Welcome to another trench chat, and I'm really pleased this week for us to be joined by a military historian, Dr Tim Godden, who is not only a military historian, he's a talented artist, and indeed many more things besides. So thanks for joining us, Tim.

Thanks having me along.

So I always start this by asking people how you got interested in the Great War and do you

have a personal connection to it. Yeah. I mean, my first experience of the war was a school battlefield trip

when I would have been 11, I and it was my first overseas trip with the school as well so there was all the excitement of that

and at the time the history teacher Chris Tooth would send around a letter to all the parents and asked, did they have anyone, did they know of anyone within the family who'd been killed in the war?

Because they then had to write off to the War Grace Commission, who would then write back with the list of those that they managed to find.

And I remember my mum speaking with my great Auntie Betty up in Scotland

to find out if we had anyone. And she said, there was a chap called Thomas Wilson. But his

fiance went out there after the war a number of times and never found him.

So we don't know if you'll be able to find him.

But sure enough, the War Grace Commission, the records had improved somewhat since the early 20s.

And he was listed, or still is listed, on the Luz Memorial at that corner.

And by sheer chance, the week before we were meant to go,

I think one of the staff dropped out and my mum, who worked in the school as well,

was asked to come along as a kind of support for the group

and controlling this gaggle of preteens.

And I think that decision there meant that we ended up going to lose Memorial,

because otherwise it was a bit off the beaten track

from what you normally do on the on the um on these kind of uh school tours over there and but

because there was myself and my mum there kind of went the extra mile as it were and we went to see

tom's name and we got the kind of, you know, the photographs

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