(contemplative music)
It's now 100 years
since the end of the First World War,
a conflict that claimed the lives
of over three quarters of a million British men.
Now featuring rare and previously unseen personal testimony
alongside newly restored archive film,
this groundbreaking three-part series will tell the story
of the Great War as never before,
from the suffering and sacrifice experienced
by the men on the front line.
The corpses there, they all had rats nests
in the cage of the chest, and when you disturbed them,
the rats ran out of the chest.
You can't forget a thing like that.
To the dramatic change
in women's lives on the home front.
I felt, when I was working on munitions, I really felt,
"Well, I haven't got any brothers to go and fight.
I'm doing the next best thing."
And I was quite pleased to be able to do it.
In this film, we'll hear from those
who survived the horrors of the Somme.
We met a hurricane of bullets.
They actually, they whizzed by my ears,
you know, ping, ping, ping, ping,
ping, ping, flying by my ears like that.
And from those who were left
with physical and mental scars.
They amputated my foot through the ankle.
I'd make no bones about it, I really cried
my eyes out when I saw the result.
This is the story of the tragedy
and turmoil of Britain's Great War.
(light music)
(men laughing) (horse hooves clopping)
In 1916, after more than a year of stalemate
on the Western Front, Allied commanders planned
a major new offensive against the German Army.
It would take place along a 16-mile stretch
of the River Somme, and if all went according to plan,
result in a decisive victory.
It was supposed to be a joint offensive with France,
but in February, the Germans attacked
the city of Verdun over 150 miles away,
and many French divisions were diverted there
where they would suffer enormous casualties.
As a result, the main responsibility
for the Somme offensive fell to the British,
led by new Commander in Chief Sir Douglas Haig.
They were so confident victory,
they allowed film cameras to record the event.
They would capture one of the most infamous
and costly battles of the entire war.
People said that Haig was wrong
in making us go fight the enemy.
Dammit, we couldn't sit there forever,
we had to get on with the job.
The French had been badly, been nearly knocked out,
and we gotta get on with the job and kill the Germans.
(somber music)
We had a duty, we were told by our senior officers,
to do our best to prevent this country
being taken over by some enemy.
(boots marching)
Well, we wanted to fight the Germans anyway,
blinking old Kaiser and his son, we use to hate them people.
We were younger, you see, the men, you were younger,
you were full of excitement, I suppose.
All together, now,
♪ It's a long way to Tipperary ♪
♪ It's a long way to go ♪
♪ It's a long way to Tipperary ♪
♪ To the sweetest girl I know ♪
♪ Goodbye, Piccadilly, farewell, Lester Square ♪
♪ It's a long, long way to Tipperary ♪
♪ But my heart's right there ♪
♪ It's a long way to Tipperary ♪
♪ It's a long way to go ♪
Arriving at the front
were the latest recruits to Secretary of State for War,
Lord Kitchener's Volunteer Army,
which by then numbered around two and a half million men.
Many were in one of the new so-called
Pals Battalions, made up of volunteers
from the same town, village, or workplace.
Young people like myself would say,
"We'll show those Germans, we'll push them back home!"
It was the thoughts of really young men
who didn't know any better.
Others had lied about their age to be there.
I was 16, but I said I was 18.
I told them I was 18, but I was only 16.
So patriotic, that's why, it was just so patriotic.
That was appealing those days.
And I went to the Battle of the Somme
so that where I was sent to, the Battle of the Somme
to a place called Thiepval.
Some of Kitchener's recruits
preparing for Battle on the Somme
already knew what it was like to go over the top,
having fought at Luce in 1915 where 16,000 men
were killed in two weeks of fighting.
I thought to myself, when we went on the Somme,
I thought, "Oh, well, nevermind if my time comes,
let's hope it's a bullet, let's hope it's sudden.
If I've got to go, I've got to go,
let's hope it's sudden," that's the way wanted.
And I never, I always dreaded losing and arm or a leg.
Well, we knew we were in for.
We were there to do a job, we couldn't get out of it,
but we were told to do a job and we did it.
I might've been afraid, I expect I was afraid
the second time, yes, no doubt about it, we were afraid,
young fellows, 18, 19, married men
with a couple of kids going over the top,
like that, and they're crying their eyes out,
wondering what's happening to the people at home.
At home Britain's children
were having to come to terms with the fact
that their fathers were away fighting.
but their pride in having seen their dad in uniform
before he left was a memory that gave comfort to some.
I can remember mum took us out
for the days to Dover Castle and we were so thrilled
about it because we could look out
of some slits in the wall, right?
And we were told to look across
and we could see France, there,
and then of course we had to see dad drilling the men.
(flutes whistling)
We were naturally over the moon to stand there
and see our dad, but then as a child, you would,
wouldn't you, you think your dad's the one and only!
(bells chiming)
When first I started school,
my first teacher was Mr. Brown.
And he was very nice, we all adored him
because we'd never had a male teacher before.
It'd always been female teachers, you know?
So we were thrilled to bits.
And the first day he went through the register
and he was going through all the names
and he said, "Oh, we have a Maud!"
("Come Into the Garden, Maud")
♪ Come into the garden, Maud ♪
♪ For the black bat, night, has flown ♪
♪ Come into the garden, Maud ♪
He said, "Stand up Maud," so I stood up
and he cooked his finger to come here.
And he says, "I'm a singer, you know?
And that's my favorite song, 'Come Into the Garden, Maud,'"
and he says, "You're the first one
I've ever come across that had that name."
So he says, "That'll be our song, won't it?"
And, oh, of course, I was thrilled to bits.
And every time he wanted me to come up. he used to sing,
♪ Come into the garden, Maud ♪
And then of course, there! (chuckling)
Then the next thing, he was called up and he went away.
(artillery firing)
On the 24th of June, 1916,
the Allies launched a massive artillery bombardment
on the Somme in an attempt to destroy German defenses.
In seven days, over a million and a half shells
were fired at the enemy lines.
We were all convinced that this was
the push which was to enter the war.
We were certainly very impressed
with the thunder of the guns
because it started all at once, and terrific,
and it went on and on and on, thunder, thunder, thunder.
(artillery firing)
With a practiced ear, you could pick out
the individual types of gun firing.
(artillery firing)
Well, at times it was indescribable.
You might get about 12 guns, battery,
I don't know what they called the artillery,
all firing at the same time.
Another time it'd be one after the other.
(artillery firing)
Tens of thousands of shells
had been sent over to the German line.
And the day before we were supposed to go over the top,
an officer, a ranking officer got on his horse
and said to us, "Tomorrow, lads, tomorrow, men,
you'll go and take the German trench.
I say that because I know you'll take the trench.
There's no trench there, there's no wire there,
it'll all be pounded by our guns, and you can just
walk over and carry your guns as you would carry a bag."
(shells exploding)
At 7:30 AM, the men
would go over the top toward the German lines.
As the time approached, they made their final preparations.
We moved up into the front line trench,
every man was given a packet of Woodbines,
stupid thing to say, but I was smoking (mumbling)
sort of, oh, we'll see about that, I don't know why,
but it doesn't matter, and zero hour was 7:30,
it was a lovely morning, and over the top we went!
They just shouted, "Come on lads," said the sergeant.
And that's, you get over the top the best you could.
Well, the one next to you would be about a yard away
from you, two yards away on the other side of you,
and you'd move straightforward in a line.
You're not holding each other's arms, you just move forward.
In the south where German
defenses were at their weakest,
the artillery bombardment was most successful
and Allied infantry faced the least resistance.
Actually, we had a very good day.
The advances on our right were held up
and somebody else on our left was held up.
And that's why we had to stop, really.
Otherwise, some idiot said we would have walked
straight through to Berlin, but we couldn't.
But elsewhere, the bombardment failed
and the Germans emerged from deep dugouts
and waited with rifles and machine guns ready.
(guns firing)
(machine gun firing)
(shells exploding)
I was one of the first to get up over on the top.
We met a hurricane a hurricane of bullets.
(machine gun firing)
They actually, they whizzed by my ears, ping, ping,
ping, ping, ping, ping, flying by my ears like that.
We were able to see the infantry going forward.
In some cases they didn't get very far,
they were just wiped out.
(shells exploding)
If you were quick enough you dropped down
when the German's opened fire, the bullets were going
over the top of you, but there was a good many
wounded before they got dropped.
Some of the chaps were lying around,
arms off or in pain and so on.
Some fellow would give him a fag or something,
but you couldn't help the poor soul.
You couldn't help him at all.
Tommy Gay had gone
over the top together with his best friend.
From the time we went up over the top,
went over together that morning, I never saw him anymore.
No, I never saw my, his name was Johnny Jupp.
(somber piano music)
Never saw him anymore, must have had
the bullet right away, yeah.
The British suffered
over 57,000 casualties that day,
including over 19,000 men killed.
It remains the most costly day
in the history of the British Army.
They were just put down on stretchers,
pieces of fencing, pieces of wood, just put down, left,
and all the stretcher bearers went to get some more.
Some of the men were calling their mothers,
some were calling for girlfriends
or wives, it was enormously sad.
I remember once, I said to one,
"Have you a mother and father?"
And he said, "I haven't got a mother, she dead."
But I had said to him, "Well,
you'll be with her in a few minutes, so don't worry."
That was all I said to him.
There wasn't anything else to say.
How can you describe seeing a mere handful of men
come where were used to seeing,
seeing a valiant in battalion?
And we weren't the only ones who felt sick.
The colonials were sitting in the front
of what was left of their men, sobbing.
There were so few, so few men left.
Well, I must have been the luckiest man on earth
to walk out with all that machine gun fire
and not one of those bullets got my name on it.
I must be the luckiest man on earth!
Absolutely, the luckiest man in the world!
The first day of the Battle of the Somme
was a national tragedy, but it was only
the beginning of a long and bloody struggle,
as along the battlefront most of the Allied
objectives still lay in German hands.
(somber piano music)
Joining those already at the front
were more of Kitchener's Volunteer Army,
among them many inexperienced young officers
who would soon be leading their men over the top.
When I was 19, I was posted to France
and there had been tremendous casualties.
And I was obviously a replacement.
An officer in my time, a second lieutenant in my time,
his term of fighting was no more than six weeks.
Six weeks before he was killed or wounded.
But casualties, they were in enormous.
It was a little bit sad, but there was a hell
of a war going on, you got to get along with it
as you went, despite, might be wounded
or killed at any moment, yourself.
The hun was throwing things at you all day long
and all night long, very often,
and I didn't think you gave it much thought.
(artillery firing)
Throughout the summer of 1916,
Allied forces on the Somme went over the top time and again,
as they fought for the objectives
they'd previously failed to take.
First of all, you're looking
at your watch and you just see zero hour.
Then you look, you see that your men,
the men that you're going to go over the top with are,
left and right, are equipped and ready to go.
(whistle blowing)
And then you encouraged them, right and left,
to go with you, all go together.
(shells exploding)
So you sort of shepherded them over as well as you could.
That's the only description I could give you.
You were a shepherd, (chuckling) yes.
(artillery firing)
Your one ambition is to get to the German wire
safe and sound, get there before the Germans got you.
(machine gun firing)
We knew where to go to shift Jerry
out of his trench, where that were, aye.
Sergeant would shout, "Get down, get down."
Aye, you'd go down, you'd get in a buck of a bloody thistle
for shelter if you, (chuckling) aye.
You went out and you saw men dropping right and left.
If you knew them as you would,
you felt for them very much, very much.
(shells exploding)
As you went out, sort of climbing barbed wire,
my clothes was all ripped up like rags, sort of thing.
Climate barbed wire here, barbed wire there, you know?
And then, what was I saying?
I was in a hell of a state, just in rags, I was in rags.
(shells exploding)
The bayonets were always there
to be used if necessary, when I say if necessary,
what I mean to say, if you got close enough to use them.
(artillery exploding)
I'll tell you something, when we'd be in a fight,
there's more lads putting bullets
into the enemy instead of the bayonet.
We weren't supposed to do that, you know?
But there's a Jerry below and he was standing solid
or I thought he was on the move, aye, no,
just pull the trigger and don't even go.
(guns firing)
It made you never forget, no never, not even to this day.
Just to think you shot a man, you know, for nothing at you,
that was how I used to always look at it.
And then again, there was, "Well, if I don't get him,
he'll get me and my life's worth a hell of a lot to me."
That's how we were, all young and daft, aye.
On the Somme, what was supposed
to have been a swift and decisive victory
had turned into a brutal battle of attrition.
Life was cheap, two-a-penny.
It didn't matter how many men were killed or wounded,
as long as they're attained a German trench,
which inevitably, and it happened many a time,
we held it for half a dozen hours
till they came back at us about twice
or three times in number and drove us
back to where we originally started.
We were sent away again, and were were topped
in the third time in succession, you know, in succession.
And of course, our object then,
was to take the town of Guillemont.
When we got there, the Germans had returned
a little bit and one of them came along and,
just on his own, one German on his own had come back.
And there was half a dozen of us lads
hiding in a shell hole.
We were in the shell hole huddled together
so we shouldn't be seen much.
And when the German come up to me
and he almost stabbed me, he was a good mind to do me in.
He got his bayonet on the end of his rifle
and nearly stuck it into me, but it touched my chest,
certainly, but he never stabbed me.
And of course, I went cold, naturally.
but then he didn't stab me.
He took the full five of us out of the shell hole
and put us in a compound behind the German line.
But that was a bad feeling, a very bad feeling, yeah!
The Allies captured the village of Guillemont
on the 6th of September, 1916.
The Battle of the Somme had entered its third month.
♪ Keep the home fires burning ♪
♪ Though your heart is yearning ♪
♪ When the lads are far away they dream of home ♪
♪ There a silver lining ♪
♪ Through the dark clouds shining ♪
♪ Keep the dark clouds right away ♪
♪ Till the boys come home ♪
("Keep the Home Fires Burning")
We hoped, we wanted a blighty wound,
as much as anything, we got to that stage,
that if we got a blighty wound,
blighty is an Indian word, as you probably know,
home, blighty being home, the best we could hope for
was a wound that would take us home.
(shells exploding)
All my life, I've had hunches and they've come through.
And I said to my friend, what a nice morning
for a cushy blighty and home.
I've no idea what came down or how it came down,
but I just had a one stifting burn and I went like a poker.
And when I came to,
I had noticed that I was hit behind the heel,
which took the sole clean away.
The doctors had a look at me and I said
that I did not want to lose my foot if possible,
but it was hopeless, the foot had to go and that was that.
They put me on a table with a mattress.
I think it was in the kitchen that they did it,
and at least, let me say, they had the chloroform
in those days, and it was done.
I'd been warned by somebody who knew
that if, when you go first time into the theater,
so many nurses who attend their first operation
would faint when the first incision's made.
But if you make a point of looking over there
when they're doing the incision there,
and then turn your head afterwards,
if you don't see the first incision made you're all right.
But if you see the blood oozing out, you're done for.
And I found I've never fainted in the theaters.
They amputated my foot through the ankle
and I can assure that was no easy job.
And afterwards it was extremely painful.
I can assure you if I ever howled in my life,
when I came out I howled then, I make no bones about it,
I really cried my eyes out when I saw the results.
Jock was sent back to Britain
where amputees and other wounded men
were becoming a common site on the streets.
For those sent home for treatment or convalescence,
there was often a chance of reconciliation
with loved ones, even if only temporary.
In 1916, my dad was wounded,
I don't know how, but he came home on leave.
And I remember him sitting there
and making a fuss of me and singing at a gramophone
with a blooming great big horn, blue,
and he put this record on
and then he was then singing to me.
And when I tell them how beautiful you are,
they'll never believe me, that from this great big world,
you've chosen me, yeah, to me,
that was absolutely wonderful.
♪ And when I told them how wonderful you are ♪
I don't know how long he was home, but it was lovely
having him home, because he went back again.
♪ They don't believe me ♪
(artillery firing)
(shells exploding)
As autumn approached, British casualties
on the Somme totaled around 200,000 men.
Progress remained slow, but the army
was about to unleash a secret weapon
that would help to change the course of the battle.
I was out in a trench out there with some others
and I could hear a purr-purr going on.
And I thought, "What's that noise?"
It's getting louder and louder, and I stood
on the first step and I could see something moving
what we call in Scotland a steam road roller
with a big funnel on it, a big, heavy thing.
And I said, "Look," and they started looking.
Someone got up in the parapet.
(tank tracks squeaking)
And we could see these things moving and behind them
there were probably four or five or six shoulders
running behind with their bayonets fixed.
An armored crawler, that's what I called them.
Of course when we got in them and got moving around
with them, well, we knew exactly what they were for.
And the armaments, when we got inside
and we saw the armaments, we said,
"Well, this is, this is really it."
We never deviated the tanks for anything.
We had to go through previous dead,
and dead that you'd killed.
If they fell in your way, you had to go over them.
All feelings of humanity leaves you when you're fighting,
you say to yourself, "Well, it's either him or me, see?
So I got to get him first," that's it, that's what you said.
So you've got no feelings of humanity right then.
Afterwards, yes, perhaps.
The tank was one of the most
significant military advances of the war,
but there were advances in medicine, too,
including development in blood transfusions,
x-rays, and prosthetics.
However, in the days before antibiotics,
many wounds became infected as bullets and shrapnel
carried the filth of the battlefields into the body,
leading to gangrene, amputation, and death.
Oh, that smell of gangrene, that's a thing
you'll never forget, a terrible smell.
I think anybody who's ever smelled it would know that
you get it so quickly when there's an infection about.
When I heard them mention gangrene, I was terrified.
They took my leg off from the ankle,
two, four, six inched below the knee,
and that was a big one, and I can assure
it was sore, so very sore and I felt it.
And I had, once again, I did a hell of a lot
of crying, the good, hefty stuff.
(somber music)
Dressing time was an ordeal with orders.
The bandages that I had on had dried
and they had to be pulled away.
And much of the dressing adhered to the skin.
Throughout his ordeal, the woman responsible
for Jock's care was known to him only as Nurse Sutherland.
She was my nurse and she certainly
looked after me in every way.
It wasn't a case of attraction like a dresser case,
she was good at her job, very good at her job.
She'd never spoke hardly except words of comfort,
and I did nothing else but cry.
And being a soldier, and being 20 or 21,
I didn't want to be more or less a child that cried, now,
but cry I did, and plenty of it.
Back on the Somme the first tanks went into action
on the 15th of September, 1916,
during the battle of Flers-Courcelette.
Although the early models were prone to mechanical failure
and the army was unsure how best to use them,
they still took the Germans completely by surprise.
They'd never seen anything like it before,
but when they saw we was armed with the small guns
and machine guns, they gave up right away.
It's surprising, we hadn't time to get on top
of their trench before they was out with our arms up, yeah.
And we passed them over to the infantry
to take back to base, and the rest,
we could see some of the machine gunners
had got away and we could see them
silhouetted against the skyline
with the machine guns on their shoulders,
going like hell back to the second and third lines,
we did a job that the infantry
had been trying to do for two years,
and they'd lost hundreds and thousands trying to do it
and couldn't, and we did it in half an hour, so, you see?
With the help of the tank,
the Battle of the Somme finally ended
on the 18th of November, 1916,
when the Allies captured the village of Beaumont-Hamel.
In four-and-a-half months of fighting,
British and Empire casualties totaled almost 420,000 men.
They'd advanced just six miles,
but they dealt a devastating blow to the German Army.
But for some, the horrors weren't over yet.
I arrived at Beaumont-Hamel.
Then I was told to bury, to collect the newly killed dead,
which I did, I took the stretcher bearers.
Unfortunately, the stretcher bearers, a good number of them
were related to the ones who were dead.
And this was a bit upsetting.
Then I was told to go back into the No Man's Land,
or rather what was No Man's Land, and bury the old dead.
That is, the dead of the Newfoundland Regiment
who had been killed there on July the first.
(somber music)
The first one I saw, the first one I came across
with his hair growing, hair growing out of his,
still growing from his face,
when I touched it, the rats ran out.
There was nothing left of the body except bone.
It seemed to be such a terrible waste of life.
After all they'd been through,
many of those who fought at the Somme
remained traumatized by their experiences.
It affects the nerves, the noise, and everything,
it gradually affects the nerves,
and if you're a nervous person or your nerves
are anyways bad at all, it's going to affect you.
(shells exploding)
It makes you feel bad in yourself, real bad.
You begin to do like this, and I never did that before.
I couldn't believe myself at the time.
I couldn't believe it, that felt my nerves
would carry me, but no, it broke my nerve.
Cases of shell shock were identified
as early as 1914 and ranged in their severity.
At the Battle of the Somme, as many as 40% of all casualties
were also suffering from some form of the condition.
We were on the Somme for the whole of the time.
You couldn't help being a bit frightened, I think,
but you couldn't show it, gotta bottled it up.
That's why it put a great strain on the ones nervous system.
I was troubled for a good many years by a difficulty
in speaking, it was hardly a stammer, it was stuttering.
But I didn't sleep till three or four o'clock
in the morning and used to go up
through the ceiling and down again,
but that was the after effects
of being shelled for 19 months and so on.
while some bore mental scars, others were left
to deal with life-changing physical injuries.
To the public, they were heroes.
Now, if we went out with some of the boys,
about a dozen of the boys, wounded boys,
we all went in a bus and we went
into the movies, we got in for nothing.
You were always a bit of a, how would you put it,
an eye catcher, they would always
stop in the street and look at you.
Or some people would come up and talk to you.
And then sometimes you'd get packets
of cigarettes or chocolates or things like that.
While he was recuperating,
Jock heard news of the woman
who looked after him, Nurse Sutherland.
She was, I think she was retiring,
so I wrote her and I said to her
I'd come out there, if I come in with my friend,
we'd come down, we'd come and see her.
But about a week before we'd shoot to leave,
I had a letter saying that she had died.
I don't know the cause or anything, but she eventually died.
I missed her a lot.
In Fifeshire, school girl Maud Cox was waiting
for news from her favorite teacher, Mr. Brown.
They used to send postcards to the school, you know,
to say where he was and the way he was getting on.
And then one day the headmaster, Mr. Trustee,
the hall bell rang and we all had to go
into the assembly hall and he put a big map
on the board and he told us, he says,
"Now, Mr. Brown and the fiancees
of Ms. Jesse and Ms. Jean McCloud,
they'd all been killed at a place
called the Somme in France."
And he pointed out on the map and put a cross on it.
And he said, "Now, I want you all
to say a prayer for the dead
and then we'll sing the first verse,
'Oh God Our Help in Ages Past'
and I want you all to walk very quietly home."
But I didn't go quietly home,
I rushed home crying on the road.
And mother said, "What was wrong?"
I said, "Mr. Brown's been killed.
He'll never sing 'Come Into the Garden, Maud' anymore."
And she was comforting, but she says,
"But he's not the only one, you know?"
And you know, I took a long while
to be comforted 'cause he was such a nice man.
("Come into the Garden, Maud")
♪ Come into the garden, Maud ♪
♪ For the black bat, night, has flown ♪
♪ Come into the garden, Maud ♪
♪ I am here at the gate alone ♪
(ominous music)
On the south point, a priest once,
a Catholic priest, he was talking about Hell.
I says, "Don't talk to me about Hell, father."
I says, "I've been through Hell once,
I don't want to go through it again."
In the sitting room, mom had this great big picture
on the wall of dad in his uniform, head and shoulders.
And she just turned it around the other way
probably because it upset her to see it
every time she went in the room, you see?