nestling in a picturesque river valley west of the town of albea a small village on the som gives us insight into life behind the lines here was a place where men were brought back from the front line wounded so many never returned what What were their stories? What do we find outside the battlefield

area? As I record this, it's the morning after a storm hit the north of England, and as I'm

looking out my window, there's snow across the valley here in South Yorkshire and the wind is raging against the window.

So if you hear a bit more background noise than usual, that's what it is, the realities of the weather.

And looking out across this landscape and seeing snow up on the high ground on the far side of the valleys wards Wentworth around the hubber stand

the old folly that sits close to the village of Wentworth where the big house was

I look at that landscape and a landscape that I've walked during the lockdown period

this last nearly two years now that has reminded me so much of walking the ground on the

western front and it takes

my mind back to snow on the battlefield snow on the som there's not snow on the som at the moment but

there could be next week and once more i'm heading back to the front and i'll be on the som not this time

with a group but with my old school pal, Andrew Whittington, and we plan

a few days around the northern sector of the Somme and up on northern France on the forgotten

front and who knows what we'll find along the way, both in terms of weather and the history

of the Great War. We had another one of our supporters evenings on Zoom last night

and it was good to see so many of you again and good to hear your stories and your comments

and your questions. This is something that we do on a regular basis for those of you are very

kind enough to support the podcast via Buy Me a Coffee and Patreon and i put links on those platforms and we have one

of these meetings once a month where we can have a get together and feel like we are some kind of

old front line community and i want you to be involved in that as much as me just talking to you

and the next one will hopefully have a guest talking about a particular

aspects of the Somme battlefields. But this week, we're on the SOM. We've returned to the SOM once

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