Welcome to the Old Front Line with me, military historian Paul Reed.

This is a regular podcast where we'll look at the history of the First World War and travel

together across the battlefields, from Iap to the Somme and beyond.

So what's in this week's episode?

Hi and welcome back.

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those reviews and press like as it all helps to give the podcast some exposure. This week

we return to Flandersfield Fields and we're about to head off

and take a journey up towards the Massines Ridge. So let's strap our boots on and head off out onto the

battlefields. This week we're back in Flanders and we're in the southern sector of the old Epe Salient.

A lot of people often ask what is a salient, what was the Epe Salient?

Well a salient is a curvature in the line and if you look at maps of that period you'll see how the front lines

come down from the north along the east of the canal and then follow the curvature of the

high ground around Eap forming this arc this salient in the line

and the salient itself the true salient was made up of 12 separate sectors, from Bozinger in the north to Holbeek in the south.

But many veterans who fought there referred to the whole battlefields as the Epe Salient or as the Salient.

And when you used to talk to veterans as I did back in the 80s and asked them where

they fought, they'd often respond, rather than Eep, it would be, I was in the salient. So it was a

phrase for the men who fought there during the years of the Great War that brought back those

memories of the low ground around the shattered city of Ipp,

...