So welcome to a trench chat. We haven't had one of these in quite a while.

And I'm really, really pleased this week to be joined by Philip Cross, who has written down, just looking down at it now,

written this absolutely fantastic book called The Other Trench. Now, we often speak on the old

frontline podcast about the importance of understanding the Great War from both sides, and that's

exactly what this book is all about, because it it gives us for those who are non-German

speakers a rare glimpse into the German experience of the Great War. So thanks for joining

this Phil and also thanks for producing this incredible book about your great grandfather's

experiences I believe. Yes. Yeah well thanks I thanks, I'm my great, great grandfather.

So, yeah, I mean, as you can hear, I'm obviously from the north of England,

which catches a lot of people by surprise because they expect to, you know,

we're a German fellow to sit here but well

the reason I'm here is because from half German my mother's German and my dad's an English

soldiers so I was born on over there in Germany and came over here when I was just one year

old so Alexander Fyfer great great grandfather was on my mother's father's side. And,

um, yeah, I mean, he, he came from, as he would have read, quite an affluent family. His family

owned like a textile industry, company within a textile industry and yeah

I mean they had this big house like almost like a manor called that's firefax of a house

big garden um it went on trips away they had quite a bit of money. And because of this background, he was destined to become

like the kind of the boss of this textile company. And during this time as well, he was part of the Saxon-Negger battalions so like an elite kind of

group of the German Imperial Army at the time and by the time the First World War broke

County was already experienced sergeant and before the war started

he told his wife of his plan to document his time in the war via a diary and regularly send the notes

...