In a small village in eastern France,

we find the graves of the sons of British aristocracy

killed in the opening months of the Great War,

and up high on the plateau above the village.

Is this where trench warfare began?

We've come to the village of Soupier on the Aine this week,

a little bit further down the Western Front that we've been for a while.

And I want to start the podcast with a dedication to an old friend, Dave O'Mara,

whose passing I sadly heard of this week. I've

known Dave for many, many years. He and I tramped across the old battlefields back in the 80s,

and our paths often crossed over the years that followed, and we had a mutual friend in the Comp

de Tru. Tru, a little village near Albert, had a chateau and in the ground of the chateau, a campsite.

And the Comte was a kindly and generous man, who I know looked after me on visits to the battlefields and did the same with Dave.

Those friendships that you make when you tramp the old front line,

when you walk that grounds, they are deep friendships, they are old friendships and they are

friendships that last forever. Dave was a very modest but incredibly intelligent and knowledgeable

man. A guy that had written some fantastic books put that knowledge into print

with pen and sword in the battleground series

where he looked at the French sector of the Somme

and he brought an awareness and greater knowledge of the French contribution

to the Great War to an English audience in a way that few have done over the years

and he had a lot more planned so this week's episode is dedicated to Dave he was a master

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