War Comes to Britain Britain's Great War

SOFT MILITARY DRUMBEAT

It was August 4th, 1914.

The clock was ticking to catastrophe.

The deadline was midnight, Central European Time -

11 o'clock in London.

Britain and Germany were on the brink of war.

German troops were on the march throughout Europe

and had invaded Belgium.

The British government had warned

that if Germany didn't back down by 11, it was war.

CLOCK TICKS

The Cabinet, and the nation, held its breath.

From Germany, silence.

TICKING ECHOES

Then, the sound of the apocalypse.

BELL TOLLS

Doom!

Doom!

Doom!

"The big clock," wrote Chancellor David Lloyd George,

"echoes in our ears like the hammer of destiny."

There was now no going back.

At 11:20, British forces were sent the fateful telegram

which read simply, "War. Germany. Act."

So Britain joined the bloodiest conflict the human race had ever known.

Ten million soldiers killed.

Every one of them somebody's father or son.

But this war wasn't just fought on foreign fields.

It affected every area of life at home.

No-one - grandparent or child, blacksmith or aristocrat,

Boy Scout or schoolgirl -

no-one escaped.

This is the epic story of how that conflict changed their lives

and forged the country we know today.

In 1914, Britain faced its biggest threat for nearly 1,000 years.

This was a land gripped by fear of invasion.

Horrified at the sight of badly wounded men returning home.

Civilians were murdered by shells from ships at sea.

Schoolchildren slaughtered in the first air raids.

The technology made possible by science

was now used for mass killing.

This would be the first truly modern war.

A total war, pitting the resources

and resolve of entire populations against each other.

A war that would visit new terrors on British households,

a war that would turn the country upside down.

BIRDSONG

Two days before Britain went to war, an unlikely visitor

turned up at London Zoo.

He spent an hour in the birdhouse trying to calm his troubled mind.

It was the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, a man who loved birds.

But today he was sick with worry.

The war he'd tried so tirelessly to prevent

was now getting closer by the moment.

And those around him were beginning to fall apart.

BIRD CALLS

The German ambassador, Prince Lichnowsky, was crazed with anxiety,

such a nervous wreck that one afternoon

he received a visiting dignitary in his pyjamas.

The British Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith,

wept as two of his Cabinet resigned,

both of them also crying.

Gaunt with stress, Grey himself would burst into tears twice -

in Cabinet, and in front of the startled American ambassador.

What WAS going on?

This was Britain in 1914, the land of the stiff upper lip,

where men, let alone leaders of men, simply didn't cry.

It wasn't that they were pacifists, far from it.

But Britain hadn't fought a war in Europe for a century,

and they were appalled by the prospect

of something on such a large scale and so close to home.

The Germans had an army of over two-million soldiers

and detailed war plans for the conquest of Europe.

When Grey and his colleagues looked into the future,

they caught a glimpse of Armageddon.

That Bank Holiday weekend,

the British people had tried to make the most of the sun.

It was looking increasingly as if war on the Continent was inevitable.

But perhaps Britain could stand apart.

The men of the British navy were massed, just in case,

in 180 warships,

the pride of the empire.

The British Army, small by continental standards,

but well-trained and used to winning, adjusted to the possibility

of fighting in Europe for the first time in generations.

And across Britain, 100,000 people demonstrated for peace.

In Trafalgar Square, the Labour MP Keir Hardie told the crowds,

"YOU have no quarrel with Germany!"

As the deadline approached on August 4th, thousands drifted towards

Buckingham Palace, hoping to catch a sight of their king, George V.

Silence fell upon the crowd.

Now and again, there was a surge of cheering

and a chorus of the National Anthem.

CHEERING

NATIONAL ANTHEM PLAYS

They stayed on long after nightfall.

They reckon there were about 10,000 people here that night.

But they weren't baying for German blood.

It's often claimed the British were naively enthusiastic about war.

They weren't. There WAS a general sense of excitement

once war had been declared,

but there was anxiety too.

The Emperor of Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm,

aimed to dominate all of Europe

by invading both France and Russia.

He also had his eyes on a chunk of the British Empire.

SOLDIERS CHANT

With a huge army primed for a lightning campaign,

the Germans would be a fearsome enemy,

which could only be stopped by even more fearsome force.

BOMBS WHISTLE AND EXPLODE

The much smaller British Army

began to embark for the Continent on August 7th.

Many expected a quick victory.

"We had great hopes," recalled one Irish soldier.

"A dose of that rapid fire of ours,

"followed by an Irish bayonet charge, would soon fix things."

Most people seem to have accepted that the war had to be fought -

to honour treaties, to defend the Empire, to protect Britain.

And what else were they supposed to do?

To sit by and watch as Germany amassed an empire

that ran from somewhere deep in Russia

to the shores of the English Channel?

MARCHING BAND PLAYS

Now war had broken out, almost everyone backed it.

Most trade unions suspended strikes, which had been common.

Their men went back to work, supporting the war effort.

This, they were told, would be the war to end war.

And almost overnight,

the British people united in determination to defeat the enemy.

MARCHING MUSIC SWELLS

Despite widespread hopes of a quick victory,

many feared a German invasion.

The British High Command believed the enemy might land at any time.

The south coast seemed especially at risk.

The first British trenches weren't in Belgium or France.

They were in England.

There was such worry that August about a German invasion

that all over the south coast, people started digging in.

There were even defensive positions here on the White Cliffs of Dover.

"The enemy is almost in sight of our shores,"

warned the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

"There is the possibility of disaster."

THUNDER RUMBLES

With most soldiers now abroad, at home it was all hands to the pump.

Men too old or unfit to fight enrolled as Special Constables.

They manned roadblocks and patrolled day and night,

on the lookout for the enemy.

Boy Scouts helped out this Dad's Army.

They trained to give first aid to the wounded.

They also watched the coast for signs of the invader.

When on night duty, they were let off school the next day.

People on the south coast now started receiving some pretty alarming advice.

They were told that if there WAS an invasion, they should flee,

and take to the fields if necessary.

And just along the coast here, animals owners were advised

that if the Army had no use for their animals

and they couldn't evacuate them,

they should be "rendered useless to the enemy."

The nation with the greatest empire the world had ever seen

was now an island in fear of invasion.

Throughout Britain, people waited anxiously

for news from the battlefields in Europe.

By mid-August, British troops were making their way

through France and Belgium, towards the enemy.

They were often greeted as heroes by the local people.

It was "a blissful period," remembered one soldier.

"Roses all the way," said another.

They were well-trained and well-equipped,

but there were far too few of them.

Britain's regular army was pitifully small.

Two-thirds of it, a mere 80,000 professional soldiers,

had crossed the Channel.

Side by side with their French allies,

they were about to clash

with the far stronger forces of the invading Germans

around the Belgian town of Mons.

In the town square,

some of the soldiers took a break before battle began.

Many of these men would never see their homes again.

The first British soldier to be killed

probably shouldn't have been here at all.

Private John Parr was a former golf caddy from North London

who'd joined the Army to better himself.

He was out on a bicycle reconnaissance patrol

when he was killed in an ambush.

GUNFIRE

Early on August 23rd, World War I began in earnest.

As the Germans launched a full-scale assault,

this canal became part of a long and bloody battlefront.

The British fought bravely.

Indeed, the first two VCs of the war were won right here.

But they were forced back,

and later that day, they had to abandon the town.

What we call the Battle of Mons

turned into a long and terrible retreat

with Britain's finest fighting men facing total annihilation.

SHOUTING AND GUNFIRE

Pursued by the Germans,

they pulled back over 200 miles, deep into France.

They marched 13 days and nights,

so short of sleep they slept as they marched

and they dreamed as they walked.

This gruelling retreat

saved the core of the British Army from disaster.

And it gave rise to one of the most famous stories of the war -

the miracle of how they were rescued by heavenly guardians,

the "Angels of Mons", blocking the Germans' path

and guiding our boys to safety.

There's one very simple explanation for the Angels of Mons -

exhaustion.

"March, march, march,

"for hour after hour, without a halt," one private remembered.

"Very nearly everyone was seeing things. We were all dead beat."

There was no angel. But there had been a humbling defeat.

The British public was about to register

the first great shock of World War I.

For a week, little news of the Battle of Mons had filtered home,

with all press reports strictly censored.

But then, on August 30th, The Times printed a brutally frank account

of the battle and the retreat.

"Broken British regiments",

"German tidal wave".

"Our losses are very great," writes the reporter.

"I have seen broken bits of many regiments."

Now, it was amazing the Army censor had allowed this through,

but what was even more astonishing were the words he added afterwards.

"The first great German offensive has succeeded.

"The British Army has suffered terrible losses

"and requires immense and immediate reinforcements.

"It needs men, men, and more men."

The call to arms was led by the most famous soldier alive -

Lord Kitchener, the new War Secretary.

Kitchener was a national hero

after ruthless victories in colonial campaigns.

He was arrogant and unbending,

a maverick who did things his way.

He'd realised that Britain could only win the war

by creating a massive new army.

Elsewhere in Europe, they forced young men into uniform.

Kitchener's new soldiers would be volunteers.

And he was the perfect figurehead to rally the men of Britain.

MUSIC: "Pomp and Circumstance March 4" by Elgar

Targeting all able-bodied young men over five foot three,

Kitchener launched a recruitment campaign.

It began with a massive poster offensive.

12 million published in one year alone.

Many appealed to national duty.

Some to virility.

Some played on guilt.

Others on fear of invasion.

This was an unprecedented campaign

of mass persuasion by the state.

Most of the time, most of the press were right behind the government.

In late August, for example, an advertisement appeared in The Times.

"Wanted - petticoats,

"for able-bodied young men who have not yet joined the Army."

The local press followed suit.

That September, a Leicestershire paper featured

proud mother Mrs Martha Ainsworth.

There were other families who'd made an even bigger contribution

to Kitchener's army.

MUSIC: "Land of Hope and Glory"

Recruiting centres were set up all over Britain.

Joining up was a very public business.

Streets were cordoned off.

Military bands played.

Volunteers made speeches.

Fevered enthusiasm swept the land,

with 20,000 men volunteering every day.

# God, who made thee mighty Make thee mightier yet... #

On 3rd September, 1914,

more young men joined than on any other day of the war,

over 33,000 of them heeding Lord Kitchener's call.

He was the only man who could hope

to carry the public with him.

I mean, we know what war is,

and they, up to that point, they had enjoyed wars that were over there,

and the Army went away somewhere and they fought a war

and everyone had a lovely medal and it was all lovely.

And they didn't fully appreciate the extent to which

their whole way of life was going to go before the cannon,

and he was what was needed at that time,

and, you know, they loved him.

What sort of a man do you think Kitchener was?

Almost a medieval type, really.

Tremendously moral, and with...

at times, a naive feeling that others were as moral as he was,

you know, when he would instruct the troops, you know, that they must,

-I forget the phrase...

-Refrain from women and wine, yes.

-Well, refrain from intimacy.

-Yes.

-How did he think that would happen?

He was a very odd chap to be sitting in a War Cabinet, wasn't he?

Well, you know, most of the Cabinet would have agreed with you

because his viewpoint was so practical

and was so far removed from the theoretical war of politicians.

-He couldn't stand politicians!

-He couldn't stand politicians.

I mean, the wonderful quote which I always love about him

is when he said, "The trouble with these politicians,

"you tell them something's absolutely secret

"and then they go home and tell their wives, except for Lloyd George,

"who goes home and tells everyone else's wife."

He believed that politicians and civil servants couldn't run anything.

He knew this was a war that would be fought across Europe on land,

and that we lacked the basic requirement to fight a war,

which was an army,

and that was his job, was to make one.

As men cheerfully committed themselves to fight,

countless families across Britain said goodbye to a father or son.

There were many tears.

One woman in Scotland was so distraught,

she wouldn't let go of her husband's hand as the train carried him away.

She was dragged underneath it, and died.

By Christmas, well over a million men had volunteered.

We think of them as soldiers because the government put them in uniform.

But till now, they'd all been civilians

from all walks of life and all over Britain.

You really can't fail to be impressed by this massive rush to arms.

While nobody knew for certain the full horror that awaited them,

there were plenty of people who had some idea.

Yet still they came.

They did so for all sorts of reasons

but the most prominent among them

seems to have been a sense of patriotic duty.

BRASS BAND PLAYS

In this stirring climate, some made themselves rich and famous

by persuading others to put their lives on the line.

A self-serving MP, Horatio Bottomley, leapt at the chance.

He staged the first of his bizarre rallies in a London music hall.

Among the 5,000 spectators, women fainted and wept

as he turned volunteering into theatre.

DRUM ROLL

The British were "the chosen leaders of the world," Bottomley ranted,

chosen by God, of course.

And the war was "a holy crusade" against Germany.

He worked his audience into a patriotic frenzy,

with actors declaiming The Charge of the Light Brigade,

and he invited the men in the audience to approach

the recruiting officers seated at tables draped in Union Jacks.

The show was a barnstorming hit.

Now Bottomley took his shows on the road.

He played to packed audiences throughout Britain.

It made him a star - and a fortune.

At one show, over 1,000 men enlisted.

Not for nothing was he sometimes called

the second most important man in Britain after Kitchener.

All his performances peddled hatred of the Germans,

or "Germ-huns," as he called them.

"You cannot naturalise an unnatural beast, a human abortion," he raged,

"but you can exterminate it."

Germany, he said, should be "wiped from the face of the map."

Before they left Britain for battle,

volunteers faced at least six months' training,

but this didn't turn out as they'd expected.

At first, the Army simply couldn't keep up with the rush of men.

Some had to train in their own clothes,

with caps for helmets or broom handles for rifles.

One unit's practice attack came to a halt

when the volunteers went off to pick blackberries.

A senior officer claimed

they were the laughing stock of every soldier in Europe.

"We were play-acting," said one volunteer.

"It required a lot of confidence to remember

"we were training to face the gigantic German war machine."

But Kitchener persisted.

That autumn, to boost the number of volunteers still further,

he backed a bold new idea...

..join up with your friends.

After all, it would be much less frightening

if you knew you were going to war with your pals.

The so-called "Pals" battalions

were comprised of men from the same area, club,

background or profession.

There were battalions for artists,

for railwaymen,

for city stockbrokers.

There were battalions for men under five foot three,

many of them sturdy miners.

The first sportsman's battalion included several county cricketers

plus England's lightweight boxing champion.

The passion for sport led to

one of the most rousing volunteer stories of the war.

It was set in the back streets of Edinburgh.

It centred around the favourite game of the working man - football.

Many of the newspapers sneered

that football was a sport for cowards and war-dodgers.

Recruiting efforts at some games were often so unsuccessful

that lots of people thought the professional sport

should be banned until the war was over.

And then one of Scotland's leading teams decided

to change the sport's reputation.

Tynecastle, in the west of Edinburgh

was the home of Heart of Midlothian Football Club.

After a string of victories, Hearts looked set

to be Scotland's next champions.

But that November, 11 players volunteered for the Army.

They'd been persuaded to enlist by the local MP and Hearts shareholder,

Sir George McCrae - himself a volunteer, aged 54.

He hoped the Hearts stars would inspire the fans

to join his new battalion.

BAGPIPE MUSIC

CROWD CHEERING

"In the presence of the god of battles..."

McCrae wrote in the local newspaper,

"..ask your conscience - 'Dare I stand aside?'"

And then on December the 5th

just before the start of the local derby against rivals Hibernian,

an astonishing sight - McCrae comes down the tunnel onto the pitch

in full military uniform followed by a pipe band

and behind that, 800 new recruits.

Spectators watched from the most modern football stand in the world,

completed that very year.

Hearts won the match 3-1.

Then, still more joined up, inspired by comradeship,

collective folly, national pride or sporting glamour.

The 16th Royal Scots - known as McCrae's Men -

soon had over 1,100 volunteers...

and started training for war.

But as with so many such battalions, once these men saw action,

there was only one likely outcome.

Young star Harry Wattie, a local man and one of

the finest forwards in the land, was among the players killed in action.

Altogether, over 400 of McCrae's men never returned to Scotland.

The deaths struck very deep in the Tynecastle community.

So deep, that there were postmen and post boys who threw in their jobs

because they couldn't stand any longer

being the bearers of bad news.

For the British public,

one of the best ways to resist the enemy was to laugh at him.

Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm became a comic-book bogeyman.

That autumn, at selected newsagents, you could buy a postcard

supposedly from the Kaiser to Britain's King George V -

who happened to be his cousin.

-IMITATES GERMAN ACCENT:

-"Mine dear Cousin," it began,

"Vot I kom for?

"I vants der leedle Bank von England for mein Frau.

"I vants der dockyards... I vants der leedle Isle von Wight

"and her luffly cows...

"I vant dose leedle places, India, Canadas, Australias for mein Sohns..."

"Deutschland's uber alles. Top Dog... Gott im Himmel!" it finishes,

"Greetings von Wilhelm."

But with so much tension and anxiety in the air,

the British sense of humour got a bit lost

as wild rumours swept the nation.

There were detailed stories about everything from

a huge German arms dump near Charing Cross

to thousands of Russian soldiers

secretly shipped to Britain to help us.

They were said still to have Arctic snow on their beards.

No-one had actually SEEN these things

but everyone knew someone who knew someone else who HAD.

By far the most hideous rumours were about what the Kaiser's troops

had apparently done when they invaded Belgium.

They'd raped women. They'd chopped children's hands off.

They'd bayoneted a five-year-old girl.

They'd executed boy scouts.

They'd crucified a British soldier and burned him alive.

The land of the stiff upper lip had become a land of crazy rumour.

One story which spread like wildfire and appeared in the national press

was about a 23-year-old nurse from Dumfries called Grace Hume.

She was said to have been working in a hospital in Belgium

when the Germans arrived, burned the place down,

beheaded the patients and lopped off her right breast.

The truth turned out to be quite different...

She was living quietly with both her breasts in Huddersfield.

The whole thing had been made up by her sister.

But there had been real savagery in Belgium.

The Germans had laid waste ancient cities.

They'd executed civilians, including women and children,

in cold blood.

And, true or false, atrocity stories terrified

a British public in fear of invasion.

Life now became very difficult for the 50,000 or so

German immigrants who had moved to Britain before the war.

German governesses might have bombs hidden under their skirts.

German barbers might slit your throat.

German butchers might poison your meat.

Suddenly all German names were out.

But the public had caught spy mania.

Scare stories abounded that Britain was riddled with German spies -

the Kaiser's secret agents, here on our streets,

and looking just like everyone else.

And sure enough, one was about to show his face.

In October 1914,

a German called Karl Lody was caught red-handed,

posing as an American tourist

while sketching British dockyards and warships.

He was put on trial in London.

The story was a national sensation.

Here, at last,

was a real live German spy who was indeed living in our midst,

and sending British naval secrets back to his spymasters in Berlin.

Convicted of war treason,

Lody was sentenced to death in the Tower of London.

Here he prepared to die, as he put it -

"In the service of the Fatherland."

On the eve of his execution, Karl Hans Lody wrote what must be

one of the strangest thank you letters ever written.

It was to his British captors -

"I feel it my duty as a German officer

"to express my sincere thanks and appreciation...

"for their kind and considered treatment even towards the enemy."

That's what I call good manners.

Despite his politeness,

Lody seemed to represent a very real threat -

the long arm of the Kaiser,

reaching right into the heart of Britain.

At dawn on November the 6th, Senior Lieutenant Lody

of the Imperial German Navy, was led to his execution.

GUNSHOTS

He was the first of 11 German spies

executed during the course of the war.

It was nothing like the feared ARMY of agents.

The British taste for spy scares wasn't borne out in reality.

Britain had gone to war.

Now, the war was about to come to Britain.

On the north-east coast of England, December the 16th, 1914,

was a still, misty morning.

The first signs of anything unusual were the flashes

coming from unidentified ships several miles out to sea.

DISTANT BOOMING

One family realised what was happening

when a German shell fragment struck their house

and smashed into the front of the family alarm clock,

stopping it for ever at three minutes past eight.

It was the start of a ferocious bombardment.

The people of Hartlepool felt the full horror of modern war.

BOOMING

Homes were death traps. But so too were these streets.

The German shells burst on impact,

sending shards of screaming hot metal in all directions

at hundreds of miles an hour.

It was the first major attack on Britain since 1066.

Many thought the Germans were invading.

Terrified children had simply no idea what was happening.

All we could hear was "Bam!"

This noise, bams. You see, it was far out to sea,

it didn't sound like bombs dropping against here.

What did you think the sound was?

We didn't know.

Me oldest sister, me mother shouted her upstairs and she said,

"I think somebody's beating the carpets!"

That's what she said.

So, anyway, she goes out,

she bounds out, she says, "Oh, Ma!" and she comes running back,

"Mam, the Germans are here, they're on the beach."

And everybody's running, running away.

I went upstairs and looked out the bedroom window.

I could see big flashes.

-Out at sea?

-Flashes out at sea, yes.

And how were people reacting?

Oh, crying. Some were crying. Some were running with their prams.

Anyway, there was hardly anybody left in Hartlepool,

they were all up the country.

Mm...

People were scurrying along outside, were they?

And then somebody came and said,

"Oh, somebody's had his head blown off."

-Well, that frightened me.

-Mm.

Somebody had their head blown off.

What did... do you remember what you felt?

You were seven years old.

I was horrified. I thought they were coming...any minute

to the door to take us, kill us.

Oh, I was sitting shivering,

I just sat on the end of the bed.

I was like that. Shivering.

Terrified.

What, thinking a German might walk through the door?

I thought they were coming any minute

to take us away, to get us...yeah.

The children of Hartlepool were among the many victims

of Kaiser Wilhelm's navy that day.

Three members of the Dixon family were killed by a shell

as they ran for it, holding hands.

George,

his sister Margaret

and their brother Albert, aged seven.

Their mother's leg was blown off.

Suddenly, the dead of World War I had different faces -

the faces of British children.

For days after the attack,

newspaper sales soared, as the public read of the horrors.

Over 500 wounded, 152 killed.

The eldest victim, 86.

The youngest, only six months.

Whitby and Scarborough were also shelled that day

with another 21 civilians killed.

The people of Scarborough barricaded the streets

in case the Germans landed.

They watched the funeral processions

convinced that the attack confirmed the rumours

about the viciousness of the Hun.

For most British people, what happened

here in the north-east that day was a war crime, an atrocity.

A line had definitely been crossed.

From now on, civilians in Britain knew

they too could be in mortal danger.

Early in the new year, a sinister new weapon

claimed its first British victims -

the Zeppelin airship.

Four civilians were killed in Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn, Norfolk.

In other attacks, over 500 more would die a similar death.

This new war made no distinction

between soldiers at the front

and women and children in their beds.

Across the Channel, the war had reached a deadly stalemate.

Nothing like the heroic battles these men had been trained for.

To protect their positions, both sides had dug in

and were now bogged down in trench warfare.

They faced each other along what became known

as the Western Front -

the long line of trenches

and defensive positions

that stretched almost 500 miles.

A campaign imagined as one of dash and movement

had become a grinding, swampy slaughter.

Uncountable numbers of men were eating,

sleeping and praying to survive in holes in the ground.

"This is not war..." one soldier wrote home,

"it's the ending of the world."

And now, the families left behind in Britain - whether rich or poor -

had to deal with their grief.

In January 1915, at St Mary's Church in Great Leighs,

there was a memorial service for three men -

the first victims of the war from the village.

"The blow has fallen," said Squire Tritton.

His son, Captain Alan Tritton, had been killed on Boxing Day.

The farm worker, Mr Fitch had lost two sons - Dick, killed in August,

and Arthur, killed on New Year's Day.

This is the order sheet for the memorial service

for all three men honoured here together.

The youngest of the squire's sons, Captain Alan Tritton

of the Coldstream Guards

had told his family that autumn he'd never come back.

He was shot in the head by a sniper.

Valerie Frost is the niece of the two Fitch brothers

also mourned that January in Great Leighs.

I do have photographs of Dick and of Arthur, um...

Dick is the one sitting down...

-He was the one in the Army?

-He was in the Essex Regiment

and he enlisted in 1913.

And as Dick was under age at the time

Grandmother went along to try

and stop him from enlisting. And he said, "If you stop me, Mother,

"you will never see me again."

And she had to let him go.

He then died on August the 26th, 1914, at the Battle of Mons.

And so this one here is Arthur?

Arthur was Grandmother's first-born child,

he'd been in the Navy for several years and was due to leave.

He was coming home, but the war started and he was not able to.

And he went down with his ship, the Formidable, in the Channel

in Lyme Regis Bay on January the 1st, 1915.

What do you think about the memorial service

shared with the son of the squire?

Well, I think that was a wonderful thing,

it shows that...in death we are all the same, aren't we?

And, really, that would have been...

Their tragedy was as much felt as my grandmother's tragedy.

And I think that's very sad

because so many people lost...

so many loved ones.

-They're all very proud in these photographs, aren't they?

-Yes.

-I know Mother was proud of them.

-Mm.

-Yeah.

I wonder what they'd think now if they was...

watching all this talking about them?

It would be amazing, really.

THEY CHUCKLE

..what they would be saying.

I don't know. But I think they'd be pleased.

I think they would be...

proud that we are still remembering the...

sacrifice that they made. Mm-hm.

MUSIC: "The Last Post"

Outside the church, a memorial lists the war dead of Great Leighs.

Among them, four Fitch brothers.

Altogether, of the 86 men of the village who served, 18 died -

a scale of loss echoed throughout much of Britain.

By early 1915, wounded from the Front were arriving

on the south coast in tens of thousands.

How long could Britain maintain this level of casualties?

Already the country was calling on soldiers

from across the British Empire, including men from the Indian Army.

Many Indian wounded were sent to Brighton,

to be treated in a very unusual temporary hospital.

The Royal Pavilion had been built long before, to evoke India -

the jewel in Britain's imperial crown.

That winter, it looked very different.

The Pavilion was filled with badly wounded men.

Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus...

lay in their hundreds

beneath the chandeliers of a royal palace.

Where princes had once dallied and danced...

..row upon row of Indian soldiers.

The huge Georgian kitchen was an operating theatre.

The dome nearby was another vast ward, complete with khaki lino.

All in all, some 4,000 Indians were treated here.

Every possible care was taken of the men,

each religion had its own kitchen

and, unheard of then in British India, white women nursed Indians.

One patient wrote to his family in India,

"Our hospital is in the place where the King used to have his home.

"The men are tended like flowers."

In fact, the royal family had sold the pavilion to Brighton Council

many years before.

But if these troops believed the King had vacated it

just for them, the authorities didn't tell them otherwise.

And in January 1915,

King George V and Queen Mary honoured them with a visit.

King George had come to pay his respects to the men

who'd served Britain so bravely so far from home.

But not all the wounded could be saved.

As the Last Post sounded,

over 50 of these men were given their own traditional cremation

on the hills above Brighton.

Their ashes were then scattered in the sea off the south coast.

By spring 1915, no-one in Britain could avoid the impact of the war.

Over one and half million men had volunteered

and were training at Army camps across the nation.

Many had hoped the war would be over by Christmas.

Now there was no end in sight - and victory far from certain.

People could feel the country was changing all around them.

London was a tense, jumpy place

with searchlights and blackouts for fear of aerial attack.

The street lamps were dimmed with brown paper.

Buckingham Palace was clad in steel mesh to deflect bombs

and Big Ben - Big Ben was silenced.

No-one had expected all this.

Children under attack from sea and from air.

Trenches above the beaches.

Barriers on the streets.

Men coming home, not as victors, but as victims.

The British people were no longer

just supporting their soldiers in a foreign conflict.

They too were part of the fighting.

But this was just the start.

What was coming was a new kind of war, a total war.

And to win it, Britain would have to be totally transformed.

Next time...

Britain becomes a machine for waging war.

Women fill the factories...

..men are forced to fight.

But has it all come too late?