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.

Happy New Year and welcome back to the old Front line podcast as we move into 2024. We started this

January with some new battlefield vlogs, short videos on our YouTube channel. And these were films

that I made last February during a very bright but crisp and cold into the winter.

I was lucky to be staying on the battlefields at Houg and walked up in the ground around it on the Belloada Ridge and railway wood and up towards Frazenberg

and recorded some films with some new filming kit.

And finally, all these months later, I've actually been able to edit them and release them.

And there'll be a little trilogy of those films going out over the course of these weeks,

which I hope you've found of interest.

And if you've not had a chance to check out the

old front line YouTube channel then there's links to it on the podcast website as the podcast

approaches its fifth year and I have to kind of keep pinching myself thinking about that

we've got quite a few different layers to it now. And dispatches like this are proving very popular.

I'm amazed at the kind of reaction,

the number of downloads that we've had,

positive comments,

people liking these shorter podcasts.

But I found when I began to release them

towards the end of November in the lead up to Christmas,

...