Searching for the Lost of World War One

Warfare

History Hit

History

4.5 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2021

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

At the end of the First World War, around one million citizens of the British Empire had been lost, and the whereabouts of about half of these was unknown. Families could be waiting weeks, months or years to hear whether their loved ones were imprisoned, wounded, missing or dead, if they heard at all. This was the task of the searchers. In the years following the war, these volunteer investigators conducted 5 million interviews, finding answers for around 400 thousand families. Robert Sackville-West is on Warfare to bring us the stories of those looking for news of their fathers, brothers and sons, and the evolution of the search to this day. Robert’s book ‘The Searchers: The Quest for the Lost of the First World War’ is out now.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone welcome back to the history hit warfare podcast I'm your host James
0:04.6	Rogers now on Thursday the 11th of November we mark armistice day the guns stopped
0:10.9	and so we stop to pay our respects on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.
0:17.1	To Mark Armis's to stay here on this podcast we have a special episode about the quest
0:21.3	to find the lost of the First World War.
0:24.0	By the end of the war, the whereabouts of more than half a million British soldiers was unknown.
0:28.0	Most were presumed dead, lost beneath the battlefields of Northern France and Flanders.
0:33.2	But as Robert Sackville West explains,
0:35.8	this was not the end of the story, not by any means.
0:39.1	He reveals the moving accounts of those who dedicated their lives to search for the missing, an effort that continues
0:45.9	to this very day.
0:47.8	So here is Robert Sackville West on the searches. Hi Robert, welcome to the History Hit Warfare Podcast. How you doing today?
1:08.0	Very well, thank you. It's great to be talking to you.
1:10.0	It's great to be talking to you as well. Where are you talking to us from in the world? From Seven Oaks in Kent.
1:16.9	Seven Oaks in Kent. Now I know Seven Oaks. I used to date a girl in Seven Oaks. It's a beautiful town, a beautiful place, and I think we may
1:26.0	have even walked around the grounds of your home.
1:29.1	Well I live in a house called Noel, which has a massive park, a thousand acre park, which is open, you know, 24-7 to everybody, and I hope that you did have romantic
1:40.3	strolls there.
1:42.3	It's open to everybody including me which is very good.
1:45.8	Absolutely. Now congratulations on your new book, The Searches, the
1:51.1	quest for the lost of the First World War. And well who are the
1:57.2	searches? There are several different types of searcher in the most general
	...

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