From the Chalk of the Sussex Downs to the Chalk of the Somme battlefields,

the men of Lowther's lambs, the South Downs battalions of the Royal Sussex Regiment, had a long war.

Who were these Sussex worthies, and what was their journey across the western front since i recorded

the last podcast some sad news has come from the som battlefields via my daughter poppy christian

foucar who lived at posseers has passed away at the age of 91.

I first met Christian and her husband Eve on my first visit to the Somme in 1982,

when I travelled across with my dad, having just been to eat with the school.

I got hold of Rose Coombs before Endeavors Fade and John Giles, the Somme then and now,

and we headed over to the Somme via the Cross Channel Ferry from New Haven to Dieppe and then the

train down to Amiens and Albert. And that's, as I've mentioned in a previous podcast, how I got

my first view of the song particularly the basilica with

the golden virgin on the top no longer leaning of course in the 1980s but coming into the battlefields

that way was quite a special magical experience almost to see it like that and we based ourselves

in albert at the Hotel de la Basilique,

directly opposite the basilica, and we walked. We just walked everywhere. We had no car, so we had no

choice but to walk. But it really gave me on that very first trip, this incredible insight into

the landscape of the song, which has stayed with me ever since. And on one of the days, we walked from Albert up to Bapom Post Cemetery,

out to La Boiselle, to the Lochnagar Mine Crater, and then up to Posseer.

And at Posseer's British Cemetery, the gardener came out and said hello.

I didn't know who he was at that stage, but that was Eve,

and said a few words, and then we continued on our walks into the village.

And as we came on to the route to Chiaupval, the road that leads up to Chiatvall,

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