Welcome back for our first question and answer episode of season nine of the old front line podcast.

This is where we feature questions posed by you, the podcast listeners, and we cover, as usual, a lot of diverse subjects.

We've had a bit of a gap in these Q&A episodes due to the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force series that we did towards the end of season 8.

And we've built up quite a big backlog of questions but as always

keep them coming in because these episodes are proving pretty popular and i very much enjoy doing them

being challenged each week to look at some different elements, different layers, different parts of First World War history.

And as we move into season nine of the podcast, our six year of doing the old front line, this is the third series where we've featured these Q&As.

And I think you'd agree that they've become really

an integral part of what we do on the old front line now so long may they continue and one other

thing that I wanted to mention as we move forward into this new season is that we now have an old

frontline podcast bulletin and that's an email

newsletter that goes out every two weeks where there's news about the podcast about the YouTube channel

that we've got and it gives me an opportunity to add a little bit of extra to what we do on some of the podcast episodes and share things with you as well, whether that's links on YouTube, whether it's links to the online, old front line shop where you can buy podcast merch or whether it's something else that's come up during the course and often in response

to some of the episodes of that particular season. The bulletin is completely free. You can just

sign up for it via the link that's in the show notes for this episode and indeed every episode.

And I hope you find it of interest. But let's get back to

the Q&A's and what questions have we got this week? Our first question comes from Kevin Penuk.

Kevin asked when the armistice was signed and the guns fell silent, did the German army just

abandoned the trenches and

retreat to Germany on their own accord, or were they taken as prisoners of war? Or did

troops on both sides in reduced numbers stay in place until the Treaty of Versailles was signed?

How did the opposing armies return to their respective home countries?

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