World War I Special 1 Antiques Roadshow

This year marks the centenary of the start of the Great War,

the war to end all wars.

Ten million soldiers and seven million civilians died

during the four-year conflict, which left physical and emotional scars

all over Europe and beyond.

To mark the anniversary, we've brought the Roadshow

to northern France for two special programmes.

Welcome to the Antiques Roadshow from the Somme Battlefields.

Our base is the town of Albert in northern France,

once a British stronghold and now

a place of pilgrimage for those who come to visit the cemeteries,

the monuments and the landscape that witnessed so much.

The basilica here isn't the original -

that was destroyed by heavy shelling,

which ripped it apart and left it in ruins.

On top of the dome, a famous sculpture - the Golden Virgin.

She was a well-known landmark in the area

and could be seen for miles around.

But in January 1915, the basilica received such a pounding

that the Virgin was knocked off the dome and left dangling,

forlornly and precariously, in the Place d'Armes here.

The British soldiers said that when she did eventually fall,

it would signal the end of the war.

In 1918, the Germans occupied Albert

and the British soldiers defiantly shot her down themselves.

But then, just a few months later, the war did end.

And in time, Albert was rebuilt

and a new Virgin was placed on top of the dome.

This is a small object that tells its own story.

This little crucifix inside the basilica

has been on quite a journey.

It was taken from the walls in 1916 by a soldier, Albert Lewis,

who was taking refuge inside the ruins of the basilica,

and he kept it with him as a talisman,

believing it kept him safe throughout the war.

He eventually took it back to Great Britain -

first to Basingstoke and then to Cardiff.

And then, in 2009, it was returned here

by Albert's great-niece and great-nephew.

Of course, in thousands of British homes

there are mementos from the Great War -

letters, postcards from the front line, campaign medals -

and we've invited a small number of those who contacted us

here to the Thiepval Memorial,

a remarkable monument to the 72,000 British soldiers who died here

but whose bodies were never found.

And they'll be meeting our specialists -

Bill Harriman, Hilary Kay,

Paul Atterbury, Graham Lay

and Martin Pegler -

and sharing their stories with us in this remarkable landscape.

I've been doing Antiques Roadshow for more years

than I really care to remember

and I can say with absolute certainty

that not a recording goes by that I don't see at least one

of these First World War bronze death plaques.

But I can also say with absolute certainty,

-I have never seen so many.

-You've got a few here

but at home I've got another 750 in my collection.

Say that again, would you?

-750.

-750.

Just under half a ton of bronze.

Blimey! So how long have you been collecting these?

Since I was 16 and I used to go round all the antiques fairs

and just buy them up. At the time, they were about £2.50 each

and I used to buy 10, 20 at a time and just kept amassing them,

but I slowed down when they got to £7 each.

I thought £7 was too much.

And now on internet auction sites,

they're trading for about £80 average.

Well, they're absolutely iconic of the First World War

and they were handed out to every family who lost...

somebody in the war.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the total that was

given out was 1,355,000.

-Is that right?

-That's about right - that's about bang on.

And one thing that I've seen you've got here -

which I absolutely applaud -

is a photograph of the fallen soldier,

his medals and his death plaque in a frame.

That guy was only 19 when he was killed, late in 1918.

I've an empathy with these because I've been in the Army

since I was 16 and, er...

I mean, I've not been shelled for seven days,

like these guys were, and machine-gunned all the time.

But my particular interest is, I like to research the soldiers.

If I can find their military record

and go through to find out what action he was involved in,

when he got killed, how the Army was working at that time...

I share your empathy. When I see one of these

that comes out of a tatty old box

and nobody really cares about it, I just think it's wrong.

One that I've never seen -

and which I've always waited for on the Roadshow,

and consequently it's a big day - is that one, which is to a woman.

And that's to Kitty Walcroft - who's she?

Kitty Walcroft was Queen Mary's Auxiliary Army Corps,

and she joined the Army in 1918,

went to France and was a telephonist at Abbeville.

Kitty died of influenza in 1919 on Valentine's Day.

Ah.

So there are - what - 600 of those to women?

602 is the low estimate, and it could be as many as 1,500.

-Really?

-But it's pretty much... They're rarer than the VC.

And this one here caught my eye, with this name

Wilhelm Gottfried von Ahn - that's a good old British name

-if ever there was one, isn't it?

-Yes.

His father was German,

his mother was Wilcox - who was English -

and he enlisted in the Middlesex Regiment

because at the time, he was classed as being an enemy alien,

and they had the 30th and 31st Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment

and they were known as "the Kaiser's Battalion"

because they were all German aliens and they worked behind the lines,

building camps and things like that, so they couldn't see the front line,

didn't know where the troops were or what they were doing.

"We'll use them as labourers."

-Trusted, but not that trusted.

-Trusted, but not that trusted.

-Yes.

However, William Gottfried von Ahn could speak fluent French and German

so he eventually transferred

from the Middlesex Regiment into the Royal Engineers,

into the Signals Section, and ended up as a translator.

And he was captured, ironically, in the Kaiserschlact -

which is the 1918 Battle in March -

and ended up as a POW and died as a POW in Germany.

That's very, very sad.

These are memorials of dead people.

There'd be some people who say,

"Isn't it rather ghoulish that you concentrate your collecting efforts

"on what is really about death?"

Some people have said it's a bit morbid but, you know,

people collect medals of soldiers that have died,

and this is basically a medal.

I'm with you on that. I just think it's tremendously respectful.

And we're talking about the value of these and how accessible they are.

You were saying sort of about £70, £80.

About £70, £80, I think, is about the average.

But I bet Miss Walcroft's plaque isn't...

I know of 12 female ones being sold since 1999

and I've averaged the price out over those years,

and it works out £2,985.

However, one sold recently with the two medals like that for 9,000.

So a woman's plaque with the two medals went for 9,000.

What would you really like to happen to it all?

Where do you want it to go in the ultimate?

I think my son, who's behind me somewhere, is saying

that he's going to carry it on when he's a bit older.

I'm sure he'll be a fantastic curator.

It will just have a bigger collection, I think. We shall see.

All my life I have loved animals, particularly horses,

and that's why I'm really pleased to be looking at these paintings

of cavalry horses today. But who painted them?

They were painted by my grandfather, Herbert Arnold Lake,

who was in the Royal Army Medical Corps,

and he came out to France at the age of 31 and...

he was a doctor here in Arras.

And I think in every spare moment that he had,

when he wasn't tending the wounded, he painted and he sketched.

So these paintings could very well have been painted around here -

not too far from here?

I'm sure they were. I'm sure they were.

But he must know horses, because I have to say, anatomically,

these are beautifully painted.

He was trained as a vet, in London,

and then he decided that, perhaps,

the veterinary life wasn't going to be so good,

so he retrained as a doctor and I think that's probably why

his paintings of his horses are very good,

because he would have done a lot of research in the first place.

So looking at this wonderful oil on panel,

it shows a cavalry troop standing in the icy cold of early morning,

waiting for the command to advance, to attack.

This is a beautiful painting.

And the interesting thing

is that if you move on from this one to the next painting,

where clearly you're in the midst of an attack,

so we almost have a series here.

And then this painting here...

..I think shows...

..the calm after the attack.

Everybody's exhausted.

Look at this trooper. Look how exhausted he looks.

The horse is probably just as tired, just as weary.

And, you know, there were certainly more than eight million horses

killed and died during the First World War.

And then this further painting...

..showing, quite frankly, the result.

He obviously understood the horrors of war

and was particularly sensitive to that.

I agree with you.

I think they are very moving

and I think, having come here today and seen what I've seen,

I find it very emotional now to look at these pictures.

And, actually, I wonder what he would have felt

about the pictures that he painted 100 years ago coming back here.

It must be quite something. I hope he's on his cloud.

When he came back from the war, he would never discuss what he'd seen

or what had happened, because they were in the paintings,

and I think his sketching and his paintings

probably kept him fairly sane.

Whereas a lot came back from the Great War really traumatised -

emotionally...wrecks, actually -

and I think he didn't,

and he went on to have a very full, wonderful life,

and a very positive man, who was great fun.

But did he continue practising in civilian life?

-He did indeed, and he was known as "the flying doctor".

-Why?

Because he went to see all of his patients on horseback,

and that was the way he liked it, until the advent of the motorcar,

when he was absolutely lethal. He was much better on a horse.

-What an old-fashioned gentleman he must have been.

-He was.

Well, you know, these are wonderful pictures,

and of course they have a value.

The best one, I think, has to be this oil on board.

It's exquisite. It's absolutely glorious.

The problem is, of course, he doesn't have a record

of selling at auction, and that's the big problem.

However, this style of painting -

which is almost reminiscent of Munnings, I have to say -

is so sought after, I think that painting alone -

even though we don't know him -

would be worth £1,000.

I think the monochrome watercolours would be worth, each,

£200 or £300.

And I think that coloured watercolour of Arras,

-just up the road from us...

-Yes.

..would be worth about £500.

He's a great artist in my opinion.

You should be very proud of him.

They are treasures, and thank you very much.

-HILARY KAY:

-The Lusitania, Cunard's great ship,

crossing the Atlantic in certain style.

It won the Blue Riband for speed

and it was really quite a classy boat.

The terrible thing about the Lusitania

was that it was torpedoed by a German U-boat,

-in 1915, with a tremendous loss of life.

-Yes.

-You have a real link to that extraordinary event.

-Mm-hm.

Tell me about it.

Well, if my great-grandparents hadn't survived that wreck,

I wouldn't be here, my cousin wouldn't be here,

my grandma wouldn't be here.

So why were they on the Lusitania?

They'd emigrated to live in America a few years before

but they decided they didn't like it - they were homesick -

so decided to come home, back to Lancashire.

And they were going on a...

I think it was a fairly cheap boat originally,

but they were frightened of the war breaking out

and they'd heard about the U-boats,

so they transferred to the Lusitania

because they'd heard it was the safest ship there was.

Is there an account of that terrible day in May 1915?

There is. My great-grandfather actually wrote an account of it -

it's about an eight-page hand-written document,

which goes into great detail about how he was...

Because all the women and children were loaded on the lifeboats,

and he was given a lifebelt and was sort of thrown off the side,

and he swam around for hours and hours and hours,

and then after - I think it was around six or seven hours -

he actually came across a lifeboat that was still sailing around,

picking up survivors and my great-grandma was actually on it...

HILARY GASPS ..which was just absolutely amazing coincidence,

and she was six months pregnant

with her first child at the time, as well.

-True.

-Were you that child?

No, I'm not that old!

So that was your elder brother, presumably?

It was my eldest brother Albert, yes,

and how she kept that baby I really don't know.

Exactly. But what an extraordinary sort of linking of fate lines.

Because I know that they only managed to launch -

-I don't know - half a dozen lifeboats...

-Hardly any.

..out of the 40-odd that there were.

And in my grandfather's account,

it said that the crew were very inexperienced

because, obviously, most of the men who would normally man it

were in the Army,

so a lot of them snagged and tipped all the people out into the sea,

so they were really lucky.

The loss of life was significant

in that there were all but 2,000 passengers and crew on board,

-out of which about 1,200 lost their lives.

-Yes.

But I suppose the important thing

for the history of the First World War

is that a significant number of those deaths were Americans.

Yes, and that's what brought the Americans into the war.

-Exactly.

-125 Americans.

-Lost their lives in the Lusitania sinking?

-Yes, yes.

And that incident, in fact, led to this extraordinary enlistment poster

and it shows a mother

drifting down through the water

and she holds and protects her baby in her arms.

And there is that one word - "enlist".

How easy it would have been...

..for your mother, for Alice, to have been...

Absolutely, yeah.

Yeah.

What do you have of hers?

I've got her wedding ring,

which she was obviously wearing when the Lusitania was torpedoed,

so that ring has actually survived a shipwreck.

It is an extraordinary story.

It's a story of high emotion,

it's a story of propaganda

and it's a story which ultimately vindicates the Germans.

They said that they fired on this ship

-because they said that it was carrying munitions.

-Mm-hm.

It was a fact that was completely denied for ever...

-..until the wreck was recovered...

-Yes.

-..and in the hold were found over three million rounds.

-Mm-hm.

-But for you, it's a story of survival.

-Mm-hm.

And a very powerful one at that.

-Thank you very much.

-Thank you.

Over 3,000 of you contacted us,

wanting to tell us of your personal family connection to World War I,

and sadly we couldn't bring you all to northern France,

much as we'd have liked to.

But as we've travelled around the country,

we've had a chance to catch up with some of you, and hear your story.

Well, this is a tin whistle.

And it's perfectly ordinary, except that it tells a story

and the story it tells is of Joe.

And this is Joe, our Joe -

Joseph Thomas Clucas, a Corporal

in the Royal Field Artillery, 57th Ammunition Column -

who joined as a boy soldier, joined the Territorial Army,

at the age of 14.

And was enlisted at the start of the war, as many Territorials were,

was killed at Passchendaele on 21st October 1917.

But between the start of the war through to 1917, this whistle,

at some point, saved his life

because a trace of the bullet that hit it when he was wearing it

is still in the whistle.

And while it's worthless, while it means nothing to anybody else,

to our family it's priceless

because it tells the story of a time in our history

when boys like Joe gave everything they had for us,

and so it's precious to us.

This is my grandfather's sword

that was given to him by the Bradford Pals

in May 1915,

before they went to fight on the Somme.

14 months later, they were all killed.

And he was so appalled at the deaths of all these soldiers he'd trained

that he joined up and went to fight in France himself.

He fought at the Battle of Arras

and survived the war.

We're very proud that he was so committed, really,

to ensuring that his soldiers were trained to the best of his ability.

This is a photograph of my father.

His name was John Joseph Crowley

and he served in the Royal Navy

for about 17 years.

During the First World War he was on the Vindictive,

which was used to block the harbour at Zeebrugge,

and he served in the gun crew and during that occasion,

they came under an awful lot of fire from the Germans

and his Commanding Officer was wounded.

And my father went to help.

He must have taken his sleeve off

to make way for the ship's surgeon to treat the wound

and he was left holding the sleeve and said,

"Maybe... What can I do with this, Sir?"

And he said, "Well, just keep it

"because it will remind you of this day."

So consequently, my dad acquired this gold braid

which came from the sleeve of the Lieutenant Commander,

and he kept it. He kept it all his life and now I have it.

This little stone cross, made from local stone,

was found during excavations here in the area.

And it's a piece of what's known as trench art,

when soldiers in the trenches would fashion little objects

from whatever they could find to hand.

It's a very simple and humble little thing

and Paul Atterbury's been looking at some more ingenious examples.

In the calm and shelter of Thiepval Wood,

we're looking at two - to me, wonderful - bronzes.

But, of course, trench art is many things.

It can be that small fragment

made from battlefield debris by a soldier,

it can be a souvenir

or it can be an amazing piece of sculpture like this.

Where do you fit in?

Well, these figures were made by my grandfather,

who was Alexander Carrick,

and he was an artillery man in the trenches

from 1916 through to 1918.

Right, we're talking a name that I immediately recognise.

I'm an enthusiast for sculpture, particularly wartime sculpture,

and I imagine this is him.

That's him, yes. That's him in his artillery uniform.

-It's a very strong face, isn't it?

-Yes, very strong.

So he goes into the artillery and while he was there,

he was obviously... You know, he was a dedicated artist,

he was drawing all the time.

I think these images of trench life, very freely drawn,

they have a really clear sense of Modernism.

But also, he's drawing very quickly, he's capturing the moment.

-And that is clearly going into this sort of figure.

-Yes.

It's very full of action, it's very dramatic,

it's very stylised, it's very modern.

You can feel the power, the force, the weight of that great shell.

He's a member of an artillery team -

they were a big team feeding the great guns.

You get the sense of this strength of the people.

Look at the great thickness of his neck.

He's stripped down almost to his underwear cos it's so hot,

firing that great gun.

And he captures all of that remarkably.

How did he make this?

Well, this was modelled from the clay of the trenches.

He befriended a Belgian sculptor behind the lines,

who cast the figure for him in his shoes into plaster,

which was then sent back home to the UK

and it was cast in bronze.

Essentially, what I'm looking at is the ultimate piece of trench art.

This is as good as it could ever get.

But, of course, if we move on to the end of the war,

he's presumably demobilised, he goes back home, he resumes his career,

but, of course, what the next phase takes us to is the other figure.

-Yes.

-Because clearly, if you'd survived the war,

it was a golden era because we were into war memorials.

Every town, every village wanted to commemorate their dead,

and if you look at the history of the war memorial,

it is a history of sculpture in that period. Everybody got involved.

And I think if we look at his war memorials -

some of which I've seen or have read about -

this is, I think, what a lot of sculptors did.

Either before or after the figure, they would make a smaller version.

-Yes.

-How many did he do in all?

In the region of 15 to 18, I believe,

throughout Scotland mainly.

Is that the Killin war memorial?

That's the Killin - very similar to the Killin one, yes.

Yeah, yeah. Inevitably, they're actually quite valuable pieces.

I'm sure you know this.

These sort of small-scale versions of well-known war memorials -

they fetch two, three, four, sometimes five thousand pounds each.

But a figure like this is something different -

you know, this is so powerful.

You know, I think that would certainly be £10,000 -

possibly more.

How do you think he'd feel if he could see us

looking at his work in this extraordinary context?

I think he'd be delighted.

I think he'd be so pleased to know that his figure had come back home,

100 years later, to the place it was born, really -

this is where he started.

We met some extraordinary people in France.

None more so than Egbert Sandroch, who had a poignant collection

of items belonging to his grandfather,

who served - and died - on the Western Front.

Standing here by the monument that commemorates

so many tens of thousands of the British dead of the Great War,

we were very keen to reflect both sides of the conflict.

And your grandfather

was a German soldier who fought here in this area.

-This is him, isn't it?

-That's correct.

That's Gottfried Sandroch, killed in action May 1st 1918.

This is his iron cross, so he was obviously quite a soldier.

Yes, that's what he got in 1914 for extraordinary bravery, yes.

You've got his chest here,

full of the items that he had with him at the Front,

and these were all sent to his wife -

to your grandmother - after he died.

I wonder if we could talk about a few of them.

This particularly caught my eye, this little shoe.

A very unique item. That's a talisman or souvenir.

That's the shoes, the baby shoes, of his first-born.

The first-born being your father?

Yes, that's my father, my father's shoes.

It's very touching to think that he took that with him.

That's extraordinary but, you know, in those times,

without cellphones and telephones,

you had to have something where you hold on to.

And this picture here - this is Gottfried, your grandfather.

Yes, that picture is probably 1915.

That's my grandfather and my grandmother and my father.

The little chap that wore the shoe.

Yes, it is.

And this little mask here.

I was intrigued by this

when I was going through the contents of this chest earlier on.

Talk to me about that.

I found this mask in one of the original field letters,

dated in December 1917 when he was back at the Front,

and obviously his first-born son

wanted to send him something for Christmas,

so painted something on cheap glossy paper.

Probably Grandmother cut out the eyes.

And that was his Christmas present to my grandfather,

into the lice-infested trenches,

and it looks like that.

So it's a Father Christmas mask.

It's definitely a Father Christmas mask. We see the beard.

So by a childish hand and sent to his father at the Front.

And did your father ever talk to you about Gottfried?

No. Never.

I was not interested in all these stories.

I only became interested in my forties.

Then the interest started, so too late.

Now, there's a letter that he wrote -

as all soldiers had to write letters in the event of their death -

-and he wrote a letter like that to his sons.

-Yes.

Now, is this the letter here, on the top here?

-Yes.

-Can we have a look at that?

-Yes.

-And we've got a translation here.

-Would you read the translation for us?

-Yes, sure.

"My dear sons, you hardly did not know me,

"but your good mother will often tell you about how much I loved you.

"You have been my pride.

"I wish you so much luck for your path of life.

"Be always ambitious but decent and never leave your good mother.

"Who will leave your mother in hardship

"is not worth that the sun would shine on him.

"My last wish is that you two learn a good profession

"and that you honour our family name.

"Farewell, my dearest sons, your father."

It's very moving, isn't it?

It is, very touching.

Your father served in the army.

In the air force, in the German Air Force.

In the air force. You are also a military man.

Yes, 38 years - German Air Force.

And what about your children?

Er, I told them not to be too much interested in the military any more

and do some decent profession.

HE CHUCKLES

Did you feel your family had given enough?

I think we sacrificed one life

and three generations in total of service - that's enough.

So, yes, it's the end of the story.

Let other families do that.

Thank you.

We're surrounded today by gravestones and crosses,

many of which say "unknown".

Now, that brings to mind The Unknown Warrior, of course,

and you know something about that story, don't you?

Yes, my grandfather, the Reverend George Kendall,

who was the Senior Chaplain in Belgium and France,

attached to the Royal Naval Division.

He was behind the secretive process

of the selection of The Unknown Warrior in 1920.

Now you've brought a Bible. Frankly, a very tatty Bible.

Well, we should excuse him for that because this Bible actually saw

all the major battles in the First World War.

He was the most war-experienced chaplain in the First World War,

so he emerged unscathed, except for a reputation as a dreadnought.

-Why?

-Which he denied, but he appeared to fear nothing

and his bravery was something that really inspired the troops

and really showed his faith, as well.

Let's have a look.

It says, "I was also senior chaplain

"in charge of exhumation work for the whole of Belgium,

"and assisted in the exhumation and putting on board

"the warship at Boulogne of the Unknown Warrior

"who lies in Westminster Abbey."

Now, the idea for this focus for the nation's grief,

for the nation's mourning,

came from a man called the Reverend David Railton.

He wrote to the Dean of Westminster Abbey

and, eventually, that idea was taken up.

And officially, then, bodies - remains, in fact -

of unknown soldiers were exhumed.

How many of those were there?

Because, as far as I know, there's controversy.

Some say four, some say six.

Yes, well, in the book he does state that there were six bodies.

-Is this the book?

-Yes, yes.

So here we see a typewritten manuscript.

Do you think he ever meant to have this published?

I think he did. I think he wanted it published after he'd died.

I think he didn't want

the information to come out whilst he was alive,

and that's why this is all new now.

So on this page it says, "The Unknown Warrior."

And this paragraph really interests me. It says,

"In the morning a general entered the hut.

"He placed his hand on one of the flag-shrouded coffins,

"and the body therein became The Unknown Warrior."

My grandfather had made sure that all the coffins

looked exactly the same.

He had examined the bodies to make sure that there were

no distinguishing features

or any evidence of where the bodies had come from.

So I think he was quite satisfied

that the identity would never be found out.

And, as we stand today, it still has never been found.

The coffin was then taken to Westminster Abbey

and there was a very moving - quite short but very moving -

service, attended by many families of deceased soldiers.

And there are stories of, for example, two soldiers -

two wounded soldiers - who travelled 60 miles,

they walked 60 miles, to London to bring wreaths

to the tomb of The Unknown Warrior.

Their brothers had both been killed in the war.

It's an incredibly moving story

and your grandfather was part of the beginning of that -

the crucial part of the selection process.

I think this is a piece of history.

See this little phial of iodine?

It was dug up in the woods back here

and it would have been part of a small personal medical kit

belonging to a British soldier during the Great War,

used wherever he was fighting.

Of course, if he was seriously wounded

he'd be taken to a medical station,

where teams would try to patch him up,

working desperately, tirelessly - often in very difficult conditions.

And Hilary Kay has one such story.

These are a group of objects which relate to one of the very few

women doctors serving in the First World War.

But not here in the Somme, but in Malta.

She is Isabella Stenhouse

and she was your grandmother. Tell me her story.

She was born in 1887 and eventually,

when she was 21, she managed to persuade her parents

to let her go to medical school in Edinburgh, so she started in 1908.

That is apparently a standard-issue Army medical kit

and she would have been one of the first women who had it,

because the Army, at the beginning of the war, said "no women".

Well, there was an even better phrase

that I heard from the War Office which was,

"The front line is no place for hysterical women."

-This is Isabella, presumably.

-Yes.

In what looks like a doctor's white coat which is several sizes too big.

Could one possibly imagine it might have been made for a man?

-Possibly.

-I don't imagine they had their own white coats.

Let's try and understand Isabella the woman.

Because she obviously was feisty.

-Did you know her?

-Yes.

-What did you make of her?

-She was just Granny.

By that time, she was just Granny.

Yeah, she was just Granny.

She never, ever, talked about her medical career.

She never talked about the war.

-May I jump forward a bit?

-Yes.

Because there is a great document here,

-which is her sign-up document.

-Yes.

-So she became part of the Army.

-Yes.

-And this was in 1916.

-Yes.

Very unusual.

Yes, well, the Army had eventually had to change its mind and said,

"OK, we're going to need some women."

They'd watched some of the women's hospitals working

and thought, "Maybe it's not quite so bad."

So they got in touch with the embryonic Medical Women's Federation

and said, "Could you find us 40 women?

"We'll send them to Malta, where it's nice and safe,

"and we'll send the men off to France." And this was...

It happened at the sort of height of the Somme so it must have been

brewing for a couple of weeks before that, at least.

Malta in the First World War

was called "the nurse of the Mediterranean".

And from a very small starting point,

eventually they had 20,000 nursing beds there

and they dealt with 135,000 casualties

during the course of the war,

and one has to remember that part of those casualties

were perhaps casualties from Gallipoli. What next?

Well, it gets more dangerous in Malta.

Because U-boat activity gets massive

and Malta becomes a dangerous place, so they have to close it down.

It can no longer be the nurse of the Mediterranean,

because people will get killed on the way there,

so she was sent on to Egypt.

Which - I think - is where we get to here, don't we?

That's right, yes.

Well, Egypt looks as if it's full of chaps.

Yes. Well, the rumour has it that the mess she was going to

was Allanby's Mess and they were saying,

"What? There's a woman coming? A woman doctor? Grrr!"

And, er, then they slightly softened

and one of them spent some time with her.

How much time?

How long is a piece of string? I don't know.

But he declared to her that she couldn't ride Dinkums, his horse.

And she said, "Of course I can ride Dinkums,"

so off they went galloping into the desert.

And she fell off and broke her arm.

And looking up into the blue eyes above her,

-she fell in love.

-She was a smitten kitten.

Well, I don't know about that, but in her Army papers it does say

that she was sent home in - was it May 1919? -

because injured while off duty.

Now, you see, I've had a sneak preview of what the next page is

and I want you to tell me if that is the happy ending

-that I'm hoping it's going to be.

-It is indeed, yes.

That is the wedding of Isabella and Hubert

up in Edinburgh, in October 1919.

He being the owner of Dinkums.

Yes, yes.

Very good. Well, I suppose, to me,

the surprising thing is that Isabella doesn't seem to have had

a particularly, er, terrible war.

Interesting things happened and yet she was not either willing,

or maybe not interested, in telling the family about it.

She never even told your mother.

No, no.

No, she admitted to once having taken out an appendix

but she doesn't mention all the shrapnel that is documented

she pulled out of wounds

and the anaesthetics she would have had to administer

and the amputations she would have had to assist at, because...

I don't know why, but she didn't.

Maybe she didn't want to remember it herself.

Actually, maybe that's true.

She just wanted to turn the page and move on.

Thank you very much for telling us Isabella's story.

We've heard some remarkable stories passed down the generations

and, of course, there are few people alive now

who actually experienced the Great War.

But I had a chance to talk one such person after a viewer contacted us

about his grandmother, who recalls her childhood during that time.

I caught up with her when we visited Richmond in West London.

Gladys, tell me about your memories of the First World War.

Well, where shall I start?

With the Zeppelin?

Oh, you remember the Zeppelins?

I remember the Zeppelin coming over and I must have been about 5½.

And we were in the school playground and this appeared in the sky

like a big silver bird, pointed either end with a box underneath,

and the teacher came and she shushed us all back into school

under a kitchen table and told us to stay there

until she said it was safe to come.

And were you frightened?

No, we just took it as it came.

Do you remember it as being a difficult time,

during the First World War?

Your father was away serving in the trenches, wasn't he?

Well, when he went into the war, I was two years and eight months.

When he came back, I was almost six.

And I couldn't say that I'd noticed any changes in him,

because he was a stranger to me.

-Of course.

-Er...

And I sort of had to get to know him all over again.

Did your father talk to you about the war?

You couldn't get him to say very much about the war at all.

And one of the stories we did get out of him

was after a bad shelling.

He was going along the trenches and this lad said to him,

"Got a fag, mate?"

So my dad said "yes" and he gave him a cigarette and lit it for him

and he said, "Now, will you be all right?"

So he said "yes".

And Dad went further along the trenches

to see whatever help he could do along there.

When he came back, the cigarette was still smouldering in his fingers

but the lad was dead.

And apparently, he was more badly wounded than...

-Than he realised.

-..they realised.

How sad.

-Well, you're 101 - you don't mind me saying, Gladys, do you?

-No.

You're a fine age and you're one of not that many people, now,

-who actually remember living through the First World War.

-No.

Not a time anyone - and particularly you - would ever want to see again.

In actual fact, I can tell you more about the Second World War

than I can about the First World War.

I know! But the fact that you can remember it all is...

-Yes.

-Is something.

I know I've been very lucky through my life.

And they say to me, "Well, what do you put down to your long life?"

I said, "A little of what you fancy does you good -

"but don't make a pig of yourself".

LAUGHTER

Volunteer soldiers from all over the British Empire

answered the call to arms,

including more than 600,000 Canadians.

Those willing to fight abroad made up the Canadian Expeditionary Force,

more than half of whom had been born in Britain.

Paul Atterbury is looking at

an object which unites one group of them.

Now, something I really love is an object

that takes me on a journey.

And I'm looking here at - I have to say -

not the best banjo I've ever seen.

But the key to it, I know, is when we turn it round

and on the back is this mass of names.

-Right.

-They're names from different countries,

they're names from different dates.

One of the key dates I can see is "Paris, August 24th 1917". Yeah.

That sets the scene very clearly.

Now, what's this banjo to you?

History.

I bought it from a dealer in the north of England

and I could see that there was writing inside

but I didn't know what it was until I got it home.

And the places which these individuals put beside their names -

they're all from Canada.

And you're from Canada?

-Yes, I am, yeah.

-So you buy this, knowing nothing about it.

-It's an interesting object with, apparently, a history.

-That's right.

-And then do you set out to find that history?

-Yes. Yeah, I did.

So what... What's that journey taken you to?

Oh! Well...

First of all, the names have got their home towns.

And those home towns stretch from British Columbia

on the west coast right through to Nova Scotia on the east coast.

And I've lived most of my life in Ontario, so that was my first call.

And I took a name off there and it is James Platts, Vineland,

so I looked on the telephone directory and the first number

I found, I phoned.

And his daughter-in-law answered the phone.

-Couldn't be better.

-No, couldn't be better.

-And that started the journey.

-Yes, it did.

-Name after name after name.

-Yes, that's right.

Now, I've got a couple of photographs.

This is that James Platt, isn't it?

-Yes, it is.

-What is his story?

He was born in Matlock in Derbyshire

and he became an orphan.

And when he was 13, he was put on a ship

and sent to Canada to work on a farm.

When the war came...

..he went and signed up.

Yeah. Now, did you establish

that all those names scattered across Canada

were all in one regiment or unit?

One may not have been.

The others were all in E Battery of the Royal Canadian Artillery.

-And is this them?

-Yes.

So what we could say - although we can never prove it -

is that all these people have their names here.

There's a very good possibility.

Now, this is a very important story for various reasons.

The reason why it means so much to me I can share with you now.

I had a great-uncle whose name is on that memorial,

and he was sent to Canada at the age of 17,

because his family had got into trouble financially

and they sent him away for a better life.

He was sent out with nothing

and made a life for himself in Winnipeg.

And in 1914, in September, he came back here,

by then a Canadian citizen,

as part of the Canadian Expeditionary Forces.

He fought and served all round here

and was finally killed here in October 1916,

by then attached to an English regiment,

but he was always a Canadian.

-Yeah.

-So your story means a great deal to me personally

-cos, in a sense, I feel I'm part of it.

-Yes, you are.

And the second thing - which, again, I feel very strongly about...

..is that we here - the British -

were completely dependent upon what were then called -

and forgive me - Imperial Forces.

If we hadn't had Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders,

South Africans, Indians,

we would have lost the First World War. It is as simple as that.

-I know that.

-And they were all volunteers

and, as I say, without them, we wouldn't be sitting here -

we wouldn't be having this conversation.

I find it, for those two reasons, a very personal story.

Now, I don't play the banjo, but you do, don't you?

Yes, I do.

So what are you going to play?

Well, there's only one tune.

When Chappell Music published it,

on the cover of the sheet music they said,

"It's a long, long way to Tipperary".

-A long, long way.

-Yes.

HE PLAYS "It's A Long Way To Tipperary"

WARTIME RECORDING: # Farewell, Leicester Square

# It's a long, long way to Tipperary... #

You've got a nice selection of First World War medals here.

How many do you actually have?

Roughly 30 to 35 at the moment.

I have to say, you're quite young for a collector - how old are you?

-Er, 14.

-When did you buy your first medals?

Roughly around 2006, cos that's when my uncle got me into it.

I went round his house and he showed me his collection,

so that really did get me going.

Gosh! Well, I have to say that I was you at your age.

I was fascinated by them, from a very early age.

I can't tell you why -

the First World War just intrigued me and it still does.

Where do you get them from?

-Mainly from internet auction sites.

-Right.

But boot fairs, antiques markets - wherever I can get them, really.

There are two medals here that are of particular interest to you.

Now, tell me a little bit about them.

Well, these standard Victory and British War Medal pair

were given to a Private Garnet Hestor

in the East Kent Regiment and he enlisted when he was under age,

at the age of 16 - which, at the time, the enlistment age was 17.

And on his records, it shows that he had joined

saying that his age was 19 and 5 months,

so obviously a bit of a lie when you look at the census.

And soon afterwards his mother wrote in

and basically explained that her son had joined under age,

and she had wrote a letter

which does have some quite touching sentences.

For example, "I hope you'll not think this cowardly of me..."

And it goes into details about her son's return.

It says, "Thank you in anticipation for my son's quick return."

So it really does show that she does want him back.

She was very fortunate cos she did get him back, too. So many didn't.

He is one of thousands of under-age youngsters who must have joined up.

I think the youngest was actually your age and you are 14, aren't you?

And many of them, of course, slipped through the net,

so he's quite unusual in having been found out and returned home -

-and, actually, quite lucky.

-Mm.

Can you imagine what it must have been like

for someone almost of your age to be over here in the middle of the war?

Incomprehensible, to be honest.

It's hard to imagine what life was really like for them, back then.

Yes, I think the hardship that they endured

is something that we can only guess at.

But it's a lovely collection

and I think it's absolutely great that you're taking an interest.

Of course, it makes a lot of difference

being able to do the research on the internet.

So an ordinary pair of medals, maybe £30 or £40.

Once you start to do some research

and you've added flesh to the bones of the man, if you like,

that can increase the medal group's value quite considerably.

£50 or £60.

But all of these are becoming more valuable as the years go by -

they're becoming rarer as the years go by -

so you have the basis of really a very good medal collection already.

-Thank you.

-Do you have any goal in terms of collecting?

-What would you really, really like to get hold of?

-Er...

A Victoria Cross grouping,

-but that's not really going to happen.

-Good luck!

# It's a long way to Tipperary... #

Following Paul's meeting with banjo player Alec Somerville,

something remarkable happened in the shadow of the Thiepval Memorial.

Now, very soon after you and I finished talking

and recording that item, an extraordinary thing happened,

and this lady came up,

and amongst your photographs was this one.

Tell me who he is.

His name is Raymond Roland and he's my great-uncle.

And he is one of the banjo...

He's on the banjo, above James Platt's name.

-Yeah.

-So what does that mean to you, hearing that story?

It was overwhelming.

Absolutely emotionally overwhelming to me.

-It's an extraordinary coincidence.

-It is, isn't it? Yes.

But I have to say,

this place generates extraordinary events and coincidences.

Every time I come here, something happens.

-Yes.

-Once again, it's happened, you know.

-Yeah.

-Those ghosts have sorted it out -

they've watched us do it and they've interfered again.

-Thank you.

-Thank you. It's all Alec!

Well, we have come from the magnificent memorial at Thiepval.

We've come west now to this quiet little cemetery at Warloy-Baillon.

And I understand you ladies are all three generations from one family.

That's right, yes.

And this cigarette case, I believe, was owned by your father.

-My father Joel Halliwell.

-Tell me about him.

He was a very, very quiet man.

But why was he given a cigarette case?

It's not the sort of thing that everybody gets handed out.

I don't really know much about that.

Well, let's look at it. There'll be a good clue in here, I'm sure.

And it says, "Presented to Lance Corporal Joel Halliwell VC..."

-There's a clue.

-That's right.

"..by Major Smith and staff at Bury in 1918."

-That's right.

-So...

VC. We all know what that stands for - Victoria Cross,

the nation's premier award for gallantry.

-Yes.

-So, why did your dad get that?

Well, he saved nine soldiers and an officer.

-So how did he do that?

-He captured an enemy horse.

-Oh, really?

-And rode out into No Man's Land.

-Yes.

-Ten times altogether, and brought back the wounded.

And then he walked for miles,

I believe, to bring back water for them.

And he only stopped when the horse collapsed.

Oh, dear! Well, that's amazing.

Having been a serving soldier myself,

we used to be trained to do casualty evacuation

and I can't tell you what it's like to try and pick up a body

that's a dead weight and just put it on your back and walk with it.

You know, you walk 200 yards with it, it half kills you.

-Yes.

-But to get a wounded man on a horse...

And he did that ten times.

Ten times. He rescued an officer and nine other ranks.

I always find courage a very interesting thing.

There are two types. There's a sort of red-mist courage

where somebody thinks,

"My advance is being held up here, my men are being shot -

"I've got to deal with that machine-gun nest,"

and they're up and they're in there and it's over in minutes, seconds.

But I find it so difficult to come to terms with

-this sort of enduring courage.

-Exactly.

Every time he did that he must have made a conscious decision

that he had to go out there and bring one of his pals in.

-I just think that's fantastic.

-I know.

I know, it is. It's brilliant.

And I think it's perhaps even more...

..salutary when you think that

he was sufficiently close to the front line

-that all the fire that was coming in was entirely random.

-Yes, yes.

-And he must have been absolutely exhausted.

-Exhausted, yes.

-It's miraculous that he wasn't hit himself.

-Yes.

Well, we've got a picture of three chaps here.

I'm guessing he's one of them.

-Yes, that's my dad.

-Yeah.

That's his brother, Tom.

-Aye.

-And we've no idea who that is.

We assume that's a pal.

Presumably this was taken before he joined up.

-Yes, yes.

-What did he do as a profession?

He was a labourer. Labourer.

My dad went in the Lancashire Fusiliers.

-A very fine regiment.

-Yeah. Tom didn't - he went in the Borders.

-The Border Regiment.

-The Borders, weren't he?

Tom got killed at the Somme.

-Sorry to hear that.

-Yeah.

Now, this is a picture of your dad with his medal.

Yeah, yeah. He was thin when he came home.

-Yeah, he'd lost a lot of weight.

-Cos he was a stocky man.

-Yes.

What does it mean to you?

Particularly - you know - the third generation.

I feel really proud that it's my grandad.

-So you should.

-It is, it is. Very proud.

You know, it's just a remarkable story.

I know. It is, really.

Now, we can see his medal there.

-That's right, yeah.

-Where's that?

-Oh, it's in the family. Good.

-Oh, yes.

-Excellent.

-But you haven't brought it today?

-No.

-That's very wise, because...safety.

-Yes.

I know you can't put a price on one man's bravery, but, er...

-No.

-..they are the most sought-after of all medals by collectors.

And for an action like this,

with this sustained courage,

I think that you'd be looking at somewhere

probably about quarter of a million to start, to open the batting.

And you get the right collector and, frankly,

the sky would be the limit,

-cos they don't come on the market very often.

-Good heavens!

-As you haven't got the medal with you...

-No.

..we thought that you might like that.

-Wow!

-Oh, thank you.

We had his name put on the back of it as well.

I hope that you will display that

with that cracking good picture,

-and that will become a bit of an...

-Oh, thank you so much.

It's our pleasure.

I think his is a fantastic story

and I'm so grateful for you, coming to tell us.

I am humbled to hear this story.

It's just absolutely fantastic.

It just does not get any better,

and thank you so much for coming and I hope you enjoy our little present.

-Thanks so much.

-My pleasure.

-Bill, that was lovely, thank you.

-Thank you, Fiona.

There's another reason why we've brought you here today,

to this particular place.

You talked about the men in the photo here, and your father,

-and also your uncle Tom.

-Yes.

And he fought here at the Somme

and, as you say, he died here at the Somme.

This is his cemetery.

Aw!

And this is where he's buried.

Is it? SHE GASPS

So I wonder if you'd like to come and see his grave.

Oh, I didn't know. Oh, yes.

-Would you like to come and see it?

-Yeah, thank you.

It's just down here.

Oh!

-This is a beautiful spot, isn't it, for him?

-It is. It's lovely.

-Are you all wanting to come?

-Yeah.

-And what do you know about how he died?

-I don't.

-We don't know an awful lot, do we?

-No, no.

He died when he was 29, I understand. He died of his wounds.

He's just a little way along here.

-He's here amongst some of the Canadians.

-Oh.

-And look - here he is.

-Oh, gosh!

Oh.

-Where is he?

-That one, Mum.

18014 Private T Halliwell, Border Regiment, 2nd October 1916.

-It's so lovely to be able to see that, isn't it?

-It is.

I don't know if...

I brought this. I hope you don't think it's presumptuous -

-I didn't know if you'd want to put it at his grave.

-Oh!

Oh, Tom.

It's beautiful. Thank you so much.

As you can see, even generations later,

families are still coming to terms

with the full impact of the Great War.

We'll be back with the second special programme

from the Somme later in the year.

But for now, our thanks to our contributors

for sharing their stories with us.

From the Somme Battlefield, bye-bye.