Welcome to Dispatches, a short-form podcast from the Old Frontline, and me, military historian Paul Reed.

In these shorter podcasts, we'll tell some of the quieter, smaller stories of the Great War,

will share books, look at original documents, and take dispatches

on the road and visit locations across that landscape of the Great War.

As November crept towards December in 1916, the Battle of the Somme had ended,

but the weather turned progressively worse.

From the autumn rains to the biting cold and then snow,

as the battle ended in places like Desire Trench north of Corsolet

or along the old Roman road close to the Butte-Walancourt. as the battle ended in places like Desire Trench north of Corsalette,

or along the old Roman road close to the Butte d'Walancourt.

In those final days in the approach to Christmas that year,

British soldiers in the front line on the heights above the Ankara Valley brushed snow away from their trench periscopes

as they stared out into a frozen no-man's

land, a picture of hell tinged with frost. This was the second winter on the Somme for British troops,

and in the 12 months since the last one, in the quieter times of 1915, a major battle had been fought here,

a defining battle of the Great War, the Battle of the Somme.

These men in those frost-filled frontline trenches were on ground that a year before had been occupied by the Germans had been behind their forward

zone of the battlefield. Germans had come and gone, taken rations up, and the post and marched out

through here for rest behind the front line, and now this was the crater zone. And that battle had brought them all to this point

at costs for Britain and its empire over 150,000 dead in 1916 and it brought with it a Pyrrhic

victory and brought them now to the coldest winter of the war where temperatures were reported

to be below minus 20 in the front lines. But if we take a few steps back first, what had brought

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