Browse content similar to Staying Alive. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
Line | From | To | |
---|---|---|---|
'Our history has been shaped by centuries of war. | 0:00:05 | 0:00:09 | |
'From the armies of the Romans... | 0:00:09 | 0:00:11 | |
'..to the modern, global conflicts of today. | 0:00:12 | 0:00:15 | |
'I'm Saul David and I'm a military historian. | 0:00:17 | 0:00:21 | |
'What history tells us again and again is that' | 0:00:21 | 0:00:24 | |
beyond the derring-do of military commanders, | 0:00:24 | 0:00:26 | |
it's the nuts and bolts of how you house and feed your army, | 0:00:26 | 0:00:29 | |
how you move it and how you kit it ready for battle, | 0:00:29 | 0:00:32 | |
that's the real key to winning wars. | 0:00:32 | 0:00:35 | |
'Today, military logistics dominates modern warfare | 0:00:36 | 0:00:39 | |
'with entire branches of specialists dedicated to feeding, moving, | 0:00:39 | 0:00:44 | |
'and kitting out frontline soldiers ready for battle.' | 0:00:44 | 0:00:49 | |
This is the story of how this elaborate, high-tech world came to be, | 0:00:49 | 0:00:53 | |
because throughout history, the greatest challenges | 0:00:53 | 0:00:57 | |
faced by any military commander have remained the same. | 0:00:57 | 0:01:00 | |
'If you don't keep your soldiers fed, | 0:01:00 | 0:01:02 | |
'they'll never even make it to the battlefield.' | 0:01:02 | 0:01:06 | |
Think about it this way, | 0:01:06 | 0:01:08 | |
you're slaughtering for 80,000 men a minimum of 300 animals per day. | 0:01:08 | 0:01:13 | |
'If you can't move your men, and fast, | 0:01:13 | 0:01:15 | |
'you'll never steal a march on the enemy.' | 0:01:15 | 0:01:19 | |
US General George C Marshall once described | 0:01:19 | 0:01:22 | |
the Jeep as America's greatest contribution to modern warfare. | 0:01:22 | 0:01:26 | |
And don't forget, America invented the atomic bomb. | 0:01:26 | 0:01:30 | |
'Any army that isn't equipped with the latest technology | 0:01:32 | 0:01:35 | |
'has literally been cut to shreds.' | 0:01:35 | 0:01:37 | |
Some of the greatest failures and victories in history | 0:01:42 | 0:01:45 | |
have come down to the detail of military logistics - | 0:01:45 | 0:01:48 | |
the real story of how wars are won and lost. | 0:01:48 | 0:01:52 | |
Throughout history, armies have faced certain constant and highly-destructive enemies | 0:02:16 | 0:02:20 | |
but I'm not talking about physical opponents, | 0:02:20 | 0:02:23 | |
rather hunger, thirst and disease. | 0:02:23 | 0:02:26 | |
Even today, a general's main task is to house his men, | 0:02:29 | 0:02:32 | |
feed them and keep them fit for combat, | 0:02:32 | 0:02:34 | |
because if he gets that wrong, he's sunk even before a shot is fired. | 0:02:34 | 0:02:39 | |
'This film is about health, housing and food, | 0:02:39 | 0:02:44 | |
'and the kit armies have used to stay alive throughout history. | 0:02:44 | 0:02:48 | |
'We'll see how Wellington had to take an entire herd of cows with him on campaign... | 0:02:49 | 0:02:54 | |
'..how a supply disaster in the Crimea | 0:02:56 | 0:02:58 | |
'led to a turning point in military history... | 0:02:58 | 0:03:01 | |
'..and how the humble tin can | 0:03:02 | 0:03:04 | |
'made possible the entrenched warfare of World War One... | 0:03:04 | 0:03:08 | |
'..because any general's primary challenge is that of basic survival. | 0:03:10 | 0:03:14 | |
'Quite simply of keeping your men alive and well enough to fight.' | 0:03:14 | 0:03:19 | |
'Camp Bastion, | 0:03:32 | 0:03:34 | |
'the logistics hub for operations in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. | 0:03:34 | 0:03:39 | |
'This is Britain's largest overseas military camp since World War Two, | 0:03:40 | 0:03:45 | |
'home to over 30,000 soldiers and contractors. | 0:03:45 | 0:03:48 | |
'Fresh food is flown in. | 0:03:50 | 0:03:52 | |
'Four tonnes of fruit and salad are eaten every single day. | 0:03:52 | 0:03:56 | |
'Water comes from the ground, a million litres a week of it. | 0:03:57 | 0:04:03 | |
'In this heart of a bleak desert, | 0:04:04 | 0:04:07 | |
'a base has been created from nothing. | 0:04:07 | 0:04:09 | |
'But setting up giant camps on this massive scale is far from new.' | 0:04:10 | 0:04:15 | |
'2,000 years ago, the Roman Empire was built and sustained by a vast army. | 0:04:23 | 0:04:30 | |
'At its peak, 450,000 men patrolled Pax Romana | 0:04:30 | 0:04:35 | |
'from Egypt all the way to Britain.' | 0:04:35 | 0:04:37 | |
In AD 122, during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian, | 0:04:39 | 0:04:43 | |
the construction of this wall began, | 0:04:43 | 0:04:45 | |
to separate the Romans from the barbarians. | 0:04:45 | 0:04:47 | |
'This marked the very limit of the vast Roman Empire. | 0:04:52 | 0:04:56 | |
'And the 10,000 soldiers stationed on this bleak, northern frontier | 0:04:56 | 0:05:00 | |
'had to be kept housed, fed and healthy | 0:05:00 | 0:05:03 | |
'just like today's troops in Afghanistan. | 0:05:03 | 0:05:07 | |
'Vindolanda is one of the best preserved of all the forts the Romans created, | 0:05:08 | 0:05:13 | |
'home to over 2,000 soldiers and families.' | 0:05:13 | 0:05:17 | |
So here we are at the barrack blocks where the soldiers actually lived. | 0:05:17 | 0:05:21 | |
If you come inside, you'll get a sense of space. | 0:05:21 | 0:05:24 | |
This was state-of-the-art. You would have had insulated walls. | 0:05:24 | 0:05:27 | |
At the front of each block, was a fireplace to keep them warm in winter | 0:05:27 | 0:05:32 | |
and crucially and most extraordinary, I think, | 0:05:32 | 0:05:35 | |
there would have been glass in the windows. | 0:05:35 | 0:05:37 | |
Civilian houses here didn't have glass for another 1,000 years | 0:05:37 | 0:05:41 | |
and then only people who could afford it. | 0:05:41 | 0:05:43 | |
It's astonishing to think of the level of detail the Romans were prepared to go to. | 0:05:43 | 0:05:48 | |
'Excavations here are still revealing the life and kit of Roman soldiers. | 0:05:50 | 0:05:55 | |
'The site's director is Andrew Birley.' | 0:05:55 | 0:05:59 | |
When on the move, they put a modern camping expedition to total shame. | 0:05:59 | 0:06:03 | |
The sheer volume of kit these guys take with them. | 0:06:03 | 0:06:06 | |
The sort of things they may carry over their shoulders | 0:06:06 | 0:06:09 | |
are their dolabras, their trenching tools, extra weapons, | 0:06:09 | 0:06:12 | |
a few wooden stakes to put in the ground for their camp at night time, | 0:06:12 | 0:06:16 | |
a water can, or something like that. | 0:06:16 | 0:06:19 | |
The other things that they carry are intensely personal. | 0:06:19 | 0:06:22 | |
You've got your wooden combs to keep yourself looking neat and tidy, | 0:06:22 | 0:06:26 | |
your spatula, palettes and things to make medicine. | 0:06:26 | 0:06:29 | |
The thing that every Roman soldier would carry bar none | 0:06:29 | 0:06:32 | |
are these lovely little knives. | 0:06:32 | 0:06:34 | |
They can double up as weapons but essentially they're for eating. | 0:06:34 | 0:06:37 | |
No knives and forks, they use knives for everything. | 0:06:37 | 0:06:40 | |
Every Roman soldier would have one of these slung on his belt. | 0:06:40 | 0:06:43 | |
Beautiful things. Wickedly sharp after all those years. | 0:06:43 | 0:06:46 | |
This would be standard issue, would it? | 0:06:46 | 0:06:48 | |
Every soldier has one of those and is expected to keep it in good order | 0:06:48 | 0:06:52 | |
and replace it if it breaks. | 0:06:52 | 0:06:54 | |
What they don't carry are things like this, huge millstones. | 0:06:54 | 0:06:58 | |
They don't carry them on their backs but they take them with them. | 0:06:58 | 0:07:01 | |
The worst case scenario is you get out into the field, | 0:07:01 | 0:07:04 | |
you run out of grain that's processed and you have to get some more. | 0:07:04 | 0:07:08 | |
There are always farmers around who you can pinch things from or buy them from if they're friendly | 0:07:08 | 0:07:13 | |
but you've got to process foodstuffs into things you can eat. | 0:07:13 | 0:07:16 | |
That's why this big millstone is the sort of thing you carry on your mule | 0:07:16 | 0:07:19 | |
at the back of the wagon train. | 0:07:19 | 0:07:22 | |
Perhaps an ox wagon would carry these travelling with the army. | 0:07:22 | 0:07:25 | |
'As a permanent camp, | 0:07:27 | 0:07:28 | |
'Vindolanda had to provide for the welfare of soldiers all year round. | 0:07:28 | 0:07:33 | |
'At the very heart of its supply operation was the granary.' | 0:07:33 | 0:07:37 | |
The floor level would have been here | 0:07:37 | 0:07:40 | |
and I'm walking along a duct which enabled air to circulate, | 0:07:40 | 0:07:44 | |
which of course prevents the grain from going off. | 0:07:44 | 0:07:47 | |
The whole building would have held a year's supply of grain | 0:07:47 | 0:07:50 | |
and this was crucial because it meant harvest to harvest | 0:07:50 | 0:07:53 | |
the fort could have held out even if it was besieged. | 0:07:53 | 0:07:57 | |
'While the grain came from local British farms, | 0:07:58 | 0:08:01 | |
'other rations had to be brought from much further afield.' | 0:08:01 | 0:08:04 | |
This fragment of pottery was actually from a Roman amphora. | 0:08:07 | 0:08:11 | |
It doesn't look like much in its current state, | 0:08:11 | 0:08:15 | |
but if you can imagine, it would have been a huge bulbous container | 0:08:15 | 0:08:19 | |
filled with olive oil. | 0:08:19 | 0:08:20 | |
The most revealing thing about the amphora is this inscription here. | 0:08:20 | 0:08:24 | |
It's the names of the proprietors of the farm | 0:08:24 | 0:08:27 | |
that actually produced this amphora and the olive oil. | 0:08:27 | 0:08:31 | |
It says Aemiliae and casae. | 0:08:31 | 0:08:33 | |
That doesn't mean much in itself until you realise that this farm | 0:08:33 | 0:08:37 | |
was in Seville in Spain. | 0:08:37 | 0:08:39 | |
The quartermaster in the camp would have ordered this olive oil | 0:08:39 | 0:08:43 | |
and had it transported 1,000 miles across the Empire | 0:08:43 | 0:08:47 | |
for the consumption of the troops at Vindolanda. | 0:08:47 | 0:08:50 | |
'Staying well-housed and fed is one thing, | 0:08:53 | 0:08:56 | |
'but it's also vital to stay healthy. | 0:08:56 | 0:08:59 | |
'No army can survive long without being able to wash.' | 0:08:59 | 0:09:04 | |
Now, why would they have used a hot room like this? | 0:09:06 | 0:09:10 | |
It's partly recreational, of course, to chill out. | 0:09:10 | 0:09:13 | |
But more importantly than that it was for hygiene. | 0:09:13 | 0:09:16 | |
As all great generals know, to get a soldier able to fight, | 0:09:16 | 0:09:20 | |
you have to keep him healthy and the caldarium did that. | 0:09:20 | 0:09:23 | |
'Hot air would have come through ducts, | 0:09:25 | 0:09:27 | |
'heating a floor of stone flags topped with concrete. | 0:09:27 | 0:09:30 | |
'Ladles of cold water would have been poured onto it | 0:09:31 | 0:09:35 | |
'to fill the room with steam like a modern sauna.' | 0:09:35 | 0:09:38 | |
What's great about coming to Vindolanda for a military historian like me | 0:09:40 | 0:09:45 | |
is that previously I'd only really looked at the Roman army at war | 0:09:45 | 0:09:49 | |
but when you come here you begin to understand how the Roman soldier actually lived | 0:09:49 | 0:09:53 | |
and what's astonishing about this site | 0:09:53 | 0:09:55 | |
is its attention to detail in all aspects of daily life. | 0:09:55 | 0:09:59 | |
You get a sense of the lengths the Roman army was prepared to go | 0:09:59 | 0:10:03 | |
to keep its troops not only healthy but also happy. | 0:10:03 | 0:10:06 | |
'Soldiers arriving in a new theatre of war such as Afghanistan | 0:10:20 | 0:10:24 | |
'have to have their basic needs met before they can do anything else. | 0:10:24 | 0:10:28 | |
'It's the most fundamental duty of any commander.' | 0:10:28 | 0:10:32 | |
Without keeping soldiers fed and watered, | 0:10:32 | 0:10:34 | |
without keeping them housed and dry, | 0:10:34 | 0:10:37 | |
and without keeping them clean and healthy, you're in trouble. | 0:10:37 | 0:10:41 | |
All of these things are hard enough to manage in fixed bases, | 0:10:41 | 0:10:44 | |
but when an army is on campaign, often in foreign and distant lands, | 0:10:44 | 0:10:48 | |
the challenge becomes even tougher. | 0:10:48 | 0:10:52 | |
'And when it goes wrong the price is high, | 0:10:54 | 0:10:58 | |
'for kingdoms as well as men. | 0:10:58 | 0:11:01 | |
'In 1415, the English King, Henry V, set off to invade France | 0:11:03 | 0:11:09 | |
'with over 10,000 men in a bid to take the French throne. | 0:11:09 | 0:11:13 | |
'Tim Sutherland is an expert in medieval warfare | 0:11:18 | 0:11:21 | |
'and has studied the type of kit Henry V's men would have taken on the campaign.' | 0:11:21 | 0:11:27 | |
People at the lower scale | 0:11:28 | 0:11:30 | |
would have walked onto the battlefield | 0:11:30 | 0:11:33 | |
with minimal amounts of equipment. | 0:11:33 | 0:11:35 | |
Mostly they would have been wearing very thick protective clothing, | 0:11:35 | 0:11:39 | |
anything that was based on linen and wool. | 0:11:39 | 0:11:42 | |
The more layers a jacket like this has, | 0:11:42 | 0:11:44 | |
the more protected it is against weapon blows. | 0:11:44 | 0:11:48 | |
Also it's warmer. The problem with this is when it gets wet | 0:11:48 | 0:11:52 | |
it becomes like a sponge and it becomes incredibly heavy. | 0:11:52 | 0:11:54 | |
It weighs you down enough to drown you, even in shallow water. | 0:11:54 | 0:11:58 | |
You had to be able to feed yourself, | 0:11:58 | 0:12:00 | |
because nobody else would have fed you. | 0:12:00 | 0:12:03 | |
You picked berries, found rabbits, | 0:12:03 | 0:12:06 | |
you'd be hunting things with a bow and arrow or trapping them. | 0:12:06 | 0:12:10 | |
What they also need to do is cook. | 0:12:10 | 0:12:13 | |
So maybe they would have had between five, 10, 15 people, a cooking pot. | 0:12:13 | 0:12:18 | |
This is an iron one, which is probably a later design, | 0:12:18 | 0:12:22 | |
but the bronze cauldrons of the time would have been very similar | 0:12:22 | 0:12:26 | |
and round about this size. | 0:12:26 | 0:12:28 | |
Everybody needs to drink, so you need something to drink from, | 0:12:28 | 0:12:32 | |
whether it's a bowl, such as a wooden bowl like this to scoop water up, | 0:12:32 | 0:12:36 | |
or whether it's something like a pottery mug. | 0:12:36 | 0:12:38 | |
What happens is you get small numbers of people who can look after themselves | 0:12:40 | 0:12:43 | |
and this is the sort of kit they would have used as a small, cohesive group. | 0:12:43 | 0:12:48 | |
'Henry's lightly-equipped force sailed to Normandy | 0:12:49 | 0:12:53 | |
'and his first objective was the strategic port of Harfleur, | 0:12:53 | 0:12:58 | |
'but he was stopped in his tracks by the town's huge defensive walls. | 0:12:58 | 0:13:02 | |
'Henry settled in for a lengthy siege, | 0:13:04 | 0:13:07 | |
'the worst-case scenario for any army reliant on foraging and fresh water to survive. | 0:13:07 | 0:13:14 | |
'The French were well aware of the English vulnerability | 0:13:16 | 0:13:19 | |
'and had a plan - to wreak havoc on the British camp | 0:13:19 | 0:13:23 | |
'and leave it wide open to the spread of disease.' | 0:13:23 | 0:13:26 | |
The French opened the locks to the river so this whole area was filled with stagnant water. | 0:13:26 | 0:13:32 | |
You can only imagine what this meant for Henry | 0:13:32 | 0:13:34 | |
and his army of 10,000 soldiers and 20,000 horses. | 0:13:34 | 0:13:38 | |
With nowhere to bury human or animal waste, with the weather unseasonably hot, | 0:13:38 | 0:13:42 | |
this area became a perfect breeding ground for disease. | 0:13:42 | 0:13:45 | |
'Sharing kit, living in what was to become an open sewer, | 0:13:47 | 0:13:51 | |
'led to a contagious wave of vomiting and diarrhoea. | 0:13:51 | 0:13:55 | |
'The National Archives in London contains evidence | 0:14:00 | 0:14:04 | |
'of how serious the problem became.' | 0:14:04 | 0:14:06 | |
I feel very privileged because it's not often as an historian | 0:14:08 | 0:14:12 | |
you get to look at, hold and read | 0:14:12 | 0:14:15 | |
an original hand-written 600-year-old document like this one. | 0:14:15 | 0:14:20 | |
It's a list of the people who came back from Harfleur in 1415 | 0:14:20 | 0:14:24 | |
and the outset of Henry V's campaign to retake Normandy. | 0:14:24 | 0:14:27 | |
It's written in French but it actually explains to us | 0:14:27 | 0:14:30 | |
the reason why most of these people had left the army. | 0:14:30 | 0:14:33 | |
The explanation is here at the top and it reads: | 0:14:33 | 0:14:37 | |
"The sick people of the retinue of the Duke of Clarence," | 0:14:37 | 0:14:41 | |
who was the King's brother, | 0:14:41 | 0:14:43 | |
"and also the people of the retinues of the captains and lords | 0:14:43 | 0:14:48 | |
"who were serving with the King at the siege of Harfleur." | 0:14:48 | 0:14:52 | |
In other words, it's the sick list, the casualties who had returned home from the campaign. | 0:14:52 | 0:14:57 | |
This roll and the other five rolls in the bag | 0:14:57 | 0:15:00 | |
contain 1,300 names and each name is individually recorded. | 0:15:00 | 0:15:05 | |
Most of these men suffered from something known as the bloody flux. | 0:15:05 | 0:15:10 | |
In other words, they were afflicted with dysentery. | 0:15:10 | 0:15:13 | |
'Harfleur was eventually taken, | 0:15:14 | 0:15:16 | |
'but by failing to provide for his troops' welfare, | 0:15:16 | 0:15:19 | |
'Henry's army was by now exhausted and malnourished. | 0:15:19 | 0:15:23 | |
'He was forced to head not further south, | 0:15:23 | 0:15:26 | |
'but north to Calais, an English-controlled port. | 0:15:26 | 0:15:30 | |
'The French, though, intercepted his army on the way - at Agincourt.' | 0:15:31 | 0:15:36 | |
BATTLE CRIES, SCREAMS AND HORSES NEIGHING | 0:15:36 | 0:15:41 | |
Henry's subsequent success at Agincourt | 0:15:43 | 0:15:45 | |
was as much to do with the failures of the French knights getting bogged down in the mud | 0:15:45 | 0:15:50 | |
as it was due to the excellence of his archers, | 0:15:50 | 0:15:52 | |
but thanks to Shakespeare that campaign has gone down in national folklore as a great victory. | 0:15:52 | 0:15:58 | |
'And of course, Henry's was only one of a long history of campaigns | 0:15:59 | 0:16:05 | |
'when English and British forces made forays onto mainland Europe.' | 0:16:05 | 0:16:09 | |
Over time, as armies grew in size, | 0:16:11 | 0:16:14 | |
these overseas expeditions created ever-greater challenges. | 0:16:14 | 0:16:18 | |
If Henry had faced difficulties managing the needs of 10,000 men, | 0:16:18 | 0:16:22 | |
imagine if that army grew to 50,000 or even 100,000, | 0:16:22 | 0:16:26 | |
entire cities on the move. | 0:16:26 | 0:16:28 | |
'From sword-wielding leaders like Henry V, | 0:16:29 | 0:16:33 | |
'by the 18th and 19th centuries, generals had to become masters | 0:16:33 | 0:16:37 | |
'not only of men but supply. | 0:16:37 | 0:16:41 | |
'How do you go about feeding tens of thousands of men on campaign | 0:16:42 | 0:16:46 | |
'overseas, always on the move, and thousands of miles from home?' | 0:16:46 | 0:16:51 | |
'In 1808, a British general, Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington | 0:17:02 | 0:17:08 | |
'sailed for Portugal to help oppose Napoleon's expanding French empire. | 0:17:08 | 0:17:12 | |
'After stops to make arrangements for the supply of oxen and mules, | 0:17:19 | 0:17:23 | |
'he finally landed his army at Mondego Bay, north of Lisbon. | 0:17:23 | 0:17:27 | |
'But as he marched inland to Leiria, heading for Lisbon itself, | 0:17:28 | 0:17:32 | |
'the challenge of feeding his vast army was formidable. | 0:17:32 | 0:17:36 | |
'Andy Robertshaw is an expert in military rations, | 0:17:41 | 0:17:45 | |
'including the supply of an army's daily bread.' | 0:17:45 | 0:17:48 | |
-Shall we? -Do you think it's ready? -Let's have a look. | 0:17:49 | 0:17:52 | |
So I shall use my trusty peel here and see what happens. | 0:17:52 | 0:17:57 | |
-Well, they look convincing, don't they? -Ah, excellent. | 0:17:57 | 0:18:00 | |
I'm happy with that. | 0:18:00 | 0:18:02 | |
If you feel that, it's baked through. | 0:18:02 | 0:18:06 | |
-I wouldn't mind eating that. -That's good! | 0:18:06 | 0:18:09 | |
That's a ration recipe for ration bread | 0:18:09 | 0:18:12 | |
and it's got the fat content replaced by treacle. | 0:18:12 | 0:18:15 | |
So it's flour, yeast, salt and treacle. | 0:18:15 | 0:18:18 | |
That's one man's ration for one day. | 0:18:18 | 0:18:20 | |
So you bake your bread, your soldiers are fed and happy, | 0:18:20 | 0:18:23 | |
you're moving on to the next location, | 0:18:23 | 0:18:26 | |
-you've got to take your oven with you. -Absolutely. | 0:18:26 | 0:18:29 | |
Either as it's cooled or as it's cooling, | 0:18:29 | 0:18:32 | |
you've got to knock it all to bits, try not to break the bricks, | 0:18:32 | 0:18:35 | |
lay them all out, because obviously you don't want to put it on a wagon, you'll set fire to it otherwise, | 0:18:35 | 0:18:41 | |
pile them all on the wagon, move to your next location and build it all over again. | 0:18:41 | 0:18:45 | |
Perhaps twice a week you're building these things. | 0:18:45 | 0:18:48 | |
'During Wellington's early campaign, it's thought the British travelled | 0:18:48 | 0:18:52 | |
'with 80,000 bricks for 400 portable ovens. | 0:18:52 | 0:18:57 | |
'And bread was only a part of what was needed.' | 0:18:58 | 0:19:01 | |
What I've got here is a little pamphlet from the Napoleonic Wars. | 0:19:03 | 0:19:07 | |
It tells you that the daily ration to each officer, | 0:19:07 | 0:19:10 | |
non-commissioned officer or private, is one pound of bread or biscuit, | 0:19:10 | 0:19:14 | |
one pound of meat, either fresh or salt, | 0:19:14 | 0:19:16 | |
one pint of wine or one third of a pint of spirits. That's it. | 0:19:16 | 0:19:21 | |
At one stage Wellington has | 0:19:21 | 0:19:22 | |
80,000 men under his command in the peninsular. How does he feed them? | 0:19:22 | 0:19:26 | |
Well, he's going to give them meat and that means a pound of meat per man per day. | 0:19:26 | 0:19:31 | |
You're slaughtering, for 80,000 men, a minimum of 300 animals a day. | 0:19:33 | 0:19:38 | |
The funny thing is that soldiers often refer to the battlefield looking like a shambles. | 0:19:38 | 0:19:43 | |
A shambles is a medieval word which describes a butcher's yard. | 0:19:43 | 0:19:47 | |
Every time they go to get their meat rations they would see | 0:19:47 | 0:19:50 | |
all these slaughtered animals. They were awfully familiar with it. | 0:19:50 | 0:19:54 | |
I mean, it's a huge logistical effort, isn't it? | 0:19:54 | 0:19:57 | |
We think of soldiers in an army but they've got this massive tail, | 0:19:57 | 0:20:01 | |
bakers and butchers and just about everyone else who has to look after this. | 0:20:01 | 0:20:06 | |
There's a massive army with a massive train of animals and butchers and wagons and forage | 0:20:06 | 0:20:13 | |
just to keep it going even without fighting a single battle. | 0:20:13 | 0:20:16 | |
Every single day. You can't stop it. | 0:20:16 | 0:20:19 | |
The scale of the effort needed to sustain Wellington's army | 0:20:22 | 0:20:26 | |
was simply staggering - 300 cows a day, an entire herd to feed his men. | 0:20:26 | 0:20:33 | |
When you think about it, that doesn't just involve the cowherds and the regimental butchers, | 0:20:33 | 0:20:37 | |
you've got the livestock experts who have to go out into the local markets to replenish that herd, | 0:20:37 | 0:20:44 | |
then the accountants and the quartermasters paying out the cash and keeping up the books. | 0:20:44 | 0:20:49 | |
Whichever way you look at it, and particularly when you delve deep into it, | 0:20:49 | 0:20:54 | |
this conceptually simple problem about feeding your army | 0:20:54 | 0:20:58 | |
becomes a huge logistical, indeed a huge management exercise. | 0:20:58 | 0:21:03 | |
'Once they had received their rations, | 0:21:07 | 0:21:09 | |
'it was up to the soldiers to cook it themselves.' | 0:21:09 | 0:21:13 | |
So you can just imagine the scene, | 0:21:13 | 0:21:15 | |
80,000 men spread over a hillside like this one, | 0:21:15 | 0:21:18 | |
all cooking their individual pots on fires like this | 0:21:18 | 0:21:21 | |
with their rations of meat and maybe the odd pilfered onion. | 0:21:21 | 0:21:24 | |
'But while the soldiers were tucking in to their hard-earned meals, | 0:21:24 | 0:21:29 | |
'they would have been unaware that what was going on behind the scenes | 0:21:29 | 0:21:33 | |
'was heading towards a watershed in how armies were fed and kept healthy.' | 0:21:33 | 0:21:38 | |
What's actually happening at this stage is a major shift in military history | 0:21:39 | 0:21:43 | |
because before this point, supply and transport | 0:21:43 | 0:21:47 | |
had always been provided on an ad hoc basis during wartime by civilians. | 0:21:47 | 0:21:51 | |
As armies became increasingly huge in size, | 0:21:51 | 0:21:55 | |
the business of supply became increasingly specialist. | 0:21:55 | 0:21:59 | |
'In these new mega-armies, men were needed to take care of the camps and of food, | 0:22:01 | 0:22:07 | |
'and without them an army would be doomed as a fighting force. | 0:22:07 | 0:22:11 | |
'From the early 19th century, success in waging war | 0:22:11 | 0:22:15 | |
'shifts from the front line to the back room, | 0:22:15 | 0:22:19 | |
'to the masters of the supply chain. | 0:22:19 | 0:22:21 | |
'But the question was who were the real back-room masters going to be?' | 0:22:22 | 0:22:28 | |
'A modern army today, supplies and transports its own food and equipment. | 0:22:38 | 0:22:43 | |
'But in Wellington's time, while the army transported provisions, | 0:22:45 | 0:22:48 | |
'it didn't have complete control of all aspects of supply. | 0:22:48 | 0:22:53 | |
'The responsibility for purchasing goods fell to a civilian body called the commissariat.' | 0:22:56 | 0:23:02 | |
The reason the commissariat remains in civilian hands | 0:23:04 | 0:23:07 | |
is that the Government, fearful of the power of the generals and their ever-larger armies, | 0:23:07 | 0:23:12 | |
doesn't want them to operate independently. | 0:23:12 | 0:23:15 | |
'On top of all this, to save money the Government also took over complete control | 0:23:16 | 0:23:20 | |
'of transport as well as purchasing. | 0:23:20 | 0:23:24 | |
'It was a decision that was to lead to the biggest supply disaster | 0:23:24 | 0:23:28 | |
'in British military history. | 0:23:28 | 0:23:30 | |
'The consequences were to transform how the entire army was run. | 0:23:31 | 0:23:36 | |
'That logistical catastrophe happened here, 1,600 miles from London, | 0:23:40 | 0:23:46 | |
'in the Russian port of Balaklava, in 1854 during the Crimean War. | 0:23:46 | 0:23:52 | |
'The Crimea is a peninsula in the south of modern-day Ukraine, | 0:23:54 | 0:23:59 | |
'Fearful of Russia's growing influence in the region, | 0:24:00 | 0:24:03 | |
'Britain went to war, | 0:24:03 | 0:24:05 | |
'relying on the port of Balaklava as a vital supply line. | 0:24:05 | 0:24:08 | |
'The British Army stationed 25,000 soldiers on a bleak plateau, | 0:24:13 | 0:24:17 | |
'high above the port. | 0:24:17 | 0:24:19 | |
'But the Government, having taken charge of supplies, | 0:24:21 | 0:24:24 | |
'failed to equip the men properly. | 0:24:24 | 0:24:27 | |
'With winter closing in, poor clothing and flimsy tents | 0:24:28 | 0:24:33 | |
'offered little protection against the deteriorating conditions. | 0:24:33 | 0:24:36 | |
'And what was being delivered into port | 0:24:39 | 0:24:41 | |
'wasn't exactly what the men needed most.' | 0:24:41 | 0:24:44 | |
This is an example of the sort of supply | 0:24:46 | 0:24:48 | |
that was being sent out to the Crimea during the war. | 0:24:48 | 0:24:51 | |
It's an extraordinary artefact. It's a marmalade pot | 0:24:51 | 0:24:54 | |
Beautifully made. You can see the detail in it, | 0:24:54 | 0:24:57 | |
not just in its construction but in this hand-painted picture | 0:24:57 | 0:25:00 | |
of the allied commanders on the front | 0:25:00 | 0:25:03 | |
with Lord Raglan in the centre position. | 0:25:03 | 0:25:05 | |
You can tell it's him because of his empty arm, | 0:25:05 | 0:25:08 | |
the arm he lost at Waterloo. | 0:25:08 | 0:25:10 | |
'Although the Government did deliver more than decorative jars of marmalade, | 0:25:12 | 0:25:17 | |
'they had forgotten one crucial thing. | 0:25:17 | 0:25:19 | |
'No carts had been provided to transport the provisions | 0:25:19 | 0:25:23 | |
'from the port up to the inland bases. | 0:25:23 | 0:25:26 | |
'Many of the supplies were left on the quayside, the food rotting, | 0:25:26 | 0:25:31 | |
'while the soldiers, unable to leave the battlefield, starved. | 0:25:31 | 0:25:36 | |
'The person who brought this logistical catastrophe to light | 0:25:37 | 0:25:41 | |
'wasn't a soldier or a politician, but a journalist.' | 0:25:41 | 0:25:46 | |
This is a picture of WH Russell of the Times | 0:25:47 | 0:25:50 | |
sitting on his rather natty campaign chair. | 0:25:50 | 0:25:53 | |
Russell became famous during the Crimean War | 0:25:53 | 0:25:55 | |
because he covered it from start to finish, | 0:25:55 | 0:25:57 | |
living for much of his time with the men here on the plateau. | 0:25:57 | 0:26:00 | |
'Russell was one of the world's very first embedded war correspondents.' | 0:26:02 | 0:26:07 | |
What particularly struck me when I first read Russell's reports | 0:26:09 | 0:26:12 | |
was the vividness of the language he uses, | 0:26:12 | 0:26:15 | |
the beauty of the metaphor and the similes. | 0:26:15 | 0:26:17 | |
In one particular report he describes the pouring rain, | 0:26:17 | 0:26:22 | |
the night as black as ink, | 0:26:22 | 0:26:23 | |
the tents bowing, staggering under the howling wind, | 0:26:23 | 0:26:28 | |
and the trenches, which surrounded Sevastopol in front of me, | 0:26:28 | 0:26:32 | |
filling with water like dykes. | 0:26:32 | 0:26:34 | |
'Living with the men, Russell was directly exposed to their suffering. | 0:26:36 | 0:26:41 | |
'Back home in London, his reports caused a national scandal.' | 0:26:41 | 0:26:46 | |
The Government was forced to resign | 0:26:47 | 0:26:50 | |
and the new administration had to act fast. | 0:26:50 | 0:26:53 | |
It realised that supply was a specialist area of logistics | 0:26:53 | 0:26:57 | |
and that it couldn't do it efficiently itself. | 0:26:57 | 0:26:59 | |
So it transferred control of the commissariat away from the Treasury | 0:26:59 | 0:27:03 | |
and formed a new transport corps within the Army. | 0:27:03 | 0:27:06 | |
'Giving control to the military was a huge leap of faith, | 0:27:08 | 0:27:12 | |
'a trust that the Army wouldn't use that extra power to turn on the Government.' | 0:27:12 | 0:27:17 | |
But it paid off. Supplies to the Crimea improved, | 0:27:17 | 0:27:20 | |
and that improvement was aided by a new technology. | 0:27:20 | 0:27:23 | |
'Previously communications between the commanders in the field and London had been chiefly by letter. | 0:27:29 | 0:27:34 | |
'Hardly the fastest way to exchange information about supply problems or anything else.' | 0:27:34 | 0:27:39 | |
But now the Government decided that the generals needed | 0:27:39 | 0:27:42 | |
a state-of-the-art piece of communications equipment - the electric telegraph. | 0:27:42 | 0:27:46 | |
An underwater cable was laid across 300 miles of the Black Sea, | 0:27:55 | 0:27:59 | |
from Varna in modern-day Bulgaria over there | 0:27:59 | 0:28:02 | |
to a point close to here, a few miles west of Balaklava. | 0:28:02 | 0:28:05 | |
'For the first time, London was connected directly to the front line of a war zone.' | 0:28:06 | 0:28:12 | |
This is St George's Monastery. I've seen it many times on a map | 0:28:21 | 0:28:24 | |
but it's great finally to see it in person | 0:28:24 | 0:28:26 | |
because this was the location of the original British Telegraph Office. | 0:28:26 | 0:28:30 | |
'From this slightly unorthodox communications hub, | 0:28:32 | 0:28:35 | |
'generals were linked by wire all the way to London.' | 0:28:35 | 0:28:39 | |
The first thing that strikes me is how thin it is. | 0:28:42 | 0:28:45 | |
Right there in the centre you can see a tiny copper cable | 0:28:45 | 0:28:49 | |
that would have carried the signal. | 0:28:49 | 0:28:51 | |
Around it there's this protective wrapping of hemp. | 0:28:51 | 0:28:54 | |
It would only have been like this close to the shoreline when it came out of the water | 0:28:54 | 0:28:58 | |
to protect it from being snagged against ships' anchors. | 0:28:58 | 0:29:01 | |
For most of the 300 miles here, | 0:29:01 | 0:29:04 | |
the protection would have just been a thin layer of rubber. | 0:29:04 | 0:29:07 | |
'The telegraph was transforming communication | 0:29:08 | 0:29:12 | |
'and the ability to keep men fed and healthy. | 0:29:12 | 0:29:15 | |
'But at the same time, | 0:29:15 | 0:29:18 | |
'smaller innovations were just as important to men at the front.' | 0:29:18 | 0:29:22 | |
This is the Soyer stove, designed by a French chef, Alexis Soyer, | 0:29:24 | 0:29:29 | |
who happened to be working in London during the Crimean War | 0:29:29 | 0:29:32 | |
when he was approached by the authorities to advise on mass catering in the Army. | 0:29:32 | 0:29:36 | |
And this was his solution. | 0:29:36 | 0:29:38 | |
Very clever design with lots of interesting features. | 0:29:38 | 0:29:42 | |
Here at the bottom is a little aperture to take away the burnt ash. | 0:29:42 | 0:29:46 | |
But more importantly this little air hole here, | 0:29:46 | 0:29:50 | |
which enabled you to control temperature. | 0:29:50 | 0:29:52 | |
On an open fire, which the Army would have cooked on before, you couldn't do that. | 0:29:52 | 0:29:56 | |
In the centre, that's where you put the fuel, | 0:29:56 | 0:29:59 | |
wood being the most obvious thing, | 0:29:59 | 0:30:01 | |
but any fuel that burned could have gone in there | 0:30:01 | 0:30:03 | |
and at the top you had the bowl. | 0:30:03 | 0:30:07 | |
You either use it to boil water or use it to cook. | 0:30:07 | 0:30:10 | |
Now the great advantage of the Soyer Stove in a military sense | 0:30:10 | 0:30:14 | |
is that it didn't produce a naked flame or much smoke | 0:30:14 | 0:30:17 | |
so the enemy couldn't see you at a distance | 0:30:17 | 0:30:20 | |
and you couldn't count the number of camp fires. | 0:30:20 | 0:30:22 | |
But it also made huge savings in terms of both fuel and manpower. | 0:30:22 | 0:30:28 | |
For a battalion cooking over an open fire, which is what they would have done before this stove, | 0:30:28 | 0:30:33 | |
it would have required about 1,700lbs of firewood a day | 0:30:33 | 0:30:36 | |
and up to 80 cooks. | 0:30:36 | 0:30:38 | |
The Soyer Stove required just a tenth of the fuel and just 16 chefs. | 0:30:38 | 0:30:44 | |
And in the Crimea, where firewood was hard to come by, | 0:30:44 | 0:30:47 | |
that was a vital saving. | 0:30:47 | 0:30:49 | |
So clever was this design, | 0:30:49 | 0:30:50 | |
that it was still being used by the British Army | 0:30:50 | 0:30:53 | |
as recently as the Gulf War of 1991. | 0:30:53 | 0:30:56 | |
'The Crimean War was a huge turning point in British military history. | 0:30:58 | 0:31:03 | |
'The telegraph changed the way armies could be supplied and controlled. | 0:31:03 | 0:31:07 | |
'The Soyer Stove transformed the way it ate on the ground. | 0:31:07 | 0:31:11 | |
'And Russell's reports heightened public interest in armies overseas.' | 0:31:11 | 0:31:16 | |
But the most far-reaching change | 0:31:17 | 0:31:19 | |
was a move towards a specialist department of the Army, | 0:31:19 | 0:31:22 | |
concerned solely with procurement, transport and supply. | 0:31:22 | 0:31:26 | |
It was the birth of what was to become the Royal Logistics Corps, | 0:31:26 | 0:31:30 | |
a unit that still lies at the centre of military operations today. | 0:31:30 | 0:31:33 | |
'The sophistication of modern operations in Afghanistan | 0:31:38 | 0:31:41 | |
'has its roots in the Crimea triggered by a catastrophe - | 0:31:41 | 0:31:45 | |
'the failure to meet soldiers' most basic needs. | 0:31:45 | 0:31:50 | |
'Communications, | 0:31:50 | 0:31:52 | |
'health and medicine, | 0:31:52 | 0:31:53 | |
'and catering are now all separate, specialist branches of the Army. | 0:31:53 | 0:31:58 | |
'Today, 16,000 soldiers are engaged directly in logistics, | 0:32:00 | 0:32:05 | |
'about a sixth of the entire British Army.' | 0:32:05 | 0:32:09 | |
'During the 19th century, | 0:32:18 | 0:32:20 | |
'the logistics of supplying military kit had undergone a watershed. | 0:32:20 | 0:32:25 | |
'But one thing had remained largely unchanged. | 0:32:26 | 0:32:29 | |
'Food. | 0:32:29 | 0:32:31 | |
'Ever since the days of the Romans, | 0:32:32 | 0:32:35 | |
'right through the time of medieval knights, | 0:32:35 | 0:32:38 | |
'and the campaigns of Wellington, | 0:32:38 | 0:32:40 | |
'waging war was very much a seasonal activity.' | 0:32:40 | 0:32:43 | |
The problems of supply were so great for early armies | 0:32:48 | 0:32:51 | |
that most campaigns took place in the summer months | 0:32:51 | 0:32:54 | |
when the fields were ripe with corn and food was in abundance. | 0:32:54 | 0:32:57 | |
It's no coincidence that the festival of Mars, | 0:32:59 | 0:33:01 | |
the Roman god of war, | 0:33:01 | 0:33:02 | |
was in March and October, because these dates mark | 0:33:02 | 0:33:06 | |
the beginning and the end of the campaigning season. | 0:33:06 | 0:33:09 | |
'War had been a summer activity | 0:33:10 | 0:33:13 | |
'because until the 19th century, | 0:33:13 | 0:33:15 | |
'there was no effective way of preserving food. | 0:33:15 | 0:33:18 | |
'But that was all about to change.' | 0:33:19 | 0:33:22 | |
'The Science Museum in London contains the very earliest examples | 0:33:30 | 0:33:34 | |
'of an invention so groundbreaking | 0:33:34 | 0:33:36 | |
'that it completely changed how armies could be fed. | 0:33:36 | 0:33:40 | |
'And how wars would be waged.' | 0:33:41 | 0:33:43 | |
This is an extraordinary artefact. | 0:33:45 | 0:33:47 | |
It's actually one of the earliest tin cans, dating from 1812, | 0:33:47 | 0:33:51 | |
made by a British firm, Donkin, Hall and Gamble | 0:33:51 | 0:33:54 | |
and look at the beautiful design. | 0:33:54 | 0:33:56 | |
You can see that it's been handmade, | 0:33:56 | 0:33:58 | |
sealed shut here, | 0:33:58 | 0:34:00 | |
soldered shut, in fact, | 0:34:00 | 0:34:02 | |
which meant 40 years before the tin opener was invented, | 0:34:02 | 0:34:04 | |
you would have had to use a bayonet to get into this. It's incredibly light. | 0:34:04 | 0:34:08 | |
It doesn't contain the original foodstuffs that would have been in it, | 0:34:08 | 0:34:12 | |
but you can see the quality of workmanship here. | 0:34:12 | 0:34:14 | |
And they were still using tin cans by the end of the 19th century. | 0:34:14 | 0:34:19 | |
And you can see this one here would have been an emergency ration pack. | 0:34:19 | 0:34:23 | |
It's actually quite heavy but a much simpler design, | 0:34:23 | 0:34:26 | |
and also a much easier way of getting into it. | 0:34:26 | 0:34:28 | |
You see this little tag. | 0:34:28 | 0:34:30 | |
It would have been rolled back and the soldier | 0:34:30 | 0:34:32 | |
could have quite easily got into the food it would have contained there. | 0:34:32 | 0:34:36 | |
'Cans like this were used by soldiers in the American Civil War | 0:34:36 | 0:34:41 | |
'and the Franco-Prussian War. | 0:34:41 | 0:34:42 | |
'But it was the mass production of canned food during World War One | 0:34:42 | 0:34:47 | |
'that changed war forever. | 0:34:47 | 0:34:50 | |
'In 1918, nearly 180 million cans were transported to the Western front by ship and train, | 0:34:52 | 0:34:58 | |
'feeding over two million men through summer AND winter. | 0:34:58 | 0:35:05 | |
'For the first time, war was no longer limited by the seasons. | 0:35:05 | 0:35:09 | |
'Many of the cans were filled with what became known as bully beef | 0:35:12 | 0:35:16 | |
'after the French word "bouilli" meaning boiled. | 0:35:16 | 0:35:20 | |
'And much of the beef came all the way from South America. | 0:35:20 | 0:35:24 | |
'One brand, Fray Bentos, was named after a town in Uruguay. | 0:35:24 | 0:35:29 | |
'It was all a far cry from Wellington's herd of cattle | 0:35:30 | 0:35:33 | |
'just a century before. | 0:35:33 | 0:35:35 | |
'The Imperial War Museum in London contains records | 0:35:39 | 0:35:42 | |
'of how soldiers reacted to the new food. | 0:35:42 | 0:35:45 | |
'Social historian, Rachel Duffett, has studied them in detail.' | 0:35:45 | 0:35:50 | |
The two tins here are meat and vegetables | 0:35:50 | 0:35:53 | |
made by Maconochies, on of the most famous | 0:35:53 | 0:35:55 | |
suppliers for the Army in the First World War, | 0:35:55 | 0:35:58 | |
and here, at least, | 0:35:58 | 0:35:59 | |
the processed meat, the beef, is mixed with some vegetables | 0:35:59 | 0:36:02 | |
so, for many soldiers, a good tin, | 0:36:02 | 0:36:04 | |
if you got one that wasn't too fatty, too gristly, | 0:36:04 | 0:36:07 | |
a good "M and V", as they called it, meat and vegetables, | 0:36:07 | 0:36:10 | |
was quite pleasant, particularly if you could heat it up. | 0:36:10 | 0:36:13 | |
Often they had to eat it cold, straight from the tin. | 0:36:13 | 0:36:16 | |
You're painting a picture of a British Army determined | 0:36:16 | 0:36:20 | |
to give them enough calories but was this food good for them? Was it nutritious? | 0:36:20 | 0:36:24 | |
I think if the British Army now looked at it, it would say no | 0:36:24 | 0:36:28 | |
because all that the nutritional science could offer any army at that point in time, | 0:36:28 | 0:36:33 | |
at the beginning of the 20th century, | 0:36:33 | 0:36:36 | |
was calories, the importance of calories. | 0:36:36 | 0:36:38 | |
They did not understand the role of vitamins. | 0:36:38 | 0:36:41 | |
Vitamin C, in particular. | 0:36:41 | 0:36:42 | |
We see that from the minor medical problems, | 0:36:42 | 0:36:45 | |
the bleeding gums, the boils, | 0:36:45 | 0:36:47 | |
the wounds that didn't go gangrenous, | 0:36:47 | 0:36:50 | |
but took a long while to heal | 0:36:50 | 0:36:52 | |
because their immune systems were perhaps not what they should be. | 0:36:52 | 0:36:56 | |
'And while the food might have kept men alive, | 0:36:56 | 0:36:59 | |
'its industrial uniformity was never going to win any awards.' | 0:36:59 | 0:37:03 | |
It's often in the memoirs and also the diaries | 0:37:05 | 0:37:08 | |
that you find the real angry comments about food. | 0:37:08 | 0:37:11 | |
And I have here a transcript of a diary for the 16th August 1916. | 0:37:11 | 0:37:16 | |
He actually says he's heard "a good deal about German atrocities | 0:37:16 | 0:37:21 | |
"but certainly in some respect the British are quite as bad. | 0:37:21 | 0:37:24 | |
"And for weeks together we have not had a second vegetable, often none at all." | 0:37:24 | 0:37:28 | |
A feeling that these men had given their lives, | 0:37:28 | 0:37:31 | |
or might potentially give their lives for their country, | 0:37:31 | 0:37:34 | |
and the very least the country could do would be to feed them adequately | 0:37:34 | 0:37:38 | |
and that's something that comes through | 0:37:38 | 0:37:41 | |
because it didn't always happen. | 0:37:41 | 0:37:43 | |
'World War One reinforced some sharp social divides | 0:37:46 | 0:37:50 | |
'between the cannon fodder of the trenches, | 0:37:50 | 0:37:52 | |
'and the generals, who had to manage ever-more complex logistics | 0:37:52 | 0:37:56 | |
'of keeping their men alive. | 0:37:56 | 0:37:58 | |
'And while enlisted soldiers were eating bully beef, | 0:38:00 | 0:38:03 | |
'many senior officers enjoyed a rather more comfortable life.' | 0:38:03 | 0:38:08 | |
Pretty impressive. Four storeys high, | 0:38:13 | 0:38:16 | |
loads of room to relax in, not bad for temporary accommodation. | 0:38:16 | 0:38:20 | |
'But the choice of chateaux like this one as accommodation | 0:38:21 | 0:38:26 | |
'for British generals was down to more than their wine cellars.' | 0:38:26 | 0:38:29 | |
Here we are just two kilometres from the front line so the generals could keep in close touch with their men. | 0:38:31 | 0:38:36 | |
The land around is flat as a pancake so you can see for miles, | 0:38:36 | 0:38:40 | |
and, vitally, there's also a moat | 0:38:40 | 0:38:42 | |
in case of emergencies for last ditch defence. | 0:38:42 | 0:38:45 | |
'World War One generals were no longer swash-bucking leaders | 0:38:48 | 0:38:52 | |
'on the charge, but managers calling the shots from a boardroom of war.' | 0:38:52 | 0:38:59 | |
And it was a room like this that would have given them the space | 0:38:59 | 0:39:02 | |
for all the staff to gather together to dine, | 0:39:02 | 0:39:04 | |
a time for bonding, I suppose you could say, | 0:39:04 | 0:39:07 | |
but also the more serious business of planning operations. | 0:39:07 | 0:39:11 | |
They would all have fitted in this room and would have discussed things that mattered. | 0:39:11 | 0:39:15 | |
'And the Chateaux owner, Baroness de la Grange, | 0:39:17 | 0:39:20 | |
'was able to pass on precious local knowledge of the area.' | 0:39:20 | 0:39:24 | |
Clearly, the ability to know the exact location of the enemy is vital | 0:39:28 | 0:39:31 | |
and it's no coincidence that maps were originally invented by the military. | 0:39:31 | 0:39:36 | |
The term "ordnance survey" derives from the Board of Ordnance, | 0:39:36 | 0:39:40 | |
which had the task of mapping Britain | 0:39:40 | 0:39:42 | |
when there was a danger of French invasion during the Napoleonic Wars. | 0:39:42 | 0:39:45 | |
The generals would have used maps like this one to plot the course of their battles | 0:39:45 | 0:39:50 | |
and this particular one was used | 0:39:50 | 0:39:52 | |
by a British officer in the battle of the Somme in the summer of 1916. | 0:39:52 | 0:39:56 | |
Up in this corner you can see where he's marked out the British trench system | 0:39:56 | 0:40:00 | |
and named those trenches Tipperary, Wellington, Gabion Avenue. | 0:40:00 | 0:40:05 | |
'To plan at night, | 0:40:07 | 0:40:09 | |
'paraffin lamps provided better lighting than candles. | 0:40:09 | 0:40:12 | |
'And to time attacks precisely, a style of watch | 0:40:12 | 0:40:16 | |
'previously considered feminine became a military necessity., | 0:40:16 | 0:40:20 | |
Now before the war, most men would have carried pocket watches | 0:40:22 | 0:40:25 | |
but these weren't a lot of use in battle when you needed | 0:40:25 | 0:40:28 | |
to get them out, open them up to tell the time. | 0:40:28 | 0:40:31 | |
How much more useful to have something on your wrist that you could immediately refer to the time. | 0:40:31 | 0:40:36 | |
This one in particular has been protected by a grille | 0:40:36 | 0:40:39 | |
to stop it being broken in the trenches. | 0:40:39 | 0:40:42 | |
So at a time when war is becoming increasingly technical, | 0:40:42 | 0:40:46 | |
it's becoming more and more important to be able to accurately time | 0:40:46 | 0:40:49 | |
a barrage to the movement of men over the trenches. | 0:40:49 | 0:40:52 | |
And what would have happened before an offensive, is a central staff officer | 0:40:52 | 0:40:56 | |
would have gathered up all the officers' watches, | 0:40:56 | 0:40:58 | |
synchronised them | 0:40:58 | 0:40:59 | |
and then distributed them back to the officers | 0:40:59 | 0:41:02 | |
just before the battle. | 0:41:02 | 0:41:03 | |
'World War One was the first industrial war | 0:41:08 | 0:41:12 | |
'in the scale of its capacity for destruction | 0:41:12 | 0:41:14 | |
'and the complexity of its modern management and logistics. | 0:41:14 | 0:41:19 | |
'But it's striking how civilian innovations in kit and supply | 0:41:19 | 0:41:23 | |
'transformed war just as much as the guns. | 0:41:23 | 0:41:27 | |
'How wristwatches could time co-ordinated attacks like never before. | 0:41:27 | 0:41:30 | |
'How canning technology enabled the continuous entrenchment of the front line | 0:41:32 | 0:41:36 | |
'through winter as well as summer for four long, grim years.' | 0:41:36 | 0:41:41 | |
'For all its new industrial technology, | 0:41:51 | 0:41:54 | |
'World War One, as ever, consumed men. | 0:41:54 | 0:41:58 | |
'Between 1914 and 1918, | 0:41:58 | 0:42:02 | |
'the British Army was supporting over five million soldiers on the front | 0:42:02 | 0:42:07 | |
'in living conditions that were almost medieval. | 0:42:07 | 0:42:11 | |
'Keeping men alive and fit was critical in this static, | 0:42:11 | 0:42:16 | |
'attritional confrontation. | 0:42:16 | 0:42:19 | |
'Health and welfare were as vital as ever, | 0:42:19 | 0:42:21 | |
'but now with industrial bombardment came a new threat - | 0:42:21 | 0:42:26 | |
'death on a scale that had never been seen before. | 0:42:26 | 0:42:29 | |
'Over the course of World War One, | 0:42:32 | 0:42:35 | |
'three million British soldiers were killed or injured. | 0:42:35 | 0:42:38 | |
'But new medical technology was able to combat death | 0:42:38 | 0:42:41 | |
'more effectively than in any previous war. | 0:42:41 | 0:42:45 | |
'And some of the most important advances were surprisingly simple.' | 0:42:45 | 0:42:50 | |
The problem for most of the combatants in the First World War | 0:42:52 | 0:42:55 | |
was that the shells that made shell holes like these | 0:42:55 | 0:42:58 | |
also caused terrible compound fractures to the arms and legs. | 0:42:58 | 0:43:02 | |
The danger of those fractures is that they tended to haemorrhage | 0:43:02 | 0:43:05 | |
as the soldiers were moved back for treatment. | 0:43:05 | 0:43:08 | |
The trick is somehow to immobilise the limb | 0:43:08 | 0:43:11 | |
and that is exactly what this did. | 0:43:11 | 0:43:13 | |
You can see clearly how the leg would have gone through the top, | 0:43:13 | 0:43:17 | |
rested on these pads all the way down | 0:43:17 | 0:43:19 | |
and then be secured, so it was completely immobilised | 0:43:19 | 0:43:23 | |
during the transport back to hospital. | 0:43:23 | 0:43:26 | |
It's incredible to think that such a basic design had such far-reaching consequences | 0:43:26 | 0:43:30 | |
and that after its introduction in 1916, | 0:43:30 | 0:43:33 | |
the mortality rate for compound fractures fell from 87% to just 8%. | 0:43:33 | 0:43:39 | |
'The system of getting food and kit to the front line | 0:43:41 | 0:43:44 | |
'now had to work in reverse so that injured men could be kept alive | 0:43:44 | 0:43:49 | |
'by getting them back to safety away from the front line.' | 0:43:49 | 0:43:53 | |
This is a diagram of the organisation of medical services from the First World War | 0:43:54 | 0:43:58 | |
and it explains in detail exactly how you would have moved back | 0:43:58 | 0:44:02 | |
depending on the seriousness of your wound. | 0:44:02 | 0:44:04 | |
First, from the regimental aid post, by field ambulance and stretcher bearers | 0:44:04 | 0:44:08 | |
to the field ambulance transport. | 0:44:08 | 0:44:10 | |
From there, to the casualty clearing station. | 0:44:10 | 0:44:13 | |
There, some pretty hard-nosed decisions would be taken by the surgeons. | 0:44:13 | 0:44:17 | |
Do we operate, do we try and save this man or do we leave him | 0:44:17 | 0:44:20 | |
so we can work on others because he's already too far gone? | 0:44:20 | 0:44:22 | |
If the wounds are very bad, you're going to go back further down the chain, | 0:44:22 | 0:44:26 | |
taken in trains to the base hospital, | 0:44:26 | 0:44:28 | |
usually on the coast, and if your wound was bad enough | 0:44:28 | 0:44:31 | |
and long-term enough, you'd have gone back on hospital ships to Britain. | 0:44:31 | 0:44:36 | |
'In 1914, there were fewer than 10,000 medical staff on the Western Front. | 0:44:39 | 0:44:45 | |
'By summer of 1916, | 0:44:45 | 0:44:47 | |
'there were more than 100,000. | 0:44:47 | 0:44:50 | |
'Ten times as many. | 0:44:50 | 0:44:52 | |
'And of the half million men hospitalised, only 36,000 died. | 0:44:52 | 0:44:57 | |
'But for all the new innovations in treating the injured, | 0:44:59 | 0:45:02 | |
'living conditions in the trenches of 1915 were arguably worse | 0:45:02 | 0:45:07 | |
'than those of 1415 in Harfleur, | 0:45:07 | 0:45:10 | |
'and the days of the bloody flux, | 0:45:10 | 0:45:13 | |
'500 years before.' | 0:45:13 | 0:45:15 | |
So, how do we do this? | 0:45:17 | 0:45:19 | |
Simplest thing. | 0:45:19 | 0:45:20 | |
Reach across and you'll see there's two bars half way down. | 0:45:20 | 0:45:24 | |
'David Kenyon is a battlefield archaeologist | 0:45:24 | 0:45:27 | |
'who has spent seven years excavating | 0:45:27 | 0:45:29 | |
'the trenches of Thiepval on the Somme.' | 0:45:29 | 0:45:32 | |
Get a bit of a feel for what it's like in the trench itself. | 0:45:34 | 0:45:37 | |
It's pretty narrow. Is that deliberate? | 0:45:37 | 0:45:39 | |
It IS deliberate. | 0:45:39 | 0:45:40 | |
It protects you from overhead explosions. | 0:45:40 | 0:45:43 | |
Shrapnel, that kind of thing. | 0:45:43 | 0:45:45 | |
If it was wider, you'd be more vulnerable. | 0:45:45 | 0:45:47 | |
And a little bit of duckboard here to keep the feet dry. | 0:45:47 | 0:45:50 | |
How significant was that? | 0:45:50 | 0:45:52 | |
That actually covers a sump in the floor, | 0:45:52 | 0:45:54 | |
there's a square hole, about that deep. | 0:45:54 | 0:45:57 | |
Goes down with a duckboard over the top. | 0:45:57 | 0:46:00 | |
That would act as a drain. | 0:46:00 | 0:46:01 | |
Water flowing down the trench would collect in there. | 0:46:01 | 0:46:04 | |
'Just as in Henry V's day, | 0:46:05 | 0:46:07 | |
'dysentery was once more a major problem. | 0:46:07 | 0:46:11 | |
'But there was another ubiquitous condition, | 0:46:11 | 0:46:14 | |
'trench foot, that could lead to gangrene and amputation.' | 0:46:14 | 0:46:19 | |
Ideally, every 24 hours, men are getting fresh socks. | 0:46:19 | 0:46:23 | |
And you don't get a choice. | 0:46:23 | 0:46:24 | |
It's compulsory to get your boots off, look at your feet, | 0:46:24 | 0:46:27 | |
dry them thoroughly and you get some clean socks on. | 0:46:27 | 0:46:30 | |
And if you and I were in a trench together, they had a pairing system | 0:46:30 | 0:46:34 | |
where we'd be matched into pairs and I'd be responsible for your feet | 0:46:34 | 0:46:38 | |
and you'd be responsible for mine, because if you're cold and wet | 0:46:38 | 0:46:43 | |
and tired, taking your puttees and boots off is a bit of a palaver | 0:46:43 | 0:46:47 | |
and you might not feel like it | 0:46:47 | 0:46:49 | |
so you'll go, "I'll do it tomorrow." But if I'm responsible for your feet | 0:46:49 | 0:46:53 | |
I'm going to make you do it, and vice versa. | 0:46:53 | 0:46:55 | |
'The risk of losing men to disease, possibly even the entire war, | 0:46:58 | 0:47:02 | |
'prompted the Army to take hygiene more seriously than ever before.' | 0:47:02 | 0:47:08 | |
This here is the 1912 Manual of Elementary Military Hygiene | 0:47:08 | 0:47:12 | |
and this is a pre-war publication. | 0:47:12 | 0:47:14 | |
This is them getting ready for the next war | 0:47:14 | 0:47:17 | |
and you can see it's really detailed. We've got causes of disease, lots of diseases listed, | 0:47:17 | 0:47:23 | |
cholera, dysentery, malaria, and how to deal with it, essentially. | 0:47:23 | 0:47:26 | |
-Yeah, prevention. -Sorting out your water supply, | 0:47:26 | 0:47:29 | |
how to handle the food, physical training. | 0:47:29 | 0:47:32 | |
It's gone from being | 0:47:32 | 0:47:34 | |
not quite optional but something that's done ad hoc | 0:47:34 | 0:47:37 | |
to something that's absolutely embedded within the system | 0:47:37 | 0:47:40 | |
and it's enforced by military law and military discipline. | 0:47:40 | 0:47:43 | |
'Living in stagnant, rat-infested trenches, | 0:47:45 | 0:47:49 | |
'each man's personal wash kit was as essential to his survival as his rifle.' | 0:47:49 | 0:47:55 | |
We found a groundsheet and wrapped up inside that groundsheet was a soldier's wash kit. | 0:47:56 | 0:48:01 | |
Everything he needed in the trench. Some of these you'll recognise. | 0:48:01 | 0:48:05 | |
That's his toothbrush. | 0:48:05 | 0:48:08 | |
-Minus its bristles. But it's pretty clear isn't it? -Then... | 0:48:08 | 0:48:11 | |
another everyday activity. | 0:48:11 | 0:48:14 | |
-That's a... -Shaving brush. A few bristles still intact. | 0:48:14 | 0:48:18 | |
I think the way it works is you take that bit off there, plug it on the bottom, | 0:48:18 | 0:48:22 | |
and it becomes the handle. | 0:48:22 | 0:48:24 | |
-Oh, I see. -And to go with it we have shaving soap. | 0:48:24 | 0:48:30 | |
Complete with the name. | 0:48:30 | 0:48:32 | |
-You can still read it. -Maker's name, yes. | 0:48:32 | 0:48:34 | |
'Finlay's shaving soap, established Belfast, Ireland.' | 0:48:34 | 0:48:38 | |
It's quite possible that this survived in the trench here | 0:48:38 | 0:48:41 | |
because its owner... Some misfortune befell him and he never came back for it. | 0:48:41 | 0:48:45 | |
And then the other daily necessity. | 0:48:45 | 0:48:47 | |
Reading matter? | 0:48:49 | 0:48:51 | |
Um...not necessarily. | 0:48:51 | 0:48:53 | |
It's actually a religious tract with hymns and things like that on it. | 0:48:53 | 0:48:57 | |
-I don't think he was planning to read it. -Toilet paper? | 0:48:57 | 0:49:00 | |
Toilet paper, yes. | 0:49:00 | 0:49:02 | |
-So he's going to take it from where he can get it, is he? -Oh, yes, absolutely. | 0:49:02 | 0:49:06 | |
Anything suitable was carefully rounded up and stored. | 0:49:06 | 0:49:11 | |
Thin enough and absorbent enough! | 0:49:11 | 0:49:13 | |
If some religious type was in the rear issuing pamphlets out | 0:49:13 | 0:49:17 | |
he would have had a ready audience for them | 0:49:17 | 0:49:19 | |
but probably not for what he intended them for. | 0:49:19 | 0:49:23 | |
So does this find change the way we think about hygiene in the trenches in the First World War? | 0:49:23 | 0:49:28 | |
What it does is it confirms what was going on. | 0:49:28 | 0:49:30 | |
Because we know he have official pamphlets | 0:49:30 | 0:49:32 | |
that say this is what the Army wanted to do | 0:49:32 | 0:49:34 | |
and instructions saying what should be done. | 0:49:34 | 0:49:37 | |
But finding something like this bang in the front line | 0:49:37 | 0:49:39 | |
shows it really was being done. | 0:49:39 | 0:49:41 | |
It's proof that the soldiers really were carrying out | 0:49:41 | 0:49:44 | |
their instructions, which you wouldn't get from other sources, | 0:49:44 | 0:49:47 | |
so it is pretty important, yeah. | 0:49:47 | 0:49:49 | |
'For all the squalor of the trenches, | 0:49:51 | 0:49:53 | |
'some of the biggest medical dangers lay very much off-duty.' | 0:49:53 | 0:49:58 | |
Over a quarter of the diseases for which British soldiers were hospitalised | 0:50:01 | 0:50:05 | |
were venereal, particularly syphilis and gonorrhoea, | 0:50:05 | 0:50:09 | |
caught when off-duty in towns. | 0:50:09 | 0:50:11 | |
To try and combat this, the British Army experimented | 0:50:11 | 0:50:14 | |
with brothels inspected by doctors with some success. | 0:50:14 | 0:50:18 | |
One in Rouen had 171,000 clients in the first year | 0:50:18 | 0:50:22 | |
and just 248 reported cases of VD. | 0:50:22 | 0:50:26 | |
But many soldiers didn't admit to these ailments, | 0:50:26 | 0:50:28 | |
partly because the treatment was painful | 0:50:28 | 0:50:31 | |
and partly hospitalisation for VD meant a stoppage of pay | 0:50:31 | 0:50:35 | |
and your wife or girlfriend would be sure to know the reason why. | 0:50:35 | 0:50:40 | |
'The hugely expanded Royal Army Medical Corps | 0:50:40 | 0:50:43 | |
'might have transformed health and welfare in the trenches of World War One, | 0:50:43 | 0:50:48 | |
'but they never got to grips with sexually transmitted disease. | 0:50:48 | 0:50:52 | |
'In fact, even throughout most of World War Two, | 0:50:52 | 0:50:56 | |
'the Army relied heavily on simple scare tactics.' | 0:50:56 | 0:51:00 | |
These posters are a classic illustration of that. | 0:51:00 | 0:51:03 | |
The first one is a skull's head in a hat, obviously, the prostitute, | 0:51:03 | 0:51:08 | |
and it lays the blame on the woman. It says: | 0:51:08 | 0:51:10 | |
Clearly, soldiers catching VD was a huge logistical problem for the Army | 0:51:21 | 0:51:26 | |
and it wasn't until the mass introduction of penicillin in 1944, | 0:51:26 | 0:51:29 | |
an antibiotic that was highly effective against both syphilis and gonorrhoea, | 0:51:29 | 0:51:34 | |
that they found a solution. | 0:51:34 | 0:51:35 | |
It managed to reduce the treatment time from 40 to 50 days | 0:51:35 | 0:51:39 | |
to under ten days | 0:51:39 | 0:51:41 | |
so that soldiers could be quickly returned to the front line. | 0:51:41 | 0:51:44 | |
'In the 80 years between the Crimea and World War Two, | 0:51:51 | 0:51:55 | |
'the logistics of keeping men housed, | 0:51:55 | 0:51:57 | |
'fed, and healthy had been transformed. | 0:51:57 | 0:52:02 | |
'But after World War Two, in just a couple of decades, | 0:52:02 | 0:52:06 | |
'science and technology created another seismic shift | 0:52:06 | 0:52:11 | |
'in the way armies were kept alive. | 0:52:11 | 0:52:13 | |
'The space race, | 0:52:14 | 0:52:17 | |
'nuclear weapons, and the first computers | 0:52:17 | 0:52:19 | |
'characterised the second half of the 20th century. | 0:52:19 | 0:52:23 | |
'At the same time, a consumer boom discovered | 0:52:25 | 0:52:28 | |
'an age of automation, and convenience foods. | 0:52:28 | 0:52:31 | |
'All this changed how soldiers lived, how they were supplied, | 0:52:31 | 0:52:36 | |
'and even what they ate.' | 0:52:36 | 0:52:37 | |
Just looking through these modern racks of uniforms, | 0:52:42 | 0:52:45 | |
all ready to go onto the bodies of today's soldiers, | 0:52:45 | 0:52:48 | |
you can't help thinking about the past. | 0:52:48 | 0:52:50 | |
This type of supply depot would have looked very similar 100 years ago. | 0:52:50 | 0:52:55 | |
But beyond the trousers and uniforms, the continuity and tradition of soldiering, | 0:52:55 | 0:52:59 | |
EVERYTHING has changed in the last 50 years. | 0:52:59 | 0:53:02 | |
And at the heart of it | 0:53:02 | 0:53:04 | |
has been the technological revolution | 0:53:04 | 0:53:06 | |
of the second half of the 20th century. | 0:53:06 | 0:53:08 | |
'Just one example | 0:53:13 | 0:53:14 | |
'is the rapid escalation of America's war in Vietnam in the mid-1960s. | 0:53:14 | 0:53:20 | |
'The Huey was developed | 0:53:20 | 0:53:21 | |
'to meet the army's need for a powerful utility helicopter. | 0:53:21 | 0:53:26 | |
''This kind of speed and flexibility in the supply line | 0:53:26 | 0:53:30 | |
'was unprecedented. | 0:53:30 | 0:53:32 | |
'Today, it's almost impossible to imagine ground wars | 0:53:32 | 0:53:35 | |
'without helicopter support. | 0:53:35 | 0:53:37 | |
'Then there's medicine. | 0:53:39 | 0:53:40 | |
'MASH units operating at the very cutting edge of surgery, | 0:53:40 | 0:53:44 | |
'maintaining a tradition that continues today | 0:53:44 | 0:53:47 | |
'as battlefield surgery feeds into civilian medicine. | 0:53:47 | 0:53:51 | |
'And, finally, food. | 0:53:54 | 0:53:56 | |
'If the tin can had changed soldiering 100 years ago, | 0:53:56 | 0:53:59 | |
'the revolution in the 1960s was dehydrated food, | 0:53:59 | 0:54:03 | |
'replacing the cans | 0:54:03 | 0:54:05 | |
'that were too heavy and noisy for operational use in the jungle, | 0:54:05 | 0:54:09 | |
'and laying the foundation for today's modern ration packs.' | 0:54:09 | 0:54:13 | |
This is the 12-hour ration pack | 0:54:15 | 0:54:16 | |
that's being sent out to troops in Afghanistan | 0:54:16 | 0:54:19 | |
and it's really state-of-the-art kit | 0:54:19 | 0:54:21 | |
and shows just how far preserved foods have come, in military terms. | 0:54:21 | 0:54:25 | |
It's designed specifically for soldiers on the move | 0:54:25 | 0:54:28 | |
and would be taken by soldiers when they're out on patrol | 0:54:28 | 0:54:31 | |
and also when they're in their forward operating bases. | 0:54:31 | 0:54:33 | |
So, what exactly does it contain? Well, let's have a look. | 0:54:33 | 0:54:36 | |
There's the main meal, "chicken yellow curry rice", | 0:54:39 | 0:54:43 | |
300 grams of it. Just a little taste of home for the soldiers | 0:54:43 | 0:54:46 | |
and, apparently, very popular that particular dish. | 0:54:46 | 0:54:49 | |
And here's the really clever thing. A heater. | 0:54:49 | 0:54:52 | |
Just this little plastic pouch. | 0:54:52 | 0:54:54 | |
Tear off the top, | 0:54:54 | 0:54:55 | |
you put the main meal inside the pouch, | 0:54:55 | 0:54:57 | |
also with water, | 0:54:57 | 0:54:58 | |
and these magnesium strips would heat the food in just 12 minutes. | 0:54:58 | 0:55:03 | |
So you'd have a hot meal wherever you were, on the go. | 0:55:03 | 0:55:06 | |
But when you're out in Afghanistan, in the desert, | 0:55:07 | 0:55:09 | |
you need an awful lot of water, | 0:55:09 | 0:55:11 | |
and to make that water palatable, there's things like this. | 0:55:11 | 0:55:15 | |
Electrolyte drink powder. This one's cherry flavoured. | 0:55:15 | 0:55:18 | |
You've also got energy drink, there, also to mix with water. | 0:55:18 | 0:55:22 | |
And lots and lots of snacks, | 0:55:22 | 0:55:24 | |
and biscuits and nuts and preserved fruits | 0:55:24 | 0:55:27 | |
and sweets to keep the soldiers going when they're on the move. | 0:55:27 | 0:55:30 | |
And also this. That's quite a nice touch. Beef jerky. | 0:55:30 | 0:55:34 | |
Also very popular and the sort of thing British soldiers | 0:55:34 | 0:55:37 | |
would have been eating in South Africa 100 years earlier. | 0:55:37 | 0:55:40 | |
But the piece de resistance, I suppose, is this - | 0:55:40 | 0:55:43 | |
the long-life sandwich - | 0:55:43 | 0:55:45 | |
designed to last for up to two years, apparently. | 0:55:45 | 0:55:48 | |
This is honey barbecued beef, not my favourite flavour, | 0:55:48 | 0:55:51 | |
I must admit, but I'm going to give it a go anyway. | 0:55:51 | 0:55:53 | |
Looks more like a wrap than a sandwich. | 0:56:00 | 0:56:02 | |
Not bad. | 0:56:06 | 0:56:08 | |
Quite tasty but you wouldn't want to be eating this every day of your life. | 0:56:08 | 0:56:12 | |
'But even the preservation of food is not new. | 0:56:15 | 0:56:18 | |
'Back on the Roman wall, it's extraordinary to think that, | 0:56:18 | 0:56:21 | |
'2,000 years ago, as well as housing, feeding, | 0:56:21 | 0:56:25 | |
'and keeping their men clean, | 0:56:25 | 0:56:27 | |
'the Romans had their own version of long-life rations.' | 0:56:27 | 0:56:30 | |
Remember this, the amphora? | 0:56:31 | 0:56:34 | |
It was full of olive oil and came from Spain. | 0:56:34 | 0:56:37 | |
It's just one tiny example of what the Romans were doing in terms of preserved food. | 0:56:37 | 0:56:41 | |
They pickled, dried, | 0:56:41 | 0:56:42 | |
salted and smoked their meat and also their fish. | 0:56:42 | 0:56:46 | |
And they even had an example of the long-life sandwich - fish in brine. | 0:56:46 | 0:56:50 | |
Now, remember that these foods came from all the far-flung corners of Empire | 0:56:50 | 0:56:54 | |
to give their soldiers a little taste from home. | 0:56:54 | 0:56:57 | |
'The basic needs of a modern soldier in Camp Bastion | 0:57:03 | 0:57:07 | |
'are no different from the Romans' at Hadrian's Wall. | 0:57:07 | 0:57:11 | |
'To be fed and housed, | 0:57:11 | 0:57:12 | |
'and, most importantly of all, to stay healthy. | 0:57:12 | 0:57:16 | |
'But as we've seen, it's achieving all this, for thousands of men, | 0:57:17 | 0:57:22 | |
'when it really matters, THAT'S the real challenge.' | 0:57:22 | 0:57:27 | |
Getting a soldier's kit right is hardly the most glamorous side of war. | 0:57:27 | 0:57:31 | |
And the logistics men are not going to win any prizes, | 0:57:31 | 0:57:33 | |
but if they do their job well, | 0:57:33 | 0:57:35 | |
their men are kept fit, healthy and ready for battle. | 0:57:35 | 0:57:39 | |
'Next time, how to move an army. | 0:57:40 | 0:57:44 | |
'As generals through history have tried to literally steal a march.' | 0:57:44 | 0:57:48 | |
This little model here represents a revolution in warfare. | 0:57:48 | 0:57:52 | |
'How trains transformed the way armies could be mobilised.' | 0:57:53 | 0:57:57 | |
While France was still preparing her army, | 0:57:57 | 0:58:01 | |
Prussia had 85,000 men concentrated and ready for action. | 0:58:01 | 0:58:05 | |
'And how, in the end, success so often comes back to men...' | 0:58:06 | 0:58:11 | |
Already, Saul, you're bent over. | 0:58:11 | 0:58:13 | |
It's unbelievable. | 0:58:13 | 0:58:15 | |
'..and boots.' | 0:58:16 | 0:58:17 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:58:31 | 0:58:34 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 0:58:34 | 0:58:38 |