Welcome to a special trench chat with Professor Mark Connolly from the University of Kent,

who's not only a distinguished Great War historian and has studied the battles of the Great

War and the tactics of the Great War, but in recent years, has also looked at that really important

interwar period when the pilgrims travelled to the old Western Front. And that's what we're

going to talk about today. So welcome, Mark, and happy new year. Happy new year to you, Paul.

And thanks so much for the invite. It's great to be on this podcast. And it's, you know, what I was thinking about today,

it always had exactly the same feeling as when I give a Western Front Association talk,

that it's both an enormous privilege and pleasure, but it's also slightly terrifying because

you're addressing, you know, such an audience of experts. You know, there is so much expertise

out there. So, you know, you have to be on your game

for this. Well, yeah, but I also think that, you know, as we've discovered, I think in all that we

do, that you are always learning with this subject, aren't you? And there's so much still to find,

doesn't you? Yeah. Yeah. The final page will kind of never be.

Never.

That's right.

That's right.

So in terms of that kind of interwar period, the Great War on the Western Front comes to an end in November 1918, the fighting ends.

But the story of the Great War just doesn't suddenly stop, does it?

No, absolutely not. I mean,

as we know, I mean, there is fighting going on, particularly in the East. So it's not, it's almost

they're like a pretend end to hostilities as well, isn't it? They've all kind of convinced

themselves. They've acted like a charade out that hostilities have really ended. But as you say,

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