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It was August the 4th, 1914. | 0:00:37 | 0:00:40 | |
The clock was ticking to catastrophe. | 0:00:40 | 0:00:42 | |
The deadline was midnight, Central European Time, | 0:00:45 | 0:00:48 | |
11 o'clock in London. | 0:00:48 | 0:00:50 | |
Britain and Germany were on the brink of war. | 0:00:50 | 0:00:53 | |
Germany's ruler, Kaiser Wilhelm II, | 0:00:58 | 0:01:01 | |
wanted to extend his empire. | 0:01:01 | 0:01:03 | |
German troops were already on the march through Europe | 0:01:06 | 0:01:09 | |
and had invaded Belgium. | 0:01:09 | 0:01:11 | |
He also planned to conquer Russia and France. | 0:01:12 | 0:01:16 | |
The British Government had warned | 0:01:18 | 0:01:20 | |
that, if Germany didn't back down by 11:00pm, it was war. | 0:01:20 | 0:01:23 | |
LOUD TICKING | 0:01:26 | 0:01:28 | |
The Cabinet and the nation held its breath. | 0:01:34 | 0:01:37 | |
From Germany, silence. | 0:01:40 | 0:01:43 | |
Then the sound of the apocalypse. | 0:01:52 | 0:01:54 | |
-BELL CHIMES -Doom. | 0:01:57 | 0:01:59 | |
-BELL CHIMES -Doom. | 0:02:01 | 0:02:03 | |
-BELL CHIMES -Doom. | 0:02:04 | 0:02:06 | |
"The big clock..." wrote Chancellor of the Exchequer, | 0:02:06 | 0:02:09 | |
David Lloyd George, "..echoed in our ears like the hammer of destiny." | 0:02:09 | 0:02:14 | |
There was now no going back. | 0:02:20 | 0:02:23 | |
At 11:20pm, British forces were sent the fateful telegram | 0:02:23 | 0:02:26 | |
which read simply, "War Germany Act". | 0:02:26 | 0:02:31 | |
In the hours leading up to the fateful deadline, | 0:02:37 | 0:02:40 | |
thousands of people had drifted towards Buckingham Palace | 0:02:40 | 0:02:44 | |
hoping to catch sight of their King, George V. | 0:02:44 | 0:02:47 | |
Silence fell upon the crowd. | 0:02:49 | 0:02:51 | |
Now and again there was a surge of cheering | 0:02:54 | 0:02:58 | |
and a mass chorus of the national anthem. | 0:02:58 | 0:03:00 | |
CHEERING | 0:03:00 | 0:03:02 | |
They stayed on long after nightfall. | 0:03:05 | 0:03:08 | |
They reckon there were about 10,000 people here that night | 0:03:11 | 0:03:14 | |
but they weren't baying for German blood. | 0:03:14 | 0:03:17 | |
It's often claimed the British were naively enthusiastic about war. | 0:03:17 | 0:03:22 | |
They weren't. | 0:03:22 | 0:03:24 | |
There was a general sense of excitement | 0:03:24 | 0:03:27 | |
once war had been declared, but there was anxiety too. | 0:03:27 | 0:03:30 | |
With an army of over two million soldiers | 0:03:34 | 0:03:36 | |
primed for a lightning campaign, | 0:03:36 | 0:03:39 | |
the Germans would be a fearsome enemy which could only be stopped | 0:03:39 | 0:03:43 | |
by even more fearsome force. | 0:03:43 | 0:03:45 | |
But even though the entire British Army numbered only 120,000 men | 0:03:51 | 0:03:57 | |
many people still expected a quick victory | 0:03:57 | 0:04:00 | |
when troops set off for the Continent on August the 9th. | 0:04:00 | 0:04:03 | |
"We had great hopes..." recalled one Irish soldier, | 0:04:07 | 0:04:10 | |
"..a dose of that rapid fire of ours | 0:04:10 | 0:04:13 | |
"followed by an Irish bayonet charge would soon fix things." | 0:04:13 | 0:04:17 | |
Most people seemed to have accepted that the war had to be fought | 0:04:20 | 0:04:24 | |
to honour treaties, to defend the Empire, to protect Britain. | 0:04:24 | 0:04:29 | |
And what else were they supposed to do? | 0:04:29 | 0:04:32 | |
To sit by and watch as Germany amassed an empire | 0:04:32 | 0:04:37 | |
that ran from somewhere deep in Russia | 0:04:37 | 0:04:39 | |
to the shores of the English Channel? | 0:04:39 | 0:04:42 | |
Now war had broken out, almost everyone backed it. | 0:04:46 | 0:04:49 | |
Most trade unions suspended strikes, which had been common - | 0:04:53 | 0:04:56 | |
their men went back to work supporting the war effort. | 0:04:56 | 0:05:01 | |
This, they were told, would be the war to end war... | 0:05:03 | 0:05:07 | |
..and almost overnight the British people united | 0:05:09 | 0:05:12 | |
in determination to defeat the enemy. | 0:05:12 | 0:05:14 | |
What they couldn't know was that this would be a new kind of war, | 0:05:24 | 0:05:29 | |
one that was fought at home as well as abroad. | 0:05:29 | 0:05:31 | |
It was a war that would affect every area of life in Britain. | 0:05:33 | 0:05:37 | |
No-one - grandparent or child, blacksmith or aristocrat, | 0:05:39 | 0:05:42 | |
boy scout or school girl - | 0:05:42 | 0:05:44 | |
no-one escaped the furnace of this total war... | 0:05:44 | 0:05:49 | |
..a war that would forge the country we know today. | 0:05:50 | 0:05:53 | |
When Britain declared war on Germany on August the 4th, 1914, | 0:06:06 | 0:06:10 | |
the British public hoped for a quick victory. | 0:06:10 | 0:06:13 | |
By mid August, British troops were making their way through France | 0:06:21 | 0:06:24 | |
and Belgium towards the enemy. | 0:06:24 | 0:06:27 | |
They were often greeted as heroes by the local people. | 0:06:28 | 0:06:32 | |
"It was a blissful period", remembered one soldier, | 0:06:35 | 0:06:39 | |
"Roses all the way", said another. | 0:06:39 | 0:06:41 | |
They were well trained and well equipped, | 0:06:53 | 0:06:56 | |
but there were far too few of them. | 0:06:56 | 0:06:58 | |
Britain's regular army was pitifully small. | 0:07:00 | 0:07:02 | |
Two thirds of it, a mere 80,000 professional soldiers, | 0:07:04 | 0:07:07 | |
had crossed the Channel. | 0:07:07 | 0:07:10 | |
Side by side with their French allies, | 0:07:10 | 0:07:12 | |
they were about to clash with the far stronger forces | 0:07:12 | 0:07:15 | |
of the invading Germans around the Belgian town of Mons. | 0:07:15 | 0:07:19 | |
In the town square, some of the soldiers | 0:07:33 | 0:07:36 | |
took a break before battle began. | 0:07:36 | 0:07:38 | |
Many of these men would never see their homes again. | 0:07:42 | 0:07:46 | |
The first British soldier to be killed | 0:07:56 | 0:07:59 | |
probably shouldn't have been here at all. | 0:07:59 | 0:08:02 | |
Private John Parr was a former golf caddy from North London | 0:08:02 | 0:08:06 | |
who joined the Army to better himself. | 0:08:06 | 0:08:09 | |
He was out on a bicycle reconnaissance patrol, | 0:08:09 | 0:08:13 | |
when he was killed in an ambush. | 0:08:13 | 0:08:16 | |
That was on August the 21st, | 0:08:22 | 0:08:24 | |
two days later, World War One began in earnest. | 0:08:24 | 0:08:28 | |
As the Germans launched a full-scale assault, | 0:08:38 | 0:08:41 | |
this canal became part of a long and bloody battle front. | 0:08:41 | 0:08:45 | |
The British fought bravely, | 0:08:48 | 0:08:50 | |
indeed, the first two VCs of the war were won right here, | 0:08:50 | 0:08:54 | |
but they were forced back and, later that day, | 0:08:54 | 0:08:57 | |
they had to abandon the town. | 0:08:57 | 0:08:59 | |
What we call The Battle of Mons | 0:08:59 | 0:09:01 | |
turned into a long and terrible retreat | 0:09:01 | 0:09:05 | |
with Britain's finest fighting men facing total annihilation. | 0:09:05 | 0:09:09 | |
Pursued by the Germans, they pulled back, | 0:09:13 | 0:09:16 | |
over 200 miles, deep into France. | 0:09:16 | 0:09:20 | |
They marched 13 days and nights, | 0:09:24 | 0:09:27 | |
so short of sleep they slept as they marched | 0:09:27 | 0:09:31 | |
and they dreamed as they walked. | 0:09:31 | 0:09:33 | |
This gruelling retreat | 0:09:37 | 0:09:39 | |
saved the core of the British Army from disaster | 0:09:39 | 0:09:44 | |
and it gave rise to one of the most famous stories of the war, | 0:09:44 | 0:09:48 | |
the miracle of how they were rescued by heavenly guardians, | 0:09:48 | 0:09:52 | |
the Angels of Mons, blocking the Germans' path | 0:09:52 | 0:09:56 | |
and guiding our boys to safety. | 0:09:56 | 0:09:59 | |
There's one very simple explanation for the Angels of Mons. | 0:10:03 | 0:10:08 | |
Exhaustion. | 0:10:08 | 0:10:10 | |
"March, march, march for hour after hour without a halt", | 0:10:10 | 0:10:15 | |
one private remembered, "very nearly everyone was seeing things, | 0:10:15 | 0:10:19 | |
"we were all dead beat." | 0:10:19 | 0:10:22 | |
There was no angel, | 0:10:22 | 0:10:24 | |
but there had been a humbling defeat. | 0:10:24 | 0:10:27 | |
The British public was about to register | 0:10:32 | 0:10:35 | |
the first great shock of World War One. | 0:10:35 | 0:10:38 | |
For a week, little news of the Battle of Mons had filtered home, | 0:10:50 | 0:10:54 | |
all press reports were strictly censored. | 0:10:54 | 0:10:57 | |
But then, on August the 30th, | 0:11:00 | 0:11:02 | |
The Times printed a brutally frank account of the battle | 0:11:02 | 0:11:06 | |
and the retreat. | 0:11:06 | 0:11:08 | |
"Broken British regiments, | 0:11:10 | 0:11:12 | |
"German tidal wave. | 0:11:12 | 0:11:16 | |
"Our losses are very great", | 0:11:16 | 0:11:18 | |
writes the reporter. "I have seen broken bits of many regiments". | 0:11:18 | 0:11:25 | |
Now, it was amazing that the Army's censor had allowed this through, | 0:11:25 | 0:11:28 | |
but what was even MORE astonishing | 0:11:28 | 0:11:31 | |
were the words he added afterwards. | 0:11:31 | 0:11:34 | |
"The first great German offensive has succeeded, | 0:11:34 | 0:11:39 | |
"the British Army has suffered terrible losses | 0:11:39 | 0:11:43 | |
"and requires immense and immediate reinforcements, | 0:11:43 | 0:11:47 | |
"it needs men, men and more men." | 0:11:47 | 0:11:52 | |
In less than a month, it had become clear | 0:11:57 | 0:12:00 | |
that World War One would NOT be ended by a quick victory. | 0:12:00 | 0:12:04 | |
What was less clear to the British people | 0:12:08 | 0:12:10 | |
was the huge numbers of men that would be needed to fight this war | 0:12:10 | 0:12:15 | |
and the impact it would have on their families and communities. | 0:12:15 | 0:12:19 | |
They were about to find out. | 0:12:22 | 0:12:24 | |
Following the heavy defeat at Mons | 0:12:35 | 0:12:38 | |
and subsequent retreat in the autumn of 1914, | 0:12:38 | 0:12:41 | |
the drive to recruit more men | 0:12:41 | 0:12:43 | |
was led by the most famous soldier alive, | 0:12:43 | 0:12:47 | |
Herbert Horatio, Lord Kitchener, the new Minister of War. | 0:12:47 | 0:12:52 | |
He'd realised that Britain could only win the war | 0:12:56 | 0:12:59 | |
by creating a massive new Army. | 0:12:59 | 0:13:02 | |
Elsewhere in Europe, they forced young men into uniform. | 0:13:05 | 0:13:10 | |
Kitchener's new soldiers would be volunteers | 0:13:10 | 0:13:13 | |
and he was the perfect figurehead to rally the men of Britain. | 0:13:13 | 0:13:17 | |
Targeting all able-bodied young men over five foot three, | 0:13:22 | 0:13:26 | |
Kitchener launched a recruitment campaign. | 0:13:26 | 0:13:29 | |
It began with a massive poster offensive. | 0:13:31 | 0:13:34 | |
12 million published in one year alone. | 0:13:37 | 0:13:40 | |
Many appealed to national duty. | 0:13:42 | 0:13:45 | |
Some to virility. | 0:13:48 | 0:13:49 | |
Some played on guilt. | 0:13:53 | 0:13:55 | |
Others on fear of invasion. | 0:13:58 | 0:14:02 | |
This was an unprecedented campaign of mass persuasion by the state. | 0:14:02 | 0:14:08 | |
Most of the time, most of the press were right behind the government. | 0:14:10 | 0:14:14 | |
In late August, for example, an advertisement appeared in The Times, | 0:14:14 | 0:14:19 | |
"Wanted. Petticoats. | 0:14:19 | 0:14:22 | |
"For able-bodied young men who have not yet joined the Army". | 0:14:22 | 0:14:26 | |
Recruiting centres were set up all over Britain. | 0:14:29 | 0:14:32 | |
Joining up was a very public business. | 0:14:35 | 0:14:38 | |
Streets were cordoned off. | 0:14:40 | 0:14:42 | |
Military bands played. | 0:14:44 | 0:14:46 | |
Volunteers made speeches. | 0:14:49 | 0:14:51 | |
Fevered enthusiasm swept the land | 0:14:53 | 0:14:56 | |
with 20,000 men volunteering every day. | 0:14:56 | 0:14:59 | |
On the 3rd of September, 1914, more young men joined | 0:15:05 | 0:15:09 | |
than on any other day of the war, | 0:15:09 | 0:15:11 | |
over 33,000 of them heeding Lord Kitchener's call. | 0:15:11 | 0:15:16 | |
You really can't fail to be impressed | 0:15:21 | 0:15:23 | |
by this massive rush to arms. | 0:15:23 | 0:15:26 | |
While nobody knew for certain the full horror that awaited them, | 0:15:26 | 0:15:30 | |
there were plenty of people who had some idea, yet still they came. | 0:15:30 | 0:15:35 | |
They did so for all sorts of reasons, | 0:15:35 | 0:15:37 | |
but the most prominent among them seems to have been | 0:15:37 | 0:15:40 | |
a sense of patriotic duty. | 0:15:40 | 0:15:43 | |
Before they left Britain for battle, | 0:15:49 | 0:15:52 | |
volunteers faced at least six months training, | 0:15:52 | 0:15:55 | |
but this didn't turn out as they'd expected. | 0:15:55 | 0:15:58 | |
At first, the Army simply couldn't keep up with the rush of men. | 0:16:01 | 0:16:07 | |
Some had to train in their own clothes, | 0:16:07 | 0:16:09 | |
with caps for helmets or broom handles for rifles. | 0:16:09 | 0:16:13 | |
One unit's practise attack came to a halt | 0:16:16 | 0:16:19 | |
when the volunteers went off to pick blackberries, | 0:16:19 | 0:16:23 | |
a senior officer claimed they were the laughing stock | 0:16:23 | 0:16:26 | |
of every soldier in Europe. | 0:16:26 | 0:16:29 | |
"We were play acting", said one volunteer. | 0:16:32 | 0:16:35 | |
"It required a lot of confidence to remember | 0:16:35 | 0:16:38 | |
"we were training to face the gigantic German war machine." | 0:16:38 | 0:16:42 | |
But Kitchener persisted. | 0:16:50 | 0:16:52 | |
That autumn, to boost the number of volunteers still further, | 0:16:52 | 0:16:56 | |
he bagged a bold new idea. | 0:16:56 | 0:17:00 | |
Join up with your friends. | 0:17:00 | 0:17:03 | |
After all, it'd be much less frightening, | 0:17:03 | 0:17:06 | |
if you knew you were going to war with your pals. | 0:17:06 | 0:17:09 | |
The so-called Pals Battalions were comprised of men | 0:17:12 | 0:17:16 | |
from the same area, club, background or profession. | 0:17:16 | 0:17:20 | |
There were battalions for artists, | 0:17:23 | 0:17:26 | |
for railway men, for city stockbrokers. | 0:17:26 | 0:17:29 | |
There were battalions for men under five foot three, | 0:17:31 | 0:17:35 | |
many of them sturdy miners. | 0:17:35 | 0:17:38 | |
The first Sportsmen's Battalion included several county cricketers, | 0:17:39 | 0:17:44 | |
plus England's lightweight boxing champion. | 0:17:44 | 0:17:47 | |
But men who joined together, often died together | 0:17:51 | 0:17:55 | |
and the effect on communities at home would be devastating. | 0:17:55 | 0:17:59 | |
The war was about to come to Britain itself | 0:18:02 | 0:18:06 | |
and you didn't have to be in uniform, or even an adult, | 0:18:06 | 0:18:09 | |
to become a casualty. | 0:18:09 | 0:18:11 | |
In August 1914, Britain had gone to war against Germany. | 0:18:20 | 0:18:24 | |
Only five months later, the enemy brought the war to Britain. | 0:18:29 | 0:18:33 | |
On the North East coast of England, | 0:18:40 | 0:18:42 | |
the morning of December the 16th, 1914, was still and misty. | 0:18:42 | 0:18:47 | |
The first signs of anything unusual were the flashes | 0:18:52 | 0:18:56 | |
coming from unidentified ships several miles out to sea. | 0:18:56 | 0:19:00 | |
One family realised what was happening | 0:19:06 | 0:19:08 | |
when a German shell fragment struck the house | 0:19:08 | 0:19:11 | |
and smashed into the front of the family alarm clock, | 0:19:11 | 0:19:14 | |
stopping it forever at three minutes past eight. | 0:19:14 | 0:19:19 | |
It was the start of a ferocious bombardment. | 0:19:23 | 0:19:26 | |
The people of Hartlepool felt the full horror of modern war. | 0:19:29 | 0:19:34 | |
Homes were death traps, but so too were these streets. | 0:19:40 | 0:19:43 | |
The German shells burst on impact, | 0:19:43 | 0:19:46 | |
sending shards of screaming hot metal, in all directions, | 0:19:46 | 0:19:50 | |
at hundreds of miles an hour. | 0:19:50 | 0:19:53 | |
It was the first successful big attack on Britain since 1066. | 0:19:56 | 0:20:01 | |
Many thought the nightmare of a German invasion had become reality. | 0:20:01 | 0:20:06 | |
Terrified children had simply no idea what was happening. | 0:20:08 | 0:20:11 | |
All we could hear is bang, these noisy bangs, | 0:20:15 | 0:20:19 | |
but see, it was far out to sea, | 0:20:19 | 0:20:21 | |
it didn't sound like bombs dropping against here. | 0:20:21 | 0:20:24 | |
What did you think the sound was? | 0:20:24 | 0:20:26 | |
We didn't know! | 0:20:26 | 0:20:28 | |
My older sister... My mother shouted her upstairs | 0:20:28 | 0:20:33 | |
and she said, "I think somebody's beating their carpets," | 0:20:33 | 0:20:36 | |
that's what she said. | 0:20:36 | 0:20:38 | |
So anyway she goes out and she finds out, she says, "Oh, Mum," | 0:20:38 | 0:20:42 | |
she come running back, "Mum, the Germans are here, | 0:20:42 | 0:20:45 | |
"they're on the beach and everybody's running away." | 0:20:45 | 0:20:50 | |
I went upstairs and looked out the bedroom window. | 0:20:50 | 0:20:53 | |
I could see big flashes. | 0:20:53 | 0:20:54 | |
-Out at sea? -Flashes out at sea, yeah. | 0:20:54 | 0:20:58 | |
And how were people reacting? | 0:20:58 | 0:20:59 | |
Oh, crying, and some of them crying, running with the prams and... | 0:20:59 | 0:21:06 | |
Anyway, there was hardly anybody left in Hartlepool, | 0:21:06 | 0:21:10 | |
it's all up the country. | 0:21:10 | 0:21:12 | |
-People were scurrying along outside, were they? -And then somebody come | 0:21:15 | 0:21:18 | |
and said, "Oh, somebody's had his head blew off." | 0:21:18 | 0:21:20 | |
-Well, that frightened me. -Mm. | 0:21:20 | 0:21:23 | |
-Somebody had their head blew off. -Mm. | 0:21:23 | 0:21:26 | |
What did you, do you remember what you felt? You were seven years old. | 0:21:26 | 0:21:29 | |
I was horrified, I thought they were coming any minute to the door | 0:21:29 | 0:21:34 | |
to take us, to kill us. | 0:21:34 | 0:21:37 | |
I was sitting shivering, I just sat on the end of the bed | 0:21:37 | 0:21:42 | |
and I was like that, shivering, mm, terrified. | 0:21:42 | 0:21:46 | |
What, thinking a German might walk through the door? | 0:21:46 | 0:21:48 | |
I thought they were coming any minute to take us away, | 0:21:48 | 0:21:51 | |
you know, to get us, yeah. | 0:21:51 | 0:21:52 | |
The children of Hartlepool were among the many victims | 0:22:07 | 0:22:10 | |
of Kaiser Wilhelm's navy that day. | 0:22:10 | 0:22:12 | |
Three members of the Dixon family were killed by a shell | 0:22:12 | 0:22:17 | |
as they ran for it, holding hands - | 0:22:17 | 0:22:19 | |
George, | 0:22:19 | 0:22:21 | |
his sister Margaret, | 0:22:21 | 0:22:23 | |
and their brother Albert, aged seven. | 0:22:23 | 0:22:25 | |
Their mother's leg was blown off. | 0:22:26 | 0:22:29 | |
Suddenly the dead of World War I had different faces - | 0:22:34 | 0:22:38 | |
the faces of British children. | 0:22:38 | 0:22:41 | |
For most British people, what happened here | 0:22:46 | 0:22:49 | |
in the North East that day was a war crime, an atrocity. | 0:22:49 | 0:22:53 | |
A line had definitely been crossed. | 0:22:53 | 0:22:57 | |
From now on, civilians in Britain | 0:22:57 | 0:22:59 | |
knew they too could be in mortal danger. | 0:22:59 | 0:23:03 | |
Before 1914 was over, the War in Europe had already reached | 0:23:18 | 0:23:22 | |
a deadly stalemate. | 0:23:22 | 0:23:24 | |
German and Allied forces faced each other | 0:23:26 | 0:23:28 | |
across a line of trenches that stretched for over 500 miles - | 0:23:28 | 0:23:34 | |
what become known as the Western Front. | 0:23:34 | 0:23:36 | |
Soon, wounded from the front | 0:23:43 | 0:23:45 | |
were arriving on the south coast in tens of thousands. | 0:23:45 | 0:23:49 | |
How long could Britain maintain this level of casualties? | 0:23:55 | 0:23:58 | |
Already the country was calling on soldiers | 0:24:03 | 0:24:06 | |
from across The British Empire, including men from the Indian Army. | 0:24:06 | 0:24:11 | |
Many Indian wounded were sent to Brighton | 0:24:13 | 0:24:16 | |
to be treated in a very unusual temporary hospital. | 0:24:16 | 0:24:19 | |
The Royal Pavilion had been built long before to evoke India, | 0:24:28 | 0:24:33 | |
the jewel in Britain's Imperial crown. | 0:24:33 | 0:24:37 | |
That winter, it looked very different. | 0:24:38 | 0:24:41 | |
The Pavilion was filled with badly wounded men. | 0:25:05 | 0:25:09 | |
Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus lay in their hundreds | 0:25:09 | 0:25:15 | |
beneath the chandeliers of a royal palace. | 0:25:15 | 0:25:18 | |
Where princes had once dallied and danced, | 0:25:24 | 0:25:27 | |
row upon row of Indian soldiers. | 0:25:27 | 0:25:32 | |
The huge Georgian kitchen was an operating theatre. | 0:25:36 | 0:25:40 | |
The dome nearby was another vast ward, complete with khaki lino. | 0:25:44 | 0:25:49 | |
All in all, some 4,000 Indians were treated here. | 0:25:51 | 0:25:55 | |
Every possible care was taken of the men. | 0:25:58 | 0:26:01 | |
Each religion had its own kitchen | 0:26:01 | 0:26:04 | |
and, unheard of then in British India, white women nursed Indians. | 0:26:04 | 0:26:09 | |
One patient wrote to his family in India, | 0:26:13 | 0:26:17 | |
"Our hospital is in the place where the King used to have his home. | 0:26:17 | 0:26:21 | |
"The men are tended like flowers." | 0:26:21 | 0:26:25 | |
In fact, the royal family had sold the Pavilion to Brighton Council | 0:26:27 | 0:26:31 | |
many years before. | 0:26:31 | 0:26:33 | |
But if these troops believed the King had vacated it just for them, | 0:26:33 | 0:26:38 | |
the authorities didn't tell them otherwise. | 0:26:38 | 0:26:40 | |
And in January 1915, King George V and Queen Mary | 0:26:42 | 0:26:47 | |
honoured them with a visit. | 0:26:47 | 0:26:50 | |
King George had come to pay his respects | 0:26:52 | 0:26:54 | |
to the men who'd served Britain so bravely, so far from home. | 0:26:54 | 0:26:59 | |
EXPLOSIONS | 0:27:02 | 0:27:04 | |
World War I had been fought for less than a year. | 0:27:06 | 0:27:09 | |
All of the suffering, grief, anxiety and fear endured so far - | 0:27:12 | 0:27:18 | |
all of this was just the start. | 0:27:18 | 0:27:21 | |
EXPLOSION | 0:27:35 | 0:27:37 | |
The First World War was the first industrial war. | 0:27:37 | 0:27:41 | |
Soldiers at the front needed millions of shells, | 0:27:41 | 0:27:45 | |
bullets and guns, known as munitions. | 0:27:45 | 0:27:48 | |
In May 1915, David Lloyd George | 0:27:52 | 0:27:54 | |
was appointed the new Minister in charge of Munitions. | 0:27:54 | 0:27:59 | |
Lloyd George knew there just weren't enough workers | 0:28:01 | 0:28:04 | |
to produce what the troops needed. | 0:28:04 | 0:28:05 | |
He'd have to mobilise a new workforce, | 0:28:10 | 0:28:14 | |
a new industrial army - the women of Britain. | 0:28:14 | 0:28:20 | |
Women in the workforce were nothing new, | 0:28:24 | 0:28:28 | |
but now women began to do jobs which only men had done. | 0:28:28 | 0:28:32 | |
Suddenly, Britain began to look very different | 0:28:34 | 0:28:38 | |
on the streets, in the fields and in the factories. | 0:28:38 | 0:28:44 | |
The biggest change in the fortunes of women | 0:28:56 | 0:28:58 | |
would take place in a strange, sometimes frightening new world. | 0:28:58 | 0:29:02 | |
In 1915, this was one of the most dangerous places in Britain. | 0:29:17 | 0:29:21 | |
It's pretty hard to believe now, but this peaceful place was once alive | 0:29:27 | 0:29:32 | |
with 6,000 people making explosives for the armies on the front. | 0:29:32 | 0:29:37 | |
These strange structures were designed to withstand | 0:29:40 | 0:29:43 | |
accidental blasts. | 0:29:43 | 0:29:45 | |
Here, the workers, many of them women, mixed deadly nitro-glycerine, | 0:29:46 | 0:29:51 | |
or made cordite, providing the bang that powered shells and bullets. | 0:29:51 | 0:29:57 | |
The women were known as Munitionettes. | 0:30:01 | 0:30:04 | |
The ones who worked at the Royal Gunpowder Mills | 0:30:05 | 0:30:08 | |
formed just a part of the million-strong female workforce | 0:30:08 | 0:30:13 | |
employed by Lloyd George's new Ministry of Munitions. | 0:30:13 | 0:30:17 | |
The experience was exciting, new... | 0:30:17 | 0:30:22 | |
and dangerous. | 0:30:22 | 0:30:24 | |
Inevitably, there were casualties. | 0:30:26 | 0:30:29 | |
This is a photograph of a woman called Charlotte Mead, | 0:30:34 | 0:30:38 | |
mother of five children, | 0:30:38 | 0:30:40 | |
with a husband away fighting in France. | 0:30:40 | 0:30:42 | |
It's taken in a photographer's studio | 0:30:42 | 0:30:45 | |
where she's posing in munitions factory overalls. | 0:30:45 | 0:30:49 | |
It's probably just as well it's in black and white, because working in | 0:30:49 | 0:30:52 | |
close contact with high explosives could do terrible things to you. | 0:30:52 | 0:30:56 | |
It could, for example, turn your skin yellow. | 0:30:56 | 0:31:00 | |
Within a year of this photograph being taken, | 0:31:01 | 0:31:04 | |
she was dead of toxic jaundice - | 0:31:04 | 0:31:07 | |
not that you could have read about it in the newspapers, | 0:31:07 | 0:31:11 | |
because the press was banned from reporting such things. | 0:31:11 | 0:31:15 | |
By the time her husband returned from the front, it was too late. | 0:31:15 | 0:31:19 | |
The need for munitions was insatiable | 0:31:29 | 0:31:32 | |
in this relentless total war. | 0:31:32 | 0:31:35 | |
Meeting that need required the most dramatic | 0:31:36 | 0:31:39 | |
transformation of production the country had ever seen. | 0:31:39 | 0:31:42 | |
Lloyd George's impact on the munitions industry was spectacular. | 0:31:46 | 0:31:51 | |
Within six months, the number of shells being manufactured | 0:31:51 | 0:31:55 | |
had increased 20-fold. | 0:31:55 | 0:31:57 | |
Weapons which had previously taken a year to manufacture | 0:31:57 | 0:32:00 | |
were now being turned out in three weeks. | 0:32:00 | 0:32:04 | |
In order to win this new industrial war, | 0:32:05 | 0:32:08 | |
David Lloyd George had called on women to take the place of men. | 0:32:08 | 0:32:12 | |
A social revolution was under way. | 0:32:13 | 0:32:16 | |
And it would play a decisive part in helping to win the war. | 0:32:19 | 0:32:22 | |
SEA BIRDS CALL | 0:32:35 | 0:32:38 | |
By February 1917, the war was locked in a brutal stalemate. | 0:32:41 | 0:32:45 | |
The German High Command decided that if they couldn't defeat | 0:32:46 | 0:32:50 | |
Britain's army, then they would crush her people. | 0:32:50 | 0:32:55 | |
In the words of the German Kaiser, "We will starve the British people | 0:32:57 | 0:33:02 | |
"who have refused peace until they kneel and plead for it." | 0:33:02 | 0:33:08 | |
The plan was to sink the merchant shipping | 0:33:08 | 0:33:10 | |
which brought the food and supplies on which the country lived. | 0:33:10 | 0:33:15 | |
The weapon would be the submarine - U-boats. | 0:33:15 | 0:33:19 | |
On a desolate mud bank in the salt marshes of Kent | 0:33:26 | 0:33:30 | |
lies the metal carcass of a First World War German U-boat. | 0:33:30 | 0:33:34 | |
British ships were blockading German ports, | 0:33:45 | 0:33:49 | |
but the U-boat was a new and terrifying way to wage war, | 0:33:49 | 0:33:52 | |
and it came close to defeating Britain. | 0:33:52 | 0:33:55 | |
The Germans knew that Britain imported two-thirds of her food | 0:34:00 | 0:34:05 | |
and they made a simple calculation. | 0:34:05 | 0:34:07 | |
If they sank 600,000 tonnes of merchant shipping every month, | 0:34:07 | 0:34:12 | |
they could starve Britain into submission in a mere five months. | 0:34:12 | 0:34:16 | |
So on 1st February 1917, | 0:34:21 | 0:34:24 | |
the Germans sent their U-boats in for the kill, | 0:34:24 | 0:34:28 | |
ordering them to attack all merchant shipping supplying Britain. | 0:34:28 | 0:34:33 | |
The devastation in the shipping lanes was catastrophic. | 0:34:33 | 0:34:37 | |
EXPLOSIONS | 0:34:37 | 0:34:40 | |
In 1917, 46,000 tonnes of meat was sent to the bottom of the sea. | 0:34:48 | 0:34:55 | |
Between February and June, 85,000 tonnes of sugar were also sunk. | 0:34:55 | 0:35:01 | |
Flour and wheat were soon in short supply, | 0:35:01 | 0:35:04 | |
and a stunned House of Commons was told | 0:35:04 | 0:35:07 | |
that, very soon, Britain would not be able to feed herself. | 0:35:07 | 0:35:11 | |
The U-boat stranglehold seemed unbreakable. | 0:35:15 | 0:35:18 | |
Britain faced a stark choice - | 0:35:22 | 0:35:24 | |
to grow much more food, or to starve. | 0:35:24 | 0:35:29 | |
But British farms were in crisis. | 0:35:30 | 0:35:33 | |
Many farmhands were now at the front, and so were the horses. | 0:35:33 | 0:35:38 | |
So a new force was sent into the fields. | 0:35:41 | 0:35:45 | |
84,000 disabled soldiers, | 0:35:47 | 0:35:50 | |
30,000 German prisoners of war, | 0:35:50 | 0:35:54 | |
and over a quarter of a million British women. | 0:35:54 | 0:35:57 | |
By the following year, over seven million extra acres | 0:36:03 | 0:36:07 | |
had been dug up to grow more food. | 0:36:07 | 0:36:09 | |
Well, it helped, eventually yielding | 0:36:16 | 0:36:19 | |
about a month's extra food each year, | 0:36:19 | 0:36:21 | |
but that was still nothing like enough | 0:36:21 | 0:36:24 | |
to make up for the thousands of tonnes | 0:36:24 | 0:36:26 | |
being sent to the bottom of the sea by German U-boats. | 0:36:26 | 0:36:29 | |
War was being waged on civilians, | 0:36:29 | 0:36:32 | |
and it was up to civilians to save themselves. | 0:36:32 | 0:36:35 | |
The order came to plough up Britain, | 0:36:45 | 0:36:49 | |
to hand over land to the people so they could provide for themselves. | 0:36:49 | 0:36:53 | |
This strip of land was waste ground until 1917. | 0:36:53 | 0:36:58 | |
Then it was dug up to provide cabbages, potatoes and marrows | 0:36:58 | 0:37:04 | |
for a hungry nation. | 0:37:04 | 0:37:05 | |
Armies of women, children and the elderly | 0:37:08 | 0:37:11 | |
set about transforming the landscape of Britain's towns and cities. | 0:37:11 | 0:37:16 | |
The nation had a new craze which the press called "allotmentitis". | 0:37:16 | 0:37:22 | |
Before the war, allotments had been a hobby for eccentrics. | 0:37:25 | 0:37:30 | |
By the end of the war, | 0:37:30 | 0:37:32 | |
there were over one and a half million of them | 0:37:32 | 0:37:35 | |
squeezed into any scrap of earth that could be dug up, | 0:37:35 | 0:37:38 | |
from grass verges to village greens to railway embankments. | 0:37:38 | 0:37:42 | |
But no amount of allotment digging | 0:37:55 | 0:37:57 | |
could hide the fact that things were simply getting worse. | 0:37:57 | 0:38:01 | |
The U-boat blockade was biting. | 0:38:01 | 0:38:05 | |
In autumn 1917, shortages were so severe | 0:38:08 | 0:38:11 | |
that huge queues formed outside butchers and grocers. | 0:38:11 | 0:38:15 | |
In some cities people looted the shops for food, | 0:38:17 | 0:38:20 | |
breaking the windows and beating up the shop owners. | 0:38:20 | 0:38:23 | |
Finally, the Food Controller had to think the unthinkable. | 0:38:28 | 0:38:32 | |
"It may well be," he told a colleague, "that you and I | 0:38:32 | 0:38:35 | |
"are all that stands between this country and revolution". | 0:38:35 | 0:38:39 | |
People would have to be told what they could and couldn't eat, | 0:38:39 | 0:38:43 | |
and so, in January 1918, rationing was brought in. | 0:38:43 | 0:38:47 | |
Now this was one person's ration for a week. | 0:38:47 | 0:38:49 | |
15 ounces of meat, | 0:38:49 | 0:38:51 | |
five ounces of bacon, | 0:38:51 | 0:38:53 | |
four ounces of margarine | 0:38:53 | 0:38:55 | |
and eight ounces of sugar. | 0:38:55 | 0:38:57 | |
# Keep the home fires burning | 0:38:57 | 0:39:02 | |
# While your hearts are yearning... # | 0:39:02 | 0:39:07 | |
This was the first time a British government | 0:39:07 | 0:39:09 | |
had ever rationed food... and it worked. | 0:39:09 | 0:39:12 | |
The queues outside the shops disappeared. | 0:39:14 | 0:39:16 | |
Rationing, allotments and a system of convoys to protect merchant ships | 0:39:16 | 0:39:21 | |
kept starvation at bay. | 0:39:21 | 0:39:23 | |
This had become a war that wasn't just being fought | 0:39:29 | 0:39:31 | |
on the battlefields, but on every street in the land. | 0:39:31 | 0:39:36 | |
It was a new kind of war and it brought a new term | 0:39:36 | 0:39:40 | |
into the English language - the Home Front. | 0:39:40 | 0:39:44 | |
In 1917, the situation | 0:39:54 | 0:39:57 | |
on the Western Front had become bleaker than ever. | 0:39:57 | 0:39:59 | |
Britain's allies were tottering. | 0:40:02 | 0:40:05 | |
There was mutiny in the French Army, | 0:40:05 | 0:40:08 | |
while Russia - torn apart by revolution - | 0:40:08 | 0:40:11 | |
was about to pull out of the War. | 0:40:11 | 0:40:14 | |
And the death toll went on rising. | 0:40:17 | 0:40:19 | |
Already, more than half a million British dead | 0:40:25 | 0:40:29 | |
since the start of the War. | 0:40:29 | 0:40:31 | |
Even decorated war heroes | 0:40:31 | 0:40:33 | |
were now wondering what they'd risked their lives for. | 0:40:33 | 0:40:37 | |
In 1917, one of them - the poet Siegfried Sassoon - went public | 0:40:39 | 0:40:44 | |
with his doubts about the War. | 0:40:44 | 0:40:46 | |
In the trenches, his men had known Lieutenant Sassoon | 0:40:48 | 0:40:51 | |
as Mad Jack, for his astonishing fearlessness, | 0:40:51 | 0:40:54 | |
and he'd won a Military Cross for bravery, | 0:40:54 | 0:40:57 | |
but now he was denouncing the whole thing. | 0:40:57 | 0:41:00 | |
"The war upon which I embarked | 0:41:00 | 0:41:02 | |
"as one of defence and liberation," he wrote, | 0:41:02 | 0:41:06 | |
"has become a war of aggression and conquest. | 0:41:06 | 0:41:09 | |
"I am protesting against the political errors | 0:41:09 | 0:41:12 | |
"for which the lives of fighting men are being sacrificed, | 0:41:12 | 0:41:16 | |
"and against the callous complacency with which those at home | 0:41:16 | 0:41:21 | |
"regard agonies they do not share." | 0:41:21 | 0:41:24 | |
From a decorated war hero, this was incendiary stuff. | 0:41:24 | 0:41:28 | |
Sassoon risked court-martial, imprisonment, even execution. | 0:41:32 | 0:41:36 | |
But the Generals were cleverer than that. | 0:41:38 | 0:41:40 | |
They pronounced him mad | 0:41:41 | 0:41:43 | |
and sent him here, to a military hospital called Craiglockhart. | 0:41:43 | 0:41:47 | |
Sassoon was surrounded by men | 0:41:57 | 0:41:59 | |
suffering from the condition called shell shock. | 0:41:59 | 0:42:02 | |
This war of endless artillery bombardment | 0:42:04 | 0:42:07 | |
wasn't only killing and maiming soldiers, | 0:42:07 | 0:42:10 | |
it was sending them mad. | 0:42:10 | 0:42:12 | |
At first, doctors thought it was a physical condition - | 0:42:15 | 0:42:18 | |
concussion, caused by exploding shells. | 0:42:18 | 0:42:21 | |
Treatment was often brutal. Some doctors used solitary confinement | 0:42:22 | 0:42:28 | |
and electric shock treatment to try to snap their patients out of it. | 0:42:28 | 0:42:33 | |
But then they began to understand something of the stress | 0:42:44 | 0:42:47 | |
of life in the trenches, the lack of sleep, the shattering noise, | 0:42:47 | 0:42:51 | |
the sight of so much death and mutilation. | 0:42:51 | 0:42:55 | |
As one lieutenant put it, | 0:42:55 | 0:42:56 | |
"Quite apart from the number of people blown to bits, | 0:42:56 | 0:43:00 | |
"the explosions were so terrible | 0:43:00 | 0:43:02 | |
"that anyone within a hundred yards was liable to lose their reason." | 0:43:02 | 0:43:06 | |
At Craiglockhart, doctors were pioneering | 0:43:15 | 0:43:18 | |
a radical new approach to shell shock. | 0:43:18 | 0:43:21 | |
Dr William Rivers believed that patients were repressing | 0:43:24 | 0:43:27 | |
the terrifying experiences they'd had | 0:43:27 | 0:43:30 | |
and that, in order to get better, they needed to talk about them. | 0:43:30 | 0:43:34 | |
In 1917, Rivers' work was groundbreaking. | 0:43:37 | 0:43:40 | |
But Craiglockhart's most famous patient - | 0:43:44 | 0:43:46 | |
the anti-war Lieutenant Sassoon - | 0:43:46 | 0:43:48 | |
wasn't suffering from shell shock, | 0:43:48 | 0:43:51 | |
and he realised that unless he gave up his protest | 0:43:51 | 0:43:55 | |
and returned to the Front, | 0:43:55 | 0:43:57 | |
he'd be stuck here forever. | 0:43:57 | 0:43:59 | |
After three months, Sassoon was restless. | 0:44:02 | 0:44:06 | |
He hadn't changed his anti-war views, | 0:44:06 | 0:44:08 | |
but he chose solidarity with his soldiers over private principles. | 0:44:08 | 0:44:13 | |
As he wrote, when he returned to the Western Front, | 0:44:13 | 0:44:17 | |
"I'm only here to look after some men." | 0:44:17 | 0:44:20 | |
Siegfried Sassoon's protesting voice had been silenced, | 0:44:25 | 0:44:28 | |
but his poetry remained clear and forceful. | 0:44:28 | 0:44:32 | |
In 1918, he wrote, | 0:44:32 | 0:44:35 | |
"You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye | 0:44:35 | 0:44:39 | |
"Who cheer when soldier lads march by | 0:44:39 | 0:44:41 | |
"Sneak home and pray you'll never know the hell | 0:44:41 | 0:44:44 | |
"Where youth and laughter go." | 0:44:44 | 0:44:47 | |
Unlike many of his friends - | 0:44:48 | 0:44:50 | |
including fellow writer Wilfred Owen, | 0:44:50 | 0:44:53 | |
whom he'd met at Craiglockhart - | 0:44:53 | 0:44:56 | |
Sassoon survived the War and died in 1967. | 0:44:56 | 0:44:59 | |
By June 1918, the balance of power | 0:45:10 | 0:45:12 | |
in The First World War | 0:45:12 | 0:45:14 | |
had shifted violently towards Germany. | 0:45:14 | 0:45:16 | |
Having made a peace with an exhausted Russia, | 0:45:19 | 0:45:22 | |
Germany could now pour troops onto the Western Front. | 0:45:22 | 0:45:26 | |
They now outnumbered the Allies by over 200,000 men | 0:45:28 | 0:45:32 | |
and they were massing for an attack they believed would win the War. | 0:45:32 | 0:45:37 | |
In the first five hours of the great Spring Offensive, | 0:45:46 | 0:45:50 | |
over a million shells were fired into British lines. | 0:45:50 | 0:45:53 | |
In a conflict where success was measured in yards, | 0:46:06 | 0:46:09 | |
the Germans advanced 40 miles in a single day. | 0:46:09 | 0:46:13 | |
In his diary, the Secretary to the British War Cabinet wrote, | 0:46:16 | 0:46:18 | |
"The Germans are fighting better than the Allies. | 0:46:18 | 0:46:22 | |
"I cannot exclude the possibility of disaster." | 0:46:25 | 0:46:29 | |
The British Army Commander Sir Douglas Haig | 0:46:30 | 0:46:33 | |
made one last desperate rallying call. | 0:46:33 | 0:46:36 | |
"Every position must be held to the last man. | 0:46:37 | 0:46:40 | |
"There must be no retirement. | 0:46:40 | 0:46:42 | |
"With our backs to the wall | 0:46:42 | 0:46:44 | |
"and believing in the justice of our cause, | 0:46:44 | 0:46:48 | |
"we must all fight on till the end." | 0:46:48 | 0:46:51 | |
The call to arms would be heard well beyond the trenches. | 0:46:57 | 0:47:00 | |
The Home Front couldn't afford to buckle either. | 0:47:05 | 0:47:08 | |
The country's war machine had to be kept running. | 0:47:09 | 0:47:12 | |
Prime Minister Lloyd George had once called the British workforce | 0:47:19 | 0:47:22 | |
the least disciplined in Europe. | 0:47:22 | 0:47:25 | |
Could they be relied upon at this moment of crisis? | 0:47:25 | 0:47:29 | |
Anyone searching for cracks in the nation's resolve | 0:47:34 | 0:47:37 | |
might have come here - | 0:47:37 | 0:47:39 | |
to the South Wales Coalfield. | 0:47:39 | 0:47:41 | |
In 1918, this place was considered | 0:47:48 | 0:47:51 | |
the Wild West of industrial relations. | 0:47:51 | 0:47:54 | |
The Welsh miners had been | 0:47:55 | 0:47:57 | |
a thorn in the Government's side | 0:47:57 | 0:47:58 | |
throughout the War, | 0:47:58 | 0:48:01 | |
calling strike after strike. | 0:48:01 | 0:48:02 | |
This, the finest steam coal in the world, | 0:48:05 | 0:48:08 | |
was a vital part of the war effort. | 0:48:08 | 0:48:10 | |
It drove the foundries, the forges, the explosives factories, | 0:48:10 | 0:48:15 | |
it powered the warships, and it gave the men | 0:48:15 | 0:48:18 | |
who extracted it tremendous power. | 0:48:18 | 0:48:21 | |
By 1918, there'd already been trouble in the pits | 0:48:21 | 0:48:25 | |
over the practice of combing out - | 0:48:25 | 0:48:28 | |
that was forcing men out of vital protected industries like this | 0:48:28 | 0:48:33 | |
and into the Army. | 0:48:33 | 0:48:35 | |
With the country now facing the real possibility of defeat, | 0:48:35 | 0:48:39 | |
further industrial unrest could have been catastrophic. | 0:48:39 | 0:48:42 | |
In fact, just the opposite happened. | 0:48:47 | 0:48:49 | |
When it came to it, even the most bolshie miner | 0:48:49 | 0:48:52 | |
wasn't prepared to see Britain lose the War. | 0:48:52 | 0:48:55 | |
When asked to pull together for the sake of the troops, | 0:48:58 | 0:49:01 | |
the response of the British workforce was emphatic. | 0:49:01 | 0:49:05 | |
In all industries, strikes were suspended | 0:49:05 | 0:49:08 | |
and people even turned out to work extra shifts. | 0:49:08 | 0:49:11 | |
On the Clyde, | 0:49:13 | 0:49:14 | |
thousands of ship builders gave up | 0:49:14 | 0:49:16 | |
their Easter holiday to keep working. | 0:49:16 | 0:49:18 | |
Recruiting offices saw a rush from men in protected jobs | 0:49:21 | 0:49:25 | |
coming forward to enlist. | 0:49:25 | 0:49:28 | |
The Minister for Munitions, Winston Churchill, | 0:49:31 | 0:49:34 | |
could scarcely believe his eyes, | 0:49:34 | 0:49:35 | |
"The response to our appeal to work over the holiday," he said, | 0:49:35 | 0:49:39 | |
"was excellent. Indeed, almost embarrassing." | 0:49:39 | 0:49:43 | |
At the very worst point in the War, | 0:49:52 | 0:49:55 | |
the Home Front had not only held, it had risen to the challenge. | 0:49:55 | 0:50:00 | |
The forces didn't lack for supplies, for ammunition or for weapons. | 0:50:00 | 0:50:05 | |
This was one time in the nation's history | 0:50:05 | 0:50:07 | |
when we really were all in it together. | 0:50:07 | 0:50:12 | |
In Germany, it was a very different story. | 0:50:21 | 0:50:25 | |
With German ports blockaded by the British Navy, | 0:50:27 | 0:50:31 | |
the country was being slowly starved out of the war. | 0:50:31 | 0:50:34 | |
Angry crowds took to the streets, demanding peace. | 0:50:39 | 0:50:42 | |
Anti-war strikes crippled German industry. | 0:50:44 | 0:50:47 | |
When a horse dropped dead in a Berlin street, | 0:50:52 | 0:50:55 | |
the locals fell on it for meat. | 0:50:55 | 0:50:57 | |
On the battlefield, the huge German Spring Offensive | 0:51:02 | 0:51:05 | |
had failed to break the Allies. | 0:51:05 | 0:51:08 | |
If anything, it had broken the Germans. | 0:51:09 | 0:51:12 | |
Their plan had devoured men and ammunition, | 0:51:14 | 0:51:18 | |
troops were left exhausted, demoralised, | 0:51:18 | 0:51:21 | |
and lacking supplies. And as the German war machine began to fail... | 0:51:21 | 0:51:27 | |
..Britain's was at full throttle. | 0:51:29 | 0:51:31 | |
By the summer of 1918, weapons were rolling off the production lines | 0:51:38 | 0:51:43 | |
in greater numbers than ever before. | 0:51:43 | 0:51:44 | |
The previous year, the United States had agreed to enter the war. | 0:51:48 | 0:51:53 | |
Now American troops had at last arrived | 0:51:53 | 0:51:56 | |
and were fighting with the Allies. | 0:51:56 | 0:51:59 | |
The tide had turned, | 0:52:01 | 0:52:03 | |
though victory would come sooner than anyone imagined. | 0:52:03 | 0:52:07 | |
After four terrible years, | 0:52:16 | 0:52:19 | |
the most devastating war in history | 0:52:19 | 0:52:21 | |
came to an end, | 0:52:21 | 0:52:22 | |
on November 11th, 1918. | 0:52:22 | 0:52:25 | |
In London, expectant crowds gathered in Parliament Square | 0:52:27 | 0:52:31 | |
and waited for the sound that would prove the War was finally over. | 0:52:31 | 0:52:35 | |
Big Ben had been silenced at the outbreak of war. | 0:52:39 | 0:52:42 | |
Now, at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, | 0:52:44 | 0:52:48 | |
it was about to strike again. | 0:52:48 | 0:52:50 | |
BIG BEN CHIMES | 0:52:52 | 0:52:55 | |
CROWD CHEERS | 0:52:59 | 0:53:03 | |
It was the signal for a roar of relief and joy, | 0:53:03 | 0:53:08 | |
and the start of celebrations which lasted three days. | 0:53:08 | 0:53:12 | |
In the House of Commons, the Prime Minister, Lloyd George, | 0:53:22 | 0:53:25 | |
addressed the House, "I hope we may say," he concluded, | 0:53:25 | 0:53:29 | |
"that thus, this fateful morning, came an end to all wars." | 0:53:29 | 0:53:34 | |
In Trafalgar Square, revellers | 0:53:43 | 0:53:45 | |
climbed on the lions and seized buses. | 0:53:45 | 0:53:47 | |
Australians and Canadians led the way. | 0:53:49 | 0:53:52 | |
They tore down the advertising hoardings in Trafalgar Square | 0:53:52 | 0:53:56 | |
asking people to buy war bonds, | 0:53:56 | 0:53:59 | |
and they lit an enormous bonfire right here under Nelson's Column. | 0:53:59 | 0:54:04 | |
The stones were left cracked and blackened as a consequence, | 0:54:04 | 0:54:08 | |
and you can see the damage still here today. | 0:54:08 | 0:54:12 | |
The last physical reminder of that amazing day. | 0:54:12 | 0:54:17 | |
Soldiers recovering in a country hospital were told the news. | 0:54:42 | 0:54:46 | |
There, the reaction was rather different. | 0:54:46 | 0:54:49 | |
One of the men said the announcement was met with silence. | 0:54:49 | 0:54:53 | |
"Our world was gone," he said, | 0:54:55 | 0:54:57 | |
"a bloody world, a world of suffering, but also, | 0:54:57 | 0:55:00 | |
"a world of laughter, excitement | 0:55:00 | 0:55:02 | |
"and comradeship beyond description. | 0:55:02 | 0:55:05 | |
"Now we were just some of the wreckage left behind." | 0:55:05 | 0:55:09 | |
Even before the War ended, cities, towns and villages | 0:55:19 | 0:55:23 | |
all across Britain had begun to build memorials to the dead. | 0:55:23 | 0:55:27 | |
Over 5,000 went up in the two years following the Armistice. | 0:55:37 | 0:55:42 | |
Some, a few, celebrated victory. | 0:55:44 | 0:55:47 | |
Most spoke of sacrifice. | 0:55:53 | 0:55:56 | |
Men remembering their dead comrades, | 0:55:56 | 0:55:59 | |
the ordinary soldier, rather than the Commander. | 0:55:59 | 0:56:03 | |
In the village of Briantspuddle, Dorset, | 0:56:10 | 0:56:12 | |
the war memorial was unveiled | 0:56:12 | 0:56:14 | |
on November 12th, 1918, the day after the War ended. | 0:56:14 | 0:56:18 | |
At the dedication of this memorial, | 0:56:23 | 0:56:25 | |
the Bishop of Salisbury wondered whether | 0:56:25 | 0:56:28 | |
there was really any need for further reminders of the War, | 0:56:28 | 0:56:31 | |
and he answered his own question, | 0:56:31 | 0:56:34 | |
"Yes, because there would be future generations | 0:56:34 | 0:56:37 | |
"who would lead lives crowded with happenings | 0:56:37 | 0:56:40 | |
"and they needed to be warned, lest they forget, lest they forget." | 0:56:40 | 0:56:47 | |
Later generations would contend it had been a futile war. | 0:57:04 | 0:57:09 | |
The War was terrible, certainly, but hardly futile. | 0:57:09 | 0:57:13 | |
It stopped the German conquest of much of Europe | 0:57:16 | 0:57:19 | |
and perhaps even of villages like this. | 0:57:19 | 0:57:23 | |
Never before in the nation's history | 0:57:30 | 0:57:33 | |
had a war required the commitment and the sacrifice | 0:57:33 | 0:57:36 | |
of the whole population. And, by and large, for four years, | 0:57:36 | 0:57:40 | |
the British people kept faith with it. | 0:57:40 | 0:57:43 | |
It wasn't a war they had sought | 0:57:43 | 0:57:45 | |
and had they known how it would turn out, | 0:57:45 | 0:57:47 | |
they doubtless wouldn't have joined in. But they hadn't known. | 0:57:47 | 0:57:51 | |
They couldn't have known, | 0:57:51 | 0:57:52 | |
any more than the politicians or the generals could have known. | 0:57:52 | 0:57:56 | |
And once it had started, there was no way of stopping it, | 0:57:56 | 0:57:59 | |
any more than you could suddenly make the dead start to walk again. | 0:57:59 | 0:58:03 | |
A century on, we should perhaps remember and respect that sacrifice, | 0:58:03 | 0:58:09 | |
and realise that, more than any other event, | 0:58:09 | 0:58:13 | |
this was the one that made modern Britain. | 0:58:13 | 0:58:17 |