Objects are the tangible artefacts of the past.

When we examine a conflict like the Great War,

what can we learn from five iconic objects of trench warfare in the First World War.

Season 7 of the Old Front Line is coming to an end as we approach Christmas and we've got a special question and answer episode following next weekend looking at how to trace your First World War

ancestors. Quite a lot of questions that have come in have related to that subject, and as

that will be our 20th Q&A episode, I thought we'd do something special on that particular theme.

Q&A's question and answers as us as an experiment really for the podcast

and now they're very much part of what we do here on the old front line and great questions

continue to come in on a regular basis and the feedback that I get from you suggests that this element of the podcast

remains popular and engaging and have obviously got no intention of stopping that.

But it's not question and answers that we're looking at this week. In this episode, we return to the subject of trench warfare.

And that too remains very popular, if that's the right word, on this podcast.

We've had quite a lot of episodes looking at different elements of trench warfare,

the whole concept of trench warfare.

And that's understandable because it's such an

essential part of our understanding of the First World War.

This was a war, of course, in 1914 that everyone went to war expecting a war of movement,

the kind of war that they had trained for, none could predict the kind of war

that the First World War very rapidly turned into. A static war, when that mobile war came to an end,

both sides dug in from the Flanders coast, where it bordered the North Sea and the English Channel

right across that remaining bit of Belgian still in Allied hands,

down into northern and then eastern France,

...