Hugh Dennis Who Do You Think You Are?

-I'm going to lock the door.

-Three minutes to go.

Actor and writer Hugh Dennis is one of Britain's best-loved comedians.

The Now Show!

He started performing while still a student at Cambridge

and has been hosting radio satire, The Now Show, for over 13 years.

What's the thing you most wish you had never started? Ryanair.

Why? I'll tell you for a pound.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Hugh's also a regular on the topical TV panel show, Mock the Week.

Napoleon. A small man? Or a long way away?

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

I love making people laugh. And it's a two-way street, as well,

because there's nothing nicer than being laughed at, in the right way.

Hugh lives in East Sussex with his wife and their two children.

He grew up in London, the younger of two boys.

His parents, John and Dorothy, met at Cambridge,

and John became a bishop in the Church of England.

It's fascinating, isn't it?

It's fascinating for anyone to find out what their family are like.

'Both my grandfathers fought in the First War.

'That's the period in my family that fascinates me

'more than any other, really.'

I feel slightly nervous.

With anything, once you start digging, you don't know what you're going to find, do you?

So, my first stop, really, is to go and see my parents,

who obviously know far more about the family history than I do.

They're very good at keeping photos and records.

'My mother's father was called Godfrey.'

'I remember him teaching me to catch.

'I remember playing with him in the garden,

'but I can't actually remember having any proper conversations.'

My father's father... His first name was Hubert.

His second name was Ronald. He was known as Ron.

Just a very lovely, very gentle man.

As far as I'm aware, he never talked about the war,

but nor did my mum's dad.

I've always assumed it was one of those things,

in that generation, you simply didn't talk about.

Hello, Pete. Great to see you. Come on in.

-Where are we going?

-In there.

That's a photograph of my father, Godfrey...

..when he was in the army, in the First World War.

-How old was he there?

-I should think that he's about 19, perhaps, or 20.

He was in France throughout the war.

-Presumably, he would've gone through some of the more horrible...

-I think he did.

Whatever it was marked him dreadfully,

-in a sort of subterranean way.

-Yes.

So that when he became really old and not very well -

I mean, he became confused and so on -

he thought that he was reliving many of those war experiences.

And...it was horrific, really.

Is there any way of finding out what he did do? Who would know?

He talked to my sister, Margaret, quite a lot, I think.

When she was grown up and I had left home.

She might be able to tell you

quite a bit more about his experiences, I think.

And this is Granddad?

That's my father, yes, your other grandfather.

-He was born in 1899.

-Near Sheffield?

-Yes, a village called Wales,

which is actually near Sheffield, yes.

Do you know what he did in the war?

No. I mean, we build up a picture from the photos that we've got,

but he never talked about it, at all.

His war experience was really quite short,

because I think he'd only been in France a few days

when he got wounded.

And I remember huge scars down the whole of his side,

which were there for ever, where he'd taken shrapnel on board.

-That's your granddad, as well.

-Just before he goes off to war?

-Yes.

He'd been a grammar school boy,

so was he was naturally looked on as someone who might make an officer.

He got his officer training at Cambridge

before he went over to France.

And this photograph here, as you'll see,

we'll both recognise that. That's on the river at...

Well, I'm assuming, on the Cam, at Cambridge.

Yes, he's number five. That's him.

Do you know about this period at Cambridge, the officer training?

I don't know what he was doing, no.

And I don't know how long he was there, either.

We've got a photograph here of his mother and his father.

-Edie, was a...

-You look quite like her, in fact.

Well, they call it genetics, don't they?

She was married to John, my grandfather. He was a miner.

And when she had children of her own,

she was determined that they should get a good education,

because she did not want her children to go down the pit.

'It's remarkable really that he was the son of a miner,

'and yet, when the First World War was on, he was an officer.

'But, before that, it was the fact that he went to a grammar school.

'I imagine in a pit village south of Sheffield that was very unusual.'

'I guess I need to start in South Yorkshire.'

Kiveton Colliery, where Hugh's great-grandfather John Dennis

worked in the 1900s, dominated the villages of Wales and Kiveton Park.

At its height, it employed over 1,000 people.

It was finally closed in 1994 and the buildings were demolished.

Hugh is meeting Eric Chambers

of the Kiveton Park and Wales History Society.

-Eric.

-Very pleased to meet you!

-Nice to meet you.

-So what have you found out?

-Well, take a look at this.

And this is what?

This is the census from 1901 for Wales and Kiveton Park.

OK, and there's... So that's John Dennis.

So he is my...

-..great grandfather?

-Great grandfather, yes.

Because his wife Edith is here.

And they have two sons, and this son, here Hubert R -

R standing for Ronald - is my grandfather.

So John Dennis was 29 in 1901.

And he was male...

-which is good, and a relief.

-(CHUCKLES) It really is, yes.

And he was a... What does that say?

-Hewer?

-Hewer.

-So, coal miner hewer.

Which was what?

They actually worked on the coalface, with a pick and shovel,

actually cutting coal.

And he would work an 8-hour shift on the coalface

and he would be expected to mine

about 17 tons altogether in one shift.

To actually do that, to mine 17 tons of coal, in any conditions,

but to do it under those circumstances was amazing.

-Not a job for the claustrophobic, is it?

-No, it isn't.

Wow.

Coal hewers in collieries like Kiveton

worked in treacherous conditions.

Almost every miner could expect to suffer an injury

or experience a roof fall over the course of his career.

And deaths underground were frequent occurrences.

Lung disease caused by coal dust was common

and there was little welfare and no pensions for those unable to work.

But in villages like Kiveton Park and Wales

there were few other opportunities for employment.

And would all these men, all these families would have worked down the pit, would they?

Well, if you have a look. This is another part of the census,

which will give you an idea of the occupations.

So this family, the Turners, the head of the family is a hewer,

then pony driver in the pit, pony driver in the pit,

and colliery engine driver,

coal mine plate-layer,

pony driver coal mine, pony driver coal mine.

Frank Robinson, 16, pony driver.

So you start quite young, don't you? He's 15. Then 14.

Yes, that tends to be a job that they started them off on.

-And how young could you be?

-In 1901, 14 was about the age.

So, my great-uncle Jack is three at this point and my granddad is two.

So they've ten more years.

We're ten years away...from these children having to go underground?

-That's correct, yes.

-Whoa.

In 1901, over 60,000 boys under the age of 16

worked in British coal mines -

nearly 9,000 of them in Yorkshire.

In that year in the United Kingdom,

66 boys were killed in mining accidents.

It's astonishing, isn't it?

When you think about how, how young 13 is, actually.

Kind of frightening, really, isn't it?

Well, it's a job I couldn't have done at all.

I managed to get out through education.

And my father always told me he didn't want me to work down the pit.

I went to grammar school.

-Which is what my grandfather did.

-Yes.

The way out was education, if you could get it.

'I think, coming here, you get a real sense of why my great grandparents'

were determined that their children wouldn't go...down the pit.

You know, childhood, in very simple terms, childhood ended really early.

It was by no means inevitable he was going to go to grammar school.

In fact, it was much more likely, I guess,

that he would've gone down the pit at 14.

'I know my grandfather made it to grammar school,

'but I don't know HOW he did that.

'That's as much as I know, so I need to find out about that.'

Hugh has come to Wales Primary School,

to meet social historian, Professor Keith Laybourn.

I mentioned there'll be something you might be interested in.

-Yes.

-This is the honours board of the school.

-It's taken from the old school, put in here.

-Yes.

Is there anything that attracts your attention?

HE LAUGHS 1910.

Dennis Ronald, is my grandfather, he got a scholarship.

He got a scholarship.

-TOGETHER: A Wales Educational Trust.

-Yes.

So what did that mean?

Well, it was the local landowners who raised money to allow

bright working-class kids from this district to go to grammar school.

-So he did well?

-He did very well.

To win a trust award, or indeed, a county award,

you are one in about 100 children.

-That's the...

-OK.

-It's that rare.

And in a sense, if you were a son of a miner, probably even rarer.

In the early 20th century,

secondary education was largely provided

by public and fee-paying grammar schools,

attended almost exclusively by children from the upper and middle classes.

Less than 5% of working-class children

made it to secondary school.

But secondary education was expanding.

The government began to help fund the building of a wave of new grammar schools.

In return for this state aid,

more places would be made available to children from poorer backgrounds.

These places were awarded by scholarship

and to win one, Ronald Dennis had to show exceptional ability.

-Well, here's the exam...

-I feel slightly nervous, if I'm honest.

..that your grandfather would've sat.

This is a ten and 11-year-old child that's probably taken this.

There's an arithmetic paper.

Um...

"Postcards already stamped can be bought at the rate of 11 for 6d.

"Similar postcards, unstamped,

"can be bought at the rate of 25, for one penny.

"Explain which is cheaper,

"to buy postcards already stamped, or postcards and stamps separately."

Doesn't say how much stamps were, so that's almost impossible.

It's almost impossible,

because I tried working that out yesterday and I couldn't!

You have to phone the Post Office and find out.

Our collective ignorance is quite profound really, isn't it?

That's the kind of question that most ten or 11 years old would go, oh...

Yes.

This is genuinely difficult, isn't it?

Very, very difficult, for a 10-11 year-old child.

-Do you know anything about the grammar school he ended up at?

-It was Woodhouse Grammar School.

Opened in '99,

designed for 200 pupils, but was demolished recently.

The next thing we have is a picture from about 1950, or thereabouts.

Um, see if you can spot...

This wasn't my grandfather.

Jennifer...

So he's there. Yes, that's definitely him.

-I believe you've got an Uncle Jack...

-I have, yes.

Is that Jack?

It was a uniform and a half, wasn't it?

And if you were, I mean, you know, kids taunt other kids,

if you were the two kids from the mining village

who'd gone off to the grammar school and you came home every day...

-Yes.

-..wearing this, sort of, expensive...

-I'd stick together, if I were them!

-He would've been....

Yes, I think the real problem I think you face,

at the turn of the century, is this class situation.

You are actually moving from being working class to a middle-class environment.

You're not accepted by one and you're beginning to almost alienate yourself from another.

I think that's a real difficulty.

Because you get it from both ends.

Remember, you're not really part of the middle-class,

-but you're no longer part of the working class.

-Yeah.

'Both he and his brother Jack both went to grammar school,

'which, kind of, set the course for where I am now, if you like.

'If no-one had got them in or if they hadn't got themselves in,

'I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now.'

Ronald Dennis left grammar school

with expectations of a professional career and a bright future.

But the world he found himself in was in turmoil.

GUNFIRE

The First World War was raging in Europe

and thousands of young British men had already been killed.

Ronald's plans were put on hold and, in January 1917,

he joined the Army.

'The next thing we definitely know about my grandfather'

is that he ended up in officer training in Cambridge,

so I guess the next step is to...

..maybe get to Cambridge and see what there is there.

Hugh is visiting St John's College,

which housed officer cadets during the First World War

and which he himself attended 60 years later.

'I started there in the '80s.'

'I imagined I was going to places my grandfather had been previously.

'But I've no idea what he did or what the officer training school was.'

Hugh is meeting Professor Gary Sheffield,

an expert on the history of officer training during the First World War.

-Hi, Gary, how are you?

-Nice to meet you.

-This is rather odd for me, because this is my old college.

-Oh, right.

Before coming to Cambridge for officer training,

Ronald Dennis had joined the Army as a private soldier.

Gary has found a copy of his military service record.

If you'd like to start by looking at this form.

So this is an application for admission to an officer cadet unit.

He's been talent-spotted.

He's in training as an ordinary soldier,

someone has recognised that there is...

there is some sort of potential for leadership there

and therefore he's recommended to be commissioned.

Was it unusual for grammar school boys to get commissions?

-How did that work?

-Before the war, definitely yes.

The vast majority of officers came from public schools.

But during the war itself, well, given the huge casualties,

particularly among officers, the Army was actively

looking to recruit erm, talented soldiers,

no matter what their social background

and to some degree, social snobbery goes out the window.

Actually, it's "Can you do the job?"

That's fascinating.

The First World War had taken a huge toll on the officer class.

During the worst periods of the war,

the average life expectancy of a junior officer on the Western Front

was just six weeks.

Many of these public schoolboys, who would have been undergraduates,

were now fighting and dying on the front.

Meanwhile, back in Cambridge,

whole colleges had been commandeered by the Army

to train a new generation of officers

from very different social backgrounds.

-Now, what's happening there?

-That's...

-This is target practice.

That's right.

There's a really nice photo there.

So this is bayoneting... bags of something. Sandbags.

This is, this is bayonet training.

This is the sort of obvious military tactics training.

What a weird, sort of conflict of worlds almost, isn't it?

Because this is a centre of learning, isn't it? And kind of...

intellectual learning, then on the grass at the back,

people are bayoneting sandbags.

There's a very interesting photo here I'd like you to have a look at.

This is the, kind of, formal, mediaeval dining hall.

And this is all the officer cadets being served, I guess, isn't it?

-Yes.

-Wow.

The Army had a strong belief that soldiers would only follow gentlemen

and gentlemen had an ethos which fitted them out to be leaders.

Officer training is not just about tactics,

it's not just about learning to be an officer in the technical sense,

it's about learning to be a gentleman,

if you're not born or educated as one.

So on some occasions, you would actually have instructors

sitting on the same table as them, checking their table manners.

HE LAUGHS

They're learning that stuff about

do you lean to the left or the right when the wine comes in?

And the way to pass the port and all the rest of it, yeah.

So it was a proper training course in moving up a social class, wasn't it?

It absolutely was and, of course,

Ronald would have done this, or something very similar to this,

coming from his background, suddenly he's in a mediaeval hall,

high table off to one side, being served dinner.

-A new experience.

-Yeah.

I mean, talking about this idea of creating gentlemen,

there's an interesting poem written here called A Perfect Course.

Perhaps you'd like to have a look at the last verse.

"It's one star now and a sand-brown belt

"and a temporary gentleman, too."

"So remember, my boy, whenever you go

"the 'Varsity you've been through." Wow.

For me, this really captures what it's about.

I mean, "A temporary gentleman".

This is actually a dreadfully snobbish term

that was bandied around at the beginning of the war.

Officers like Ronald would hold temporary commissions -

they would be known as temporary offices officers,

as in, once the war was over, they would be back to civilian life.

But the assumption was - and it's very snobbish assumption -

that these people would only have the manners

and the bearing of an officer, of a gentleman,

for the period the war was going on.

So it must have been very difficult, I guess.

You know, your father is, literally, on the coal face

and then you are brought to these ridiculously plush,

really, isn't it, surroundings in Cambridge.

-So how long would he have been here then? Six months?

-Six months.

It was a six-month course

and at the end of it, he would have gone off to join his unit.

Between periods of military training,

the cadets in Cambridge were encouraged to take part

in all the traditional activities of student life -

playing sports, punting on the river and rowing.

'I should think Ronald, my grandfather,

'found it very, very strange to be here.

'I should think this was unlike anywhere

'he'd imagined he would end up.

'But I don't suppose any of this felt very real to him.

'I don't think it could.'

I think it was probably taken from about here.

There's a pub in this shot called the Fort St George,

which is just...there.

So it's definitely here.

So this is obviously the end of his time here,

cos the leaves on the trees.

He started in January and he was only doing six months so, you know,

this is spring or early summer.

As the end came to his time here

I should think he could only have viewed leaving here with, sort of, trepidation, really.

'According to my dad, Ronald only arrived in France

'in the last weeks of the war and was quite badly wounded.

'I need to find out what happened to him.'

Hugh is visiting the Imperial War Museum in London.

-He's meeting military historian Nigel Steel.

-Hi, I'm Hugh.

Pleased to meet you.

But what I'm interested in is my grandfather,

when he leaves Cambridge and heads off to war.

Well, the first thing, I think, is his medal index record,

and what's useful about the medal index record

is it actually gives us the date he arrives in France.

-So he goes to France on the 12th of October.

-1918.

And then the war ends on the 11th of the 11th of '18,

although presumably there is a bit of stuff after that.

There's a month to go,

but what's interesting about entering the Western Front

in the beginning-middle of October

is that you are almost at the climax of the war.

There are large numbers of German soldiers

who are fighting as hard as they have ever fought

and although we can historically see that there may only be a month left,

it doesn't make a difference. He doesn't know that.

By October 1918,

the fighting on the Western Front was getting ever more desperate.

The stalemate of trench warfare had been replaced by chaotic

mobile combat across devastated terrain.

The Germans had fallen back towards the Belgian border,

close to the River Sambre, so the British High Command

planned a major assault to smash these new German lines.

-And what does he do when he arrives then?

-He was a platoon commander,

so he would have been in command of a group of 30-35 men.

-He was 19.

-He was 19 years old, he's just arrived from Britain.

There's a group of maybe 25-30 hardened soldiers

from the North of England and you've been plonked from nowhere on top.

I mean, it's an intimidating prospect.

The target of Ronald's platoon was the village of Futoy.

To capture it, Ronald would have to lead his men

through more than a mile of fierce German defences.

The attack takes place at five o'clock in the morning,

it's very dark, there's a mist floating around.

It's going to be extremely noisy -

the shells will start flying in both directions instantaneously.

Machine guns will crank out.

You're not really going to be able to see where you're actually going,

so very soon, casualties will fall. I think the battle will degenerate

into an almost inconceivable, terrifying experience.

Despite the German resistance, Ronald and his battalion

successfully captured the village of Futoy,

but they suffered heavy losses.

"The battalion was unlucky in losing 13 officer casualties,

"five killed, eight wounded."

-And he gets wounded?

-He gets wounded.

-On this day?

-That's right.

Yes, we know that because if we go down the rest of the medical reports

that we've actually got for him

and this is the description of the wound that he actually gets.

"Wounded as above by fragments of shell.

"Shell wound, upper arm, right."

And what would "shell" mean that instance?

Does that mean artillery shell?

Yes, an artillery shell would have been fired

and burst into fragments and this large lump of hot metal

would have flown towards him and ripped across his arm.

It's all healed up within two or three weeks,

so it's actually not that bad, but it's bad enough to take you off the battlefield.

Lucky. Very lucky.

You know, a tiny bit higher. Tiny bit to the left.

That's where luck is on his side.

It does seem to be, when you look at the way it pans out for him.

He could be somebody you could say had a lucky war.

Well, a very, very lucky war.

Following his injury at Futoy,

Ronald Dennis was sent home to England to recover.

After the war, he left the army,

married and became a secondary school teacher.

He died in 1990, aged 91.

I wonder, when I hear about his service,

whether he'd rather underestimated what he had achieved.

I mean, what I'm rather proud of, really, is the fact that

when he was called upon, he did the thing that he was called upon to do.

Without my grandfather's journey,

I don't suppose my life would be in any sense the same,

because his story, it seems to me, is one of social mobility, really,

which had only started to become possible at that point.

And if none of that happened, I wouldn't be here, so...

Now, Hugh wants to explore the very different war experience

of his other grandfather, Godfrey Hinnels.

My mum's dad obviously had this very long war.

I want to know where he fought and what his story was, really,

cos I know even less about that and there's more to know, really.

Hugh's aunt Margaret has come up to London

to share her memories of her father.

-How lovely to see you. Long time.

-It's a small room you've got here.

Extraordinary. So, there we are.

Now, mum said - and this is why I'm here, really -

that you would know more about your father's war record than she does.

Yes, I think possibly I do. Yes, I do.

We've got photographs here

and this is one that was particularly...

I knew so well.

It's a family gathering.

There's his beloved brother, Frank, who'd just joined up,

and there's my father, still in civvies.

Frank then went off and got killed at Gallipoli.

-How old was he there? He was 17?

-17. 17, yes.

And he was his best friend.

And there was my father towards the end of the war, I take it.

-This is a group of sergeants, isn't it?

-Yes, that's right.

He was in the war for a long time, wasn't he?

Yes, he was, both in France and in Belgium.

And did he tell you any, kind of, specifics of his war?

I don't know how I know this story -

you have to understand that I don't know -

but he was on a hill

with an enormous amount of British troops

and the Germans surrounded them

and at the end of the battle,

there were nine of them left - nine British -

and the Germans had really won, obviously,

and to get out of this hill, from this hill,

they had to use the dead bodies of their comrades...

I mean, it's so horrendous, isn't it?

..to build a bridge,

because it was very marshy, I think,

and, well, that was the only way out.

-So he had one hell of a war, didn't he?

-He did.

-Awful, awful.

It must've been so hellish for him.

And do you think...

I mean, obviously, towards the end of his life, when I knew him,

and I remember him as a very gentle, friendly grandfather, wasn't he?

-Yes, he was lovely.

-He taught me to catch and stuff like that.

But do you think it absolutely coloured the rest of his life?

Inside. Inside him.

He woke every morning at six, or just before,

and got up, because he said the thoughts that crowded him

were too terrible. To get away, he'd go into the garden and...

..he tended our garden so beautifully

and it was his salvation, I think.

-It's not something you'd really ever get over, is it?

-No, no, no, no.

It just sounds like he had a horrific time.

One story that Margaret told me

about my grandpa being one of nine men left after a German... A battle.

I didn't know any of that, at all.

I want to know where that was and what happened.

I need to get to the bottom of that, I think.

Hugh is starting by doing an online search

for Godfrey's military service record.

So here he is. Godfrey Parker Hinnels.

Bury St Edmunds, aged 20 years and four months. That's him.

Right, so these are the records of his service,

so he embarks for France

on the 13 of February -

that's my birthday - in 1917.

It's all in a strange order,

but he's in active service in France for 18 months or so.

It's very confusing

cos they've just filled in gaps wherever there is a gap,

so it seems to start in 1919

and then go back to 1916 and it's just dates, really.

I need to get to the story behind it.

Find out what happened in each of these places.

I'm aware that this is a very different kind of journey.

He left on 13th February, 1917, presumably on a troopship,

going out to a very harsh training camp.

By contrast, I'm on an nice, warm ferry heading - I hope - for a hotel.

It must have been deeply frightening, I think,

when you know that the next step is...action.

You must, kind of, look back and just think,

"I wonder if I'll ever get back there again."

Hugh is in northern France heading south to the city of Arras,

where Godfrey was sent shortly after he arrived.

It was the scene of one of the pivotal battles

of the First World War.

By April 1917, the Western Front was in stalemate,

with both sides dug in in a vast network of trenches.

To break this deadlock, the British launched a major offensive

against the German trenches, outside the city of Arras.

Godfrey had been assigned to the Suffolk Regiment.

In early April, 1917, they were stationed close

to the village of Neuville Vitasse, southeast of Arras.

To find out what they were doing there,

Hugh has arranged to meet battlefield historian Jeremy Banning

at a military cemetery on the outskirts of the village.

-Hi.

-Hello, Hugh. Nice to meet you.

-And you.

-Can I tell you what I know?

-Yes.

What I've worked out so far is that his war - his action -

started here, somewhere here.

There are other bits of his story that I'm following, as well,

where he gets stuck on the top of the hill with, sort of, nine men

and they're the only ones left standing, really,

which I want to get to the bottom of.

I'm just interested to know what happened here and why he was here.

Well, I've got some maps. I can show you modern maps

and we can see whereabouts we were.

OK, well here's the town of Arras here

and this is the village of Neuville Vitasse just here

so the tree-lined road that you can see just running on the ridge,

perhaps 300 yards away from us,

that's the position that they're brought to -

between Neuville Vitasse and Henin-sur-Cojeul.

-And we're here.

-We're just here, yeah.

-Looking that way.

Absolutely, looking back across the field.

So what was Godfrey doing here in April, 1917?

Well, if I can refer you to the war diary here,

if you have a look on the 13th...

OK, so a great deal of burial

and salvage work was done by the battalion

in the vicinity of the trenches in front of the...Hindenburg Line.

The trenches up towards this area had been attacked on 9 April,

so the Suffolks were brought in, as the war diary says, to bury the dead

who had been killed in the attack on 9 April and that's why we're here,

because there's a very, very good chance that Godfrey and the Suffolks

created the cemetery that we're standing by.

"The weather was bitterly cold and it snowed heavily."

-Wow, so it snowed here.

-Yeah.

The bodies of the men who had been killed in this attack

would have been lying under a blanket of snow

and so, Godfrey's role would have been

to find those men underneath that snow and...

..dig into it, to try and recover that body.

A lot of the bodies would have been blown into pieces, as well,

so they would have been in a pretty dreadful state. So, a horrible job.

You can see the fact that these men are buried

with the headstones buttressed next to each other,

there was no time for individual graves.

They would have dug a long trench and buried them in there.

You know, for someone who hasn't yet been to war, that must be...

It's pretty harrowing stuff, isn't it? You have to...

..come to thinking, "Well, I'm next," aren't you?

Unavoidably, I would have thought.

It would be a very, very tough introduction

to what modern warfare was, really.

So we're coming up now on to this high ground of Henin Hill,

and the German line ran across to the left just behind the ridge.

If you look in front of you, to the left,

you can see the remains of a German strongpoint here.

This whole landscape used to be dotted with these

and this was a machine gun position within the Hindenburg Line.

The Hindenburg Line was a massive German fortification

that stretched across northern France.

It was made up of an elaborate network of trenches and tunnels

surrounded by fields of barbed wire.

During the Battle of Arras,

breaking through the Hindenburg Line was the Allies' main objective.

Godfrey's next assignment with the Suffolks

was to launch an attack on this formidable fortification.

Anywhere here?

Yeah, perhaps if we stop in there, we can pull up on the right here.

Jeremy has brought Hugh to the site of the attack.

The Hindenburg Line itself was two lines of trenches

and we're between the two. And the reason we know where we are

is because you can see this white chalk line

in the field running through there.

Can you see the residue on the surface?

So that gives you the perfect line of the support line

of the Hindenburg and that is because

that had been dug down into the chalk

and so it leaves a perfect scar on the landscape.

The Allies had already seized

a short stretch of the Hindenburg Line north of this area.

The plan was for Godfrey's Suffolk battalion

to enter the German trenches in the north

and fight their way down using grenades,

killing and capturing German soldiers as they went.

This is a German map of the time,

showing perfectly the Hindenburg Line running down here in blue.

This is their start position and they are working down

the front and support line of the Hindenburg Line.

You're actually attacking along trenches

rather than attacking against them.

-And what happens?

-Let's have a look at the war diary once again.

-So let's see.

-Oh, OK. "Advance commenced at 4:45 AM.

"Meeting with a good deal of opposition of all sorts,

"until reaching the second sunken road,"

-which is this, is it?

-Absolutely.

-So they're not in open country.

They're fighting their way down a trench.

Above the trench or in the trench?

No, they're in the trench. To put it in its crudest terms,

what you're doing is you're throwing grenades at the enemy,

who are doing the same to you, as well.

I'll show you what the trench was like.

You can see the way it goes along and then returns in fire bays,

so you have this zigzag shape.

So when you're bombing your way along,

you don't know what you're going to encounter

when you're working your way round each bay.

Specialist bombers who would pull the pin on their grenade,

throw the grenade up over the top here

and then specialist bayonet men, whose role would be,

in the split-second that grenade explodes,

to be round the corner to bayonet any Germans.

Once they'd bayonetted them, the quickest way to dispatch someone

is rifle butt in the face. So it's smash into the face.

The nature of the fighting within this

is about as brutal as it can get

and if we think about Godfrey having joined the battalion in March,

he's thrown into one of the most savage infantry battles

of the entire war, so he is now from being as green as you can get

in the middle of this utter melee.

Three hours after starting their attack,

Godfrey and the Suffolks were within 200 yards of their objective,

but there, their progress was halted.

The Germans began a fierce bombardment of the trenches

from a neighbouring village and the British were forced to retreat.

There is a series of memoirs

left by a man called Captain Stormont Gibbs,

who was the adjutant of the 1st 4th Suffolks.

-This is of this actual attack, is it?

-Absolutely, yes.

"We calculated that not more than half the battalion could be left

"to hold two miles of trench."

So they've lost...

Well, they've lost that number of men, is that right?

"Soon came the news that we had no-one left in the front trench.

"All were wounded or madly trying to escape with the wounded.

"Then came the report that our bombs,

"which we kept hurling up to the front,

were duds and so were useless.

"When the enemy had driven us back

"for a considerable distance along our front line,

he was, of course, able to work down the communication trenches

"and get in behind our men.

"They tried to save themselves by bolting across the open,

"but they ran into barbed wire

"and were mopped up to a man by machine guns.

Wow.

-So they lost half of their men.

-They lost half their men, yeah.

And ended up, at the end of the day, exactly where they'd started.

Of around 700 men who began the attack on the Hindenburg trenches,

just 350, including Godfrey, survived.

What an introduction to combat that is, really.

It's very brutal. It's very brutal.

It's almost impossible to imagine the noise and the horror

of finding yourself in something like that.

You're just fighting for your life

and the way that you have to fight for your life

is to kill lots of Germans as you go.

It's impossible to imagine what the effect is, really.

By the end of the battle of Arras,

the Allies had taken hardly any ground,

yet the cost to human life was immense.

In five weeks, the Allies suffered nearly 160,000 casualties,

an average of over 4,000 men a day.

I hardly dare ask, but what happens to Godfrey after this then?

The next major action is not too far from the Belgian city of Ypres,

sort of between Ypres and the Passchendaele Ridge.

So this is Passchendaele that's about to happen?

That's right. That's right, yeah.

This is like a series of really awful fixtures, isn't it?

It's like, you go and have a rest and then you go and play the next one.

-Absolutely.

-A sort of horrific...fixture list.

In July 1917, the Allies launched an attack on the German lines

around the village of Passchendaele, east of the Belgian city of Ypres.

Passchendaele would become

one of the most brutal and chaotic battles of the war.

Within a few months, the countryside had been completely destroyed

and heavy rains had turned the battlefields into a quagmire.

Tens of thousands of Allied soldiers were being killed

trying to advance just a few miles into German-held territory.

We're coming out of Ypres now and as we're going up this ridge here,

you can see the ground rising in front of us

and that was where the German lines ran up,

running along the top of that rich, the British on the lower slope.

It was from these positions that the British launched their offensive for

the battle for Passchendaele.

Is Passchendaele the other side of the ridge?

Passchendaele is away to our left.

On 26 September, Godfrey and the Suffolks

were set to launch an attack on the German lines

towards the Passchendaele Ridge.

But their plan came to nothing.

Before they could leave their starting positions,

they came under intense German artillery bombardment.

By the end of the encounter, they'd suffered over 250 casualties -

a third of the battalion.

Godfrey survived

and he and his comrades were withdrawn from the front line

and spent the winter in camps close to the town of Poperinge.

The town of Poperinge, close to Ypres,

was commandeered by the British Army during the war.

Just off the town square was Talbot House, a club for British soldiers.

-Today, it's a museum.

-Hi, Hugh. Please come in.

-Welcome to Talbot House.

-The secretary is Jan Louagie.

So this is my grandfather, Godfrey.

-We've got this war diary.

-That's really interesting.

He was in Toronto Camp, which is just up the road here,

so it's only about two miles from Poperinge.

So he would have come to Talbot House.

Well, there's a big chance he would have come.

Talbot House was founded by a British Army chaplain,

Philip "Tubby" Clayton.

It was unique in offering soldiers the comforts of home

in the heart of the battlefield.

This is a picture taken in the other room.

There was a piano, a nice painting on the wall.

It also feels terribly British.

Oh, yes. The ground floor was just chairs -

armchairs, carpets, curtains, you know? It was a home from home.

And there was also a concert hall, you know,

because Talbot House had its own orchestra.

A really important place in the lives of the soldiers who were...

Definitely. Oh, yes, yes.

Lots of British soldiers were very fond of the garden, you see,

because Ypres was a sea of mud.

Here there was a garden with green grass,

with birds sitting in the treetops.

Mm. Well, my grandfather was very keen on gardening.

He treated the garden, when he got back from the war,

-as his way of escaping, really.

-Ah.

Well, this was also considered as a sort of therapy

by the chap who ran the place.

He said, "If you do gardening, you forget all about the war."

Maybe that's a lesson my grandfather learned here.

-Possibly.

-It could be, couldn't it?

"Tubby" Clayton managed to get together a chapel

and, again, one of the soldiers was a good painter.

He painted this, what it looked like.

-If you want to, we can go and have a look.

-Is it still here, is it?

-It's still here, yes.

-I'd love to do that, yeah.

-OK, let's go and see it.

-It's incredibly simple, isn't it?

-Yes.

We found a very nice account by one soldier

who was telling his wife all about Talbot House.

"And pushing through the door I found myself at once in a different world.

"During the preceding three weeks,

"I've lived in the land of mud and death.

"Many of my best friends had passed over,

"others I'd seen mangled, wounded and in agony.

"After some hesitation, I climbed the narrow stairway into the upper rooms"

- so that's that staircase -

"I've been to services often enough,

"both in the Army and in those almost-forgotten civilian days

"yet in that little upper room in company with a few dozen other men

"who had been tried by fire as I had been tried,

"I found for the first time, the courage and satisfaction

"that men have agreed to call a piece of God which passeth understanding

"and I came down the stairs ready and able to face again

"the dangers and troubles of the morrow."

You can see that, really.

-It's a wonderful place, isn't it?

-Very much so.

I still don't know how his war ends.

I also need to see if I can get to the bottom of this story

where he is one of the last men standing on this hill,

surrounded by Germans, and I don't think I've found that yet.

Neither of the places we've been seem to be that.

In the spring of 1918,

having spent the winter away from the front line,

Godfrey Hinnels found himself once again in the thick of the action.

The German High Command launched a massive attack

on the Allied forces on the Western front -

The Spring Offensive.

Godfrey and his new regiment, the Lincolnshires,

were charged with defending the village of Wytschaete on the outskirts of Ypres.

-This is Wytschaete.

-This is the village of Wytschaete, that's right.

Godfrey's unit were brought in to defend this area.

So the Germans are there. Coming towards us.

Coming across this way. It was a desperate time.

So as Godfrey's sitting here,

perfectly aware that they're going to be attacked -

it's not IF they're going to be attacked,

it's WHEN they're going to be attacked.

So Douglas Haig, commanding the British expeditionary Force,

the special order of the day. If you have a look at the date,

it's just a few days before Godfrey was here.

"To all ranks of the British Army in France and Flanders,

"there is no other course open to us but to fight it out.

"Every position must be held to the last man.

"There must be no retirements. With our backs to the wall

"and believing in the justice of our cause,

"each one of us must fight on to the end.

"The safety of our homes and the freedom of mankind alike

"depend upon the conduct of each one of us at this critical moment."

So this is where Godfrey finds himself -

-right in the middle of it.

-So it's this far, no further.

On the morning of 16 April, 1918, the Germans launched their attack.

Godfrey and his Lincolnshire battalion,

consisting of around 400 men and vastly outnumbered,

were directly in their path

holding a section of the Allied front line

on the edge of the village of Wytschaete.

"So at 4:30 AM on the morning of the 16th

"the enemy put down a terrific bombardment on our front line."

-So that's coming this way, so they're firing...

-They're firing...

Well, we're on this line here, so they're coming this way.

"Under cover of a dense fog,

"the enemy attacked on the flanks of the battalion

"and succeeded in breaking our line.

"Strong parties of the enemy then wheeled inwards

"and attacked both flanks of the battalion."

So he's facing this way,

but now he's got Germans have come that way and that way.

The Germans had broken through the British line on both sides of the village,

circling back to attack Godfrey's battalion on both flanks.

It says, "Owing to the dense fog and bombardment

"it's impossible to get a clear idea of the situation

"and the companies didn't know they were attacked

"until the enemy appeared at close quarters."

Godfrey and his comrades would have been unable to see

the Germans breaking in, so the Germans appearing at you

out of the fog from probably just a few yards away,

so it's terrifying hand-to-hand fighting.

Within hours, Godfrey's battalion had been almost wiped out.

Small pockets of soldiers were left to defend

the rising ground on the edge of the village,

while the Germans closed in steadily from both sides.

Well, the story was that he, I think, is on the top of a hill

with nine other men and surrounded

and manages then to retreat or escape, somehow.

According to my Aunt Margaret,

he said that they had to use the bodies of their dead colleagues

as a, kind of, a walkway.

I'm sure you couldn't ever really verify that.

That would never be in here, would it?

I think it's 86 men, 87 made it out of this action

so the account of there being nine men,

that might be nine men from his platoon.

-So how many would have started the action?

-Perhaps 400.

-OK.

So you've lost three quarters of the company.

Of the entire battalion.

So you think this is probably where that story of nine men at...

It ties in. It ties in very well.

There's no other action within Godfrey's service

that would tie in with this.

Well, I'm glad I know where it is. I'm glad I wasn't there, at the time.

The defence of Wytschaete marked the end of Godfrey's front-line service.

After the war, he returned to his home town of Bury St Edmunds,

where he got married and spent the rest of his life.

He died in 1974.

It's been a very interesting journey.

One of the aspects of it which it's really, kind of,

rammed home was that this was a war fought in farmland.

It was just a sort of muddy, bloody, horrifying mess.

And I'm glad I now understand the landscape.

I have a better feeling for what it was like and how awful it was.

I understand entirely why neither of my grandfathers

really wanted to talk about the war,

because why would you want to talk about the war?

It's so unremitting in its awfulness, that you...

I imagine you wouldn't really want to inflict it on anyone else.

In the end, they might not have talked about it,

but I am delighted that they had the choice not to talk about it.

In other words, that they got home.

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