The terrible iconic Battle of Verdun, where France and Germany clashed in 1916

was the longest single battle of the war of more than 300 days and 300 nights.

What can we find of the battlefields of Verdun in a day?

As this is incredibly our 150th episode of the old front line,

I thought that finally we'd get round to doing Verdon in a day.

But first, 150 episodes, it's quite incredible for me to think that we've now

been broadcasting this podcast for more than three years. We're coming up to a million downloads.

The podcast statistics are more and more incredulous for me when I look at them

to see just how many people are tuning in and listening each week. And we've built up a nice

little community of podcast listeners of those who support the podcast via Buy Me a Coffee and Patreon and thank you to

all of them who have helped for this podcast to continue in the way that it has and expand

in the way that it has and more of that hopefully in the next 150 episodes but thanks to you you all for listening, for downloading, for tuning in on a regular basis

for questions and retweets and comments on Twitter.

And as season five of the podcast will be coming to an end this summer,

we'll be looking forward to a new season in the autumn with lots more subjects to discuss and hopefully more recording on the grounds as well. That's certainly my aim.

But let's get down to Verdun or across to Verdun. I've just come back from leading a battlefield tour in the Reims and Verdun area,

looking at the French contribution to the Great War, but with an English-speaking group.

It's something that's really important to do, and just about everybody that was on that tour

had been to the Somme and Ipanas and and Luz and some of the lesser known British battlefields of the Great War but they wanted to expand their knowledge to really beyond the Somme and that tour looking as we did in the fighting on the Shmenda Dam and the Aynne in the fighting in the champagne, in the Argonne and around Verdun,

hopefully gave them an insight into the importance of the French contribution to the Great War

and the sacrifice that France made in that conflict.

And it was something that I felt very strongly over the course of those five days as

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