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

Here we'll discuss visits across those pathways of the Great War, books you might want to read,

talk through old photographs, documents documents and even maps from the period

and chat about news from the battlefields. So let's get started. So hello and welcome to a new aspect

of the old front line podcast.

This is what's called a short form podcast, so it's a much shorter podcast than the ones we put out on a regular basis.

And I thought having moved recently and packed and unpacked that vast archive of First World War material that I've got,

I realized that I had so many stories, potential stories that I could share with you through the old front line.

But many of them were not really big enough to fill an entire main episode so what we're going to do

here is use that material use those stories and have some shorter podcast some of them only 15 20

minutes long where we'll pick a book off the shelf and discuss that book. We'll open a photo

album and I'll talk you through it and we'll discuss the history behind it. I'll glance across some

trench maps and we'll discuss a bit about those and then I'll take this short form podcast on

its travels and we'll go out onto the battlefields and we'll visit places.

And again, there are many places that I go to where there isn't enough there to talk for an hour, maybe, but there is for one of these.

And we're going to call this new short form podcast this bolt on if you like to the old

front line dispatches after the mentioned in dispatches that many soldiers received for their bravery

and conduct in those battlefields of the great war so let's start our first dispatches with some news from the battlefields.

Now you may have picked up on this on social media,

but in the last week there's been some interesting news from the SOM.

A site called the Butta Walancoor has changed hands.

Now, what and where is the But de Wollancourt?

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