In the shadow of endless rows of miners' cottages

and tall slag-heaps that dominated the landscape,

the men of a London Irish football team

kicked a leather ball into action,

signalling the start of the Battle of Luz.

Were they those who played the greatest game of all? We've returned to the Luz battlefield

for this episode, and this area around Luz, or Luson-Gaul, the village that gives this sector its name,

forms part of what in recent years has become known as the forgotten front, that lesser

visited parts of the British

battlefields of the Great War that runs from the town of Amontier, Armentiers, home of the famous

Mademoiselle from Armentiers, up on the Franco-Belgian border, down to the grounds, the

coalfields around the city of Lons or Lens.

For much of the war here, the front was static, but particularly in the year 1915,

there was a whole series of battles from the Battle of New Chappelle,

the first British offensive in this area in March of 1915,

two to fighting along the Alba's Ridge and Fester Burton-Givinci,

and then eventually here at Luz with the big operation,

the big push, as it was called at the time,

with the Battle of September and October of 1915.

The battlefield area at Luz covered a roughly 10-mile front

from the village of Givanchile Labase or

Givinci as the troops call it just north of the La Bacay canal and then down through the flats

...