places like Flanders, that people be familiar with, very, very famous in the first of all context low lying, below sea level sometimes or at sea level drainage system smashed. so marsh Bog So the trenches become those drain systems. So you're wading around in water, effluent mud, sewage muck January, December, February. I mean, n nightmarish. As well as all that You've got the enemy. So you've got no man's land and then what's what you've got snipers? tellell me how many ways to die are there in a trench? There many ways to die in a trench. So I mean I suppose You got to make the point that the trench was relatively safe. you know, if you were going over the top on an advance, you know, you were you were in a great deal more danger Um But there were many ways to die in the trench or indeed at night coming out of the trench. So U you'' I suppose you'' Your biggest danger was on a day to day basis was artillery. So the trenches would all be, they wouldn't be straight they would be Zigzag And of course, if you think about it, that makes perfect sense. You'd have these traverses. And the idea being that if a shell exploded in the trench The force of it couldn't go all the way down. It would be broken Bye theseese crerelations, if you like And it also meant that if somebody got into your trerench enemy got into it, they couldn't fire all the way down. or indeed, if a group got in, you know, they couldn't just run all the way down, they were sort of held up as they moved along. that made perfect and it wasn't just the front line turch, but certainly the front line church had to be had to be like that. So it was miserable inside, but it also had that level of protection, particularly against artillery shells. People coming into a trench for the first time were in quite a lot of danger because they didn't know how to live in it And the first thing you do always was to keep your head down because the trenches were at variable No know, they weren't all built to a to a specification, you know, these weren't IkeA trenches. they were just placed there. were they had to be built and they had to be built given whatever was there, the geography and the conditions at the time So People arriving in Um Would either be ort of ladaisical and wouldn't know to get their heads down. You only had to pop your head up for a second and the sniper would take take your head off Or they would throw themselves down at the slightest noise and and in fact, was something that the the frontline officers like to do was, you know, when you had a staff officer coming up from behind, they enjoyed it when the staff officer came up and was so scared that they threw themselves down at every, you know, that was, you know, that that constant sort of you know, competition and rivalry and sort of antipathy between the staff officer and the front line officer. That was that was very much at play But it was a great danger and you know, snipers were were a great danger. So people, not only did they have to keep their heads down, not only were the signs up, you know, reminding people to keep their heads down. people, you know, they had different ways warar being the mother of invention. I read about one man. We used to be able to isolate snipers. What we used to try to do, we'd put a turnip on the parapet And then the sniper hopefully would fire and fire through it and you could see the direction they' coming and then you'd put another turnip up at a different point And he'd fire through that and you'd be able to just gota workout precise Really? Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure how successful that was, but you know,s it's what we used to do And you had to be very, very careful the snipers. You had your own snipers obviously. And so periscopes were. They even had a setup where you could sort of remotely fire a gun through some sort of mechanical So you didn't even have to put your head up over the trench And Sometimes people were incredibly lucky found lots of accounts, lots but accounts of of shells landing inside a trench, but they were duds And one man said a shell landed right next to me And he said, I was so fascinated. I picked it up, you know, pulled it out, picked it up, and an officer, an artillery officer came along and said two things. firstirst of all never ever touch it again. It could have gone off. And secondly if you'd left it where it was, we could have worked out where it came from. So, you know I suppose you know, people shouldn't really have needed the instruction, don't lift it up once it's landed But then there are also different kinds of artillery. So You know, the mortars, mortars are interesting because obviously they, you know, they could be in the trench opposite And you could hear it fire. You could often hear the whoop, whoop, whoop as it came over. and you could also see it. Ar arcing sort of very fired from not very far away but through this very tight trajectory. T trajectory. Yeah. And if you saw it, you could get out of its way At night it was more frightening because you couldn't see it And so this was one of the things about being, you know, becoming experienced You knew when to keep your head down, you knew basically how to befith, and you also knew So almost instinctively, how to stay safe from For example a mortar that was was coming over. So there were diff, you know, you had to kind of learn this new existence of of how to stay Safe Bat safe in terms, you know, from from the weapons that were G to hit you Sire at you but also from, you know, how to stay healthy you know, in the trench as well and how to get enough sleep. and how to you know, how to eat properly and how to. And also bear in mind that the trenches, you know, we have again, possibly an idea that No man's land was this sort of consistent belt. Of course it wasn't, You know, some trenches could be a thousand yards You know, mild Well But you know, a long, long way away U in which case, you know, your interaction with it would be or day to day interaction with it would be less And then perhaps the average would be two, three hundred yards. But then you had places where it was literally fifteen yards away and the enemy trendch. And you know, acc couount subody said, you know, I'd get up in the morning and get up in the morning. I'd be there in the morning. They didn't sleep eight hours overnight. but and And a voice would come over morning, Tommy, and I ch up back morning, Fritz That's what it was. You know, you had a sort of weird sort of communication. And that actually, now I think of it, sort of widened itself out in terms of the routine in the in the trench, in the front line trench because you would have first thing in the morning You would have St two So everyone's on the fire step. Everyone's the staring out into the mist in case the enemy attack at dawn. And that was the most vulnerable time But there's almost something. s ritual like or religious about it that everybody would getet up and almost pay their respects to the other side and they were doing it to you as well And you'd have what they called very ephemistically, the mouring hate. which was Artillery fire which would you know come in the morning from both sides. Again, ritual is almost like clearing the throat in the morning getting it out of the way. And then they it'doped so that either side could have breakfast. Yes, it was rather mean to shell when breakfast is being brought up. There are certain things you do not do I'm being a little fascetious because I mean, obviouslyang units They were trying to kill each other. But at the same time, there were rules within You know, within it and you didn't, you know, that was that was a rule and And so, you know there was a lot to get used to. The trench had a life of its own You were living Absolutely between in this huge state subsidized city. And if you're in the front line you were you know, you were really in the west end, if you like. but But within that, you had to learn how to be an you know, a city animal. you had to learn how to live and to be wise to everything that was going on. and it did take a while And that included, you know, breakfast would come up You had to know how to how to make your breakfast. You had to know What you were eating, you had to know how to get the best of it You had your RM ration in the morning That was incredibly important. was. You know, it was and it wasn't it was two tablespoons, you know, it wasn't going to get you drunk. Everyone got two tablespoons of rum. Unless, I mean, I'm sure there were people who well, but that was government issue. That was a government issue. And it wasn't constant. you know there were times when it wasn't coming and there were times when it came in the evening, et ccetera, etcetera. Basically you got your you got your um out of these great big sort of ear and where jars and And it was important because You know, it sort of fortified you and it was also a sense that people cared about you. You know, they were giving you something that helped, you know, it wasn't just keeping you alive, it was doing something more for you. He was fortifying you, It was keeping his spirit keepeeping your spirit up. And of course, you know, there was a lot of there was a big temperance movement at the time and so there were Lots of people back at home saying these They shouldn't be. This is quite wrong And there were a lot of people in the trenches saying, how dare you come, you know, you temperance people, come and stay out here for a bit and then see how you feel about you know about this. and even, you know, wouldood Bine Willie, you know, that that wonderful Hadre who came out and you know, would hand cigarettes out to the soldiers. I mean he was temperance And he spent some of his time you know, saying that they shouldn't be getting alcohol. I think I think I'm not sure about this, but I think he may have changed his view in the same way he changed his view about war that give them something, you know, they're living a hard life out here, give them something. So, you know, and then your meals you'd have your Cakies, meat and vegetables and You did a video on this, didn't you 've You've eaten it ha't I spent I've a lot of eating in trenches over this. Josh, this is the End if you like on one of the hardest things to talk about And it's something that a lot of people watching this video may get almost offended by In all the research you've done, you've looked at so many sources, Is there a sense that at certain times at certain places, people actually quite enjoyed it? Yes. Yeah, and it's almost difficult to say You know how consensus builds up about all different events over the years and whether it's this or nine eleven or whatever it is And you're not really allowed to you know, to to to kick against the but Yes, they did. someome people did. Now clearly, nobody had a wonderful time and thought, you know, this next year I'm going to the trenches, not Sgnest. That was not how it was. However There were people who said, you know, and Well, no, I should I qualify that. There were people who very sheepishly after the war said this was This in some ways was the best time of my life because because of danger, although I think it, you know, certain people do experience, you know, heightened excitement and to kind of get, you know to get off on that kind of thing. But I think more for The Crades ship more for the fact that, you know, in back in Blighty peopleople lived their lives and their lives could be terribly mundane, they live and they die and you know, they didn't particularly Get close to others I think here people became very, very close They laughed together, they relied on each other and You know, you What you might have remembered about the morning was you, less the shelling and more the fact that someone made you a cup of tea And I think that was important. And I think when people got home After the war, they A lot of people actually miss that They didn't have that same sense of belonging, alsoso a sense of purpose You know, for a lot of people, there was no, you know, what are we doing This is completely mindless. Wh Why are we trying to kill other people that we don't have any hatred for and But in at another level, It gave people a meaning, something to do that they'd perhaps not had um before it gave people new, you know They could When they were behind the lines They experienced a new culture. Now I'm not saying that every you know, these were culture cultures who couldn't wait to get to Paris to see the, you know to go and see the paintings, but U On the other hand In all kinds of different ways, you know, so many expressions we have nowadays come from that period. Egg and chips What's more English and egg and chips This meal they first had in France. Really? U you know, they there were a lot of people Going to different kinds of restaurants, going to the concert parties. going to brothels. All these experiences that people were having that they wouldn't have had at home. the concert parties I found That's f, a wonderful account from a man who played first Girl You know, his life was completely changed You know, he he came out as a member of a corporal in a Middlesex regiment And just a little corporel average And he applied and he became a member of a concert party, the Ace of Spades concert partarty which is, I think a divisional concert party And he played, he was quite small Quite slim And he played first Girl and he took the name Dolly Claire. I forget anyyway, took took a name And he always played the girl. And sometimes it was, you know, big broad music hall review, sometimes with' serious plays, melodrums And he talked about one he's very proud of where He had a very traragic death at the end playing a Native America. And he he was a very convincing girl his interviews in the Imperial loy Museum. interview and something you got really annoyed, angry when people suggested that he was anything other than a virile man, of course. You know, this was all the time, but the same. He was playing first girl and doing it well. And the colonel was invited to one of the shows and was told there were two girls and told you've got to choose which one is the real girl He was chosen by the colonel and then he was sent to see the Colonel And the cololonel, he said, oh, he was disgusted when he found out that I was a man, but I was very pleased. You know, And this was a haltter he became an actor after the war. So I suppose my point is Not everybody had a whollly negative experience. and I think you're allowed to say that The First World War, of course was a hellish time term in so many ways But it was also time of companionship time of opportunity And if you look at what came after the war for so many people Things just got worse I mean, you know, so many of the wounded came home to no kind of safety net whatsoever. justust ended up on the streets begging You know, they were promised a land for heroes, homes for heroes and and none of that materialized U you know, Britain more, you know pretty soon went into depression So that, you know, at the end of the next war the world Bloody well sure they weren't going to get the same result after the end of that they got at the end of this war So Yeah,s it's a much more, it's like all of these stories, you know, and it's Much more nuanced, much more interesting and you won't get onene story. so I think people should stop trying to tell one story You've told many stories today. Thank you, Josha Levine. What is the book that people can go in I just to have that one is called. Forgotten Voices of the Pongm This one is nural history So lots of and first person stories in it, which I think and Ford by Richard Holes, which is very nice. and I think yeah, I think Quite an interesting book. Very interesting book indeed. Thanks coming home. Thanks, D Well, thank you very much, Josh. That brings us to an end today, folks. as we've heard L in the trenches was defined not only by battle, but by insurance And behind every offensive and every headline of the war We're just ordinary men liivving, trying to survive in extraordinary conditions, clinging to routine and friendship and hope Aidst all that. destruction The trenches became a world of their own, one that tested the limits of human resilience and left phhysical and psychological scars long after those guns fell s And thank goodness, we've got books like Josh's, we've got accounts