While it's been good for us to wander virtually together across the battlefields of the Great

War, one of the things that I wanted to do from the very beginning was to make recordings

on the ground itself. So after these long months of lockdown, I finally had a chance to get back

to the battlefields, and I'm pleased to present this episode

recorded in Flanders a few weeks ago

this was a new experience for me

and there were the usual hiccups with technology

so bear with the sound on this one

it will get better but now it's time

for us to return

to the old front line.

After several months away from the western front,

feeling probably more than a little bit cut off from it,

it's quite good to be back here,

to be walking down this grass path now towards one of the more than 170 British and Commonwealth cemeteries

that surround the city of Eap.

Here was Britain's bastion on the Western Fronts. Four years of war, a quarter of a million men died in defence of Eap.

And cemeteries like this one blew a farm commemorate the men who fell here in that period.

This is a small cemetery behind the lines close to the medical facilities that were in this area from 1915 until the end of the war and the vast majority of the men buried in here are known because these men were brought in wounded died of their wounds so they know who they were and they were buried.

Or they were men killed in the front line who were brought back here for burial by their comrades

away from the battlefield area where burials were difficult.

When you come into cemeteries like this, you can't help but read them, you can't help but look to see what it is they tell you as you walk in.

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