Last month was the hundred and tenth anniversary of the Battle of Luz.

Luz was an important turning point in the British Army's experience on the Western Front, its first big battle, its first big Porsche.

And the first time on that Western Front, the Kitchener's army, men from the new army, had been used in a major offensive.

Luz changed the British approach, really, to battles on the Western Front, in the way they were fought, with the resources that were available.

This was a battle in which men, manpower wasn't a problem, artillery was no longer a problem.

That was something that had dogged British offensives in the earlier phase of 1915.

And the turning point with new weapons in that lose was the first occasion in which poison gas was used by the British Army.

So it was important that last month's podcast supporters evening, on that 110th anniversary, that we marked it somehow.

And Professor Peter Doyle, historian, geologist, author, and great friend to this podcast, who's appeared on it on many occasions, very kindly came along to deliver a talk about that very battle.

So here we'll share Peter's talk tomorrow on the Old Frontline YouTube channel.

And do check out Peter's talk, and I'll put the details of that in the show notes.

Right, so what I'm going to do is talk to you about uh the British use of gas in 1915 and really whether its expectation was greater than reality.

So clearly there's a lot of faith placed in this.

Um so this is taken from the phrase is taken from one of those popular magazines of the period, and you can see repaying the Germans with their own coins.

So the things I'm gonna address, not necessarily in this order, not necessarily with individual slides, but I'm gonna look at uh the idea of Luce or Luce as the ill-fated battle.

I'm gonna focus predominantly on terrain and trench warfare because, as I've mentioned to you already, this is my primary interest, and it's something that I've been interested in since I was about eight years old when I first saw All Quiet on the Western Western Front.

Of course, the only decent one, uh not the recent rubbish one, but you know, that's just my perspective on it.

You may have different views.

Um, I'm gonna look at this as a trench warfare as a siege, and I think that's a well-established concept, but I want to look at how what siege engines were used, if you look, how this was uh comprised, and particularly as one of those, why gas?

Why would we use gas?

What was gas all about?

Um, I think we often have gas in our minds through Dulce de Corumest, um, obviously through Wilfred Owen, but really, was it that terrible a weapon?

That's uh a question to be addressed.

I'd leave that really with everyone.

I'm gonna focus a little bit on understanding some misunderstandings, misapprehensions about gas, and particularly its release.

And there's some very principal points here that I need to point out to you.

Um, we're gonna look at what happened at Luce, but I'm gonna be spending my time mostly on the first part of that battle rather than the latter part with the grinding, trench warfare, trench raids, uh, and all the rest of it was played.

So I'm really looking at that first component.

And was there a chance of success?

Well, I'm a great believer, and there's always a chance.

Um, I'll say it with hushed breath here, but I I still have half a view that Gallipoli could have succeeded.

There you go.

I know this goes against the grain right now.

Uh, don't tell uh Peter Hart whatever you do, but principle behind this is maybe just maybe.

So let's have a look at that.

And was there anything learned?

Well, we are often talk about the concept of the learning curve, learning process.

It's been discussed, kicked around since the 80s or 90s.

Um, there's definitely going to be something learned.

So that's what I'm gonna try and draw out from this, and obviously, very happy to answer any questions.

So let's look at it in a nutshell.

Why uh loose?

Well, this is all about Joseph Joff.

Uh, he had a vision, and his vision, of course, was in 1914-15 was to break through and to sweep uh the Germans from the fields of France in Artois and Champagne.

Um, and I think they're commencing in winter 1914, which is against the normal doctrine.

You know, you don't fight but wars in winter, apparently.

Um, that's certainly the case.

But Joff um, mustachio, like all of these guys are, insists that the British are engaged in this, they're gonna have to happen.

So there he is, Joff.

Um, I think we can you know beat that mustache with uh with the kitchener, but you know, it's down to you to to measure this up.

Um, joking apart, Joff was a committed to the elimination of uh a big knee in that old front line, the front line which extended down, of course, from the British sector in the Noy on salience.

And we're if we're talking about salience, this is one hell of a salience, so attack at all costs is his principle.

So we have uh this crusty individual, of course, field marshal Sir John French.

Um he is given the opportunity to you know to commit his troops.

In fact, he was forced into this, but he realized he knew that after Neuf Chapel, and of course, after those early battles, that really the it had to stand on the defensive until the new army was in tip-top condition, could be shipped to France, and could actually engage.

And of course, Leurce is the first time that the new army is really committed, it also goes to Gallipoli, and also that artillery supplies and artillery capability was made available.

So he was hedging his bets always, uh, not wishing necessarily to commit.

Nevertheless, the Joffre and the rest of the French were really committed to this idea of the Neuyan salient, which I don't know if you can see my cursor, but it's right here, this big old bend.

Uh, and so when we look at this, uh, we can see the the British, of course, are far up there in Ypa and Amentia, you know, the areas of the 1914-15 battles, early 15.

And what we're really looking at is this sort of attacks at Artoiran Champagne, in order to again cut off that salient and then start can commence the breakthrough for uh the the French, you know, to beat the Germans.

So the British were dragged into this.

Now, one of the things that uh if you have traveled there, and I know Paul knows this area very well, the Champagne region.

It obviously is famous for its champagne, but wow, its landscape is phenomenal.

And I think when you look at it, you realize just how challenging that is in this open, wonderful landscape.

And we can see Douglas Johnson, who was an American military uh colonel who was also a geographer and uh really studied the landscape.

He really considered that the champagne, of course, was really significant.

So if you know the Mindus Mestige, which uh Paul knows very well, and maybe some of you visited there, it is an incredible hand shape.

That's what this is all about, of a landscape.

It's a chalk hill, well-drained chalk, you know, vast vistas, open vistas, you huge uh rolling hills that go away from this.

Uh, this is terrain writ large.

So, this is the kind of thing, the battlefield of the champagne, uh, really significant, and of course, in Artois, a little bit more difficult, perhaps, in some senses.

So, why terrain and military history?

So, if we take the words of a contemporary, we can see that in his view, the military history of any company country, sorry, is largely determined by its topography.

Um, so I think obviously I'm gonna say that, but I would imagine that anybody would know that.

Um, of D-Day, for example, Burma.

You know, we're looking at in the Second World War, terrain being so varied and so complex.

Think about the Italian campaigns 1944, 43, 44, 45.

I mean, wow, that's that is terrain.

So, really, I think the military history of that country uh is clear, but obviously, we're looking here uh in France and Flanders.

It's also a concept of of the soils, so in the ranges of hills.

This is uh Petit Bois, um, which of course is one of the areas on the Messines battlefield where a um particular mine did not explode.

Um, we can see just the richness of this soil, and naturally we pervade this with our ideas of how that soil is going to descend into a muddy quagmire.

There are reasons for that, and there are reasons why a lot of the uh upheld views on why it was muddy quagmire are actually overstated or wrong.

But uh, what we are seeing here is the clarity of the challenge of that landscape.

And so what we can see is that this kind of thing, these landscapes, these soils, uh, these hills of features which impeded the march of armies.

And this is Hilaire Belloch, 1914, a quote somebody largely derided.

If you read the uh wipers times, you'll come across him.

I can't remember how he's uh how he's uh pervaded in there, but it clearly uh is mocked.

But he was a geographer again, and he's pursued he's pursuing this idea of the landscape, and this is his view of uh the landscapes.

So, terrain analysis is something that everybody has to engage in, whether it be the Tommy on the ground who's in the trench and really close to that mud, or whether it is uh Haig or anybody else at the top.

I'm not a big believer in, you know, was Hague a butcher or a bungler?

He's a general like anybody else, he's gonna make mistakes, it's the same as any other general.

So I think there's too much played on that.

But if you think about whether or not they're engaged with terrain, think about what happened in the South African War, the Boer War.

And what happened in that was the realization that terrain was massive.

And so the general staff and the training of British officers, which came in the wake of the failures in the early part of the Boer War, led to this sense of the choice of position, the need for uh you know an economy of effort, uh, a lot of power and defense, and ensuring uh that you know the defensive positions are there to stop the enemy.

So, really, it's all about considering of selecting a position.

Now, what we know is that that sounds great if you've got the opportunity to select your position.

But what we do understand and realize is that the Germans in invading through France and Belgium were able to pick and choose.

Uh, and of course, the French, Belgians, British were able perhaps to push them back.

But we look at the Upersalient, we know where they command the Inverted Gomes Heights, we know the conditions on the Sun where again they're forming on sort of ridgetops and valleys.

All of this has been selected by the Germans, not by the allies.

So let's look at one of those areas, uh, Lus or Lus on Gohill in Artois.

It's neglected, innovative commas.

It's because people blast by this on the motorway or on the train.

The zoom.

As you go past on that motorway and you're heading towards Vimeo and beyond or Aras, and you go south, you'll see those pimples on the landscape, and you'll get a sense of the industrial landscape that it was a World Heritage Site in many ways.

It's where the ground clearly played its part.

And remembering that dictum that you should choose your landscape, you choose the place where you would fight.

This was chosen for French.

This was Joff saying, Tell you what, this is a great place for the British to fight a battle against the Germans.

And I think, uh, as we can see, this was not something that was accepted by the British.

So another entrance into the mustachio stakes.

Um, here we have um the good-looking field marshal Sir Douglas Haig.

Um, Hague, whatever people view of him, however he is personified, Haig, of course, was an intelligent individual, and he was committed as commander of the first RE to complete an evaluation of the ground, a terrain analysis south of La Basse.

So to look at this ground and tell French, is this any good for us to fight that battle, even though we have no choice?

Let's have a look at it.

So, what Hague did, look, excuse me, looking at this ground, um, as you can see, fairly open and uh fairly dismal.

The ground is bare and open.

It would the sense of it, the German trenches, obviously, they've chosen their positions, numerous villages and you know, built into this fortifications.

This was going to destroy any kind of rapid advance.

So, Haig, who was going to be in charge of the battle with the First Army, was also recognizing that this is not a place you would choose to fight a battle.

Yet, in line with the French, this was the place where they were demanded to fight.

So, the open landscape of Luz, if we look at it, it's yes, it's open landscape.

It is broken by industrial clutter, so you know, plenty of that clutter now, still uh as these mine heaps.

Uh, not much of the built environment in terms of the uh the the heads of those of those mines, but lots of villages and coal at depth, very important.

Miners were still at work underneath the battlefields, which is absolutely incredible.

So, if we look at this, I mean this uh Puikans um put Poit 15 uh Tower Bridge.

I mean, that's a wonderful looking structure.

I think if it was uh, you know, if this hadn't been destroyed, this would have been preserved.

It's an incredible thing, and that became known as Tower Bridge because of the sort of slight resemblance to the towers on Tower Bridge.

It also reflects the men who were fighting here: men from Scotland, men from London, and the Midlands in uh the Battle of Luce.

So you can see one of the panoramic photographs, you can see the sort of dismal look of the landscape.

Uh, we can see the roads, we can see Tower Bridge and uh this sort of loose crassier, which are these uh uh hills of waste.

So Newman Flower, one of the participants in the battle, um, he said it it's not a picturesque one, which is a slight understatement.

Uh, he goes on to say the squalid little red brick villages and ugly mine works.

I'm not sure whether the villagers of Lewis would be happy to hear that their village was called squalid little red brick villages, but you can understand where he's coming from at the time.

Um, and what we're seeing, of course, it could get even worse.

Philip Gibbs, who's a war correspondent.

Really interesting books by Philip Gibbs.

You know, he really gives a sense of of the of the war.

Um, and he's calling it a hideous country, he's calling it the black country, rather similar to that in Midland, England is a place called the Black Country, reflecting on the amount of chimneys uh and factory work.

And so, what they're saying again is that this sort of yeah, there's rich soil, but there's a lot of this coal waste going on there.

So, Philip Gibbs, again, it's hideous flat country.

It's not just flat though.

Uh, not only do we have all of those mine workings, but we have slag heaps and quarries, and uh, I'm not going to spend a lot of time referring to this, but those are both capable of being fortified under the German doctrine of fortification.

So the quarries are forming a major part of the later uh struggle for the loose front line.

So the German way of fortification or Stellungsbau, the idea of fortress building, uh, really defines how the Germans are going to approach this.

To be honest, there's nothing new in this, it's not to say that other nations did not have engineers and engineering doctrine, but the French and the British were not in a position where they're going to sit on the defensive all forever.

They're going to be always wanting to attack.

The French are not happy that the Germans have put their big clot up us all over France.

And so, what's going to happen is that the Germans are going to place their work, their way of fortification in action.

Stellungsbow would set the definition of the construction principles, the fortifications manual.

And so, what we can see in there is everything.

And you look at this relative to the Somme, and this, of course, the edition I'm showing here is very definitely associated with that.

Then you can absolutely see how they use these principles, but they use them everywhere.

And the reason, of course, is that the Germans are holding the Allies at bay whilst they fight the Russians.

Beat the Russians, bring the troops to the west, beat the Allies.

So that's the whole principle behind this.

So every advantage of the topography was needed to be used in developing this, the ground, and everything scrap of forest, remnants of villages, any kind of industrial uh attributes are going to be built into that front line, and there's no doubt that the Germans were able to do this.

Now, one of the things that is always surprises me, and it's probably down to the way that the British view things are rather dastardly, that they, you know, and rather on sporting, that the the Germans sat at depth, how dare they?

You know, 15 or even 20 feet below the surface.

Well, I think for uh most of our modern minds, I think, well, why wouldn't they?

Um, and if they're going to have this defensive position where the allies are going to wear themselves out against the trench lines, they're going to build those dugouts at depth in that chalk that we've referred to.

So uh James Norman Hall, American who served in the uh the infantry at this time, early part of the war, went on to be an aviator, of course.

Uh, what we see is that uh he's talking about this stratum or solid chalk.

The Germans are digging down into that, which is 15 to 20 feet below the surface.

So a lot of this we think about in the Somme, but we are forgetting that there are sort of preemptive elements to that on Lus.

So when we're talking about in 1915 the big push, we're talking about Lus.

We're not talking about the Somme, which came later.

So if we look at uh the British understanding of trench warfare relative to position, uh, we can also see some hints about what was going to happen when the Germans built the Hohenzollern Redoubt.

So, what we can see here, this comes from uh an article written in 1916, which shows exactly their positional warfare.

So, what we are getting here is the drawing the enemy into a valley and then you know gunning them down, if you like, with machine guns and creating the awful phrase a kill zone or beaten zone into which the enemy are going to be drawn.

And this you see this uh both our sides of this slide on the sun.

This is and we see it also at machines uh as well.

And so if you're on a spare, that means adjusting out bit, you draw your lines back, and again you draw the enemy over that spare and you gun them down and create yet another kill zone.

So I think the point here is you're inviting the enemy in so that they can wear themselves out against this.

And although that was difficult on at Lus, the other things like the quarries and the trench fortifications allowed this to happen.

Think about what was going on about the Hoesona and Redoubt.

Uh, you can see what Hague is thinking, the strong trench fortifications become a fortress, and of course, without absolute uh use of artillery, then it's going to be really difficult to engage this.

So, although the Germans are heading themselves out into a salient, they've created this sort of huge jutting out position, with, of course, the British Tommy humour of Big Willy and Little Willy, the trenches on either side.

Um, this of course refers to the Kaiser and the Sun, by the way, in case you're wondering about anything else.

But the the principle here is uh once again the attack uh would would have to take this salient, but this was really well bedded in, and that trench fortress, of course, is kind of semi-subterranean, and it was a major, major thing.

So, if you look at the Lust battlefield, uh there's a sort of contemporary map on the right, and uh we're looking at the battlefields on the left.

You see a trench map.

Uh, what we get a sense of is the variety of things that are breaking up this battlefield.

We're seeing the idea of mine works, we're seeing where the redoubt is.

You can see it there on the trench map, and how that is a great fortification.

Uh, we can see the various roads, the Hulu Vermel Road.

Um, we can see Hill 70, which is behind the German lines.

Uh, we can see the Lone Tree, which is really important on the battlefield.

Um, and we can see that also on a Landsat image uh over Lane.

And yeah, it looks pastoral.

We can see those villages, um, we can see the sense of this, and it looks pretty flat to us.

You know, it's low-lying slopes, industrial clutter, villages.

Again, not a place you'd really want to fight in necessarily.

So we can see the roads, uh, we can see the positions of the various points.

So loose road, the Lange Road, these are both important as they cross the uh the trench lines and have fortifications in them.

You see La Basse, see the Grenay Spur, which is a very low spare, you know, an upland thing out into a valley and a double crassier on the other side.

So hold those in your mind if you can.

And then you can see what the Germans have done is there's the British front line in red, and the Germans have built redoubts.

The redoubts are fortifications, just like uh the Horner Song Son Redoubt.

You can see the double crassier is another one of these.

Remember Stellungsbow, build every last thing into your fortifications and break up the uh the enemy uh and uh attempts to attack it.

You know, this is why these things are incredible uh fortifications.

So, um, how do you then break through these stellungs bow?

So, what I'm really interested in is the idea of siege breaking, and uh maybe too my head stuck too much into medieval or earlier.

So, I'm looking for a few trebuchets here, um, uh as well as batching rams and the rest.

And actually, we do have those, uh, clearly.

So, artillery, of course, is our trebuchet, no, no doubt about that.

Um, mining was something that was carried out in medieval times.

You know, you undermine the walls, uh, you allow them to collapse, siege of Rochester in whenever it was, sometime in in the past, he said, uh, showing his ignorance of of medieval warfare, and also um the idea of you know using siege weapons, battering ramps.

Maybe that battering ramp could be a tank, and maybe just maybe a new thing, gas.

Now let's look at how those are intended to work.

Okay, so what the artillery is intended to do is to destroy the fortification and the men within it.

You know, you you blow it up, you blow the men up, and then you walk through.

That's the idea.

So just think of Nivelle, and that was his idea.

Let's do that, no problem.

Blah blah blah.

Ain't gonna happen if you haven't got enough.

Uh, mining.

Mining is very fashionable.

Everybody loves mining, it's great, you know, the the clay kickers and so on.

I'll I'll uh disappoint you.

It's pointless in many ways.

The reason for that is not because I'm anti-mining, clearly, uh, as a geologist as well as a historian, I'm really interested in Battle of Machines, which is as has an absolute point, it was coordinated, it meant that it was carried out.

It took two years to plan, and once it was over, it was over.

You're not gonna have that again.

So it meant the mining had to be very, very specific.

And on the sum, we can see, yeah, it leaves a great hole in the ground, but did it do any good?

Well, that's for us to consider what it does do is it undermines strong points as a tactical weapon.

So, that again is to destroy the fortification and destroy the men.

Tanks, different concept.

You are a battering ram, you're going through the trenches in a fortress.

So you you bring all your men in the fortress, you go across that wire, go across those trenches, and you you know you kill the enemy with machine guns in your female tanks in a vertical, or you know, uh six-pounders in few have uh a male tank in a vertical commas.

So that's what you do, you take the fight to them by crossing it.

What about a different method?

How about you don't destroy the trenches?

How about you destroy the men uh or drive them out?

And that's what gas is about.

Because when we're talking about casualties, what we mean is we are looking at battlefield inoperatives.

So we're looking at dead, we're looking at wounded, we're looking at captured.

So drive the men out, uh, make them incapable of fighting.

You've done your job.

You don't have to kill them.

Again, this is terrible brutality that we're talking about here.

Uh, but I thought it was as well to take you through that.

Whoops, down here again.

Don't beep at me.

Right, so cease breaking artillery.

Um, 1914, 1915.

We know the story, don't we?

Uh, they're concentrated on field guns, lots of shrapnel.

This is a great picture, I love it.

Um, flat trajectory.

Flat trajectory is great in uh, you know, if we have open sites, you have mobile warfare, you train your guns on the uh cavalry or the infantry, boom, uh, shrapnel, and you know, awful, awful situations to be in.

But what we do know is we need high trajectory, how it's gonna lob shells in and destroy straight into your Hoensola and Dow.

That's not gonna be easy if you haven't got enough field guns, you haven't got enough industry.

I remember 1940, 1915, you have all of those men or many of those men who served in or working in big factories and making these kinds of things was volunteered for war.

So it took mobilization of the of the nation and particularly mobilization of women and the capability of those women to create the war machine of artilleries, women who contributed massively to the winning of this war in a sense, but it was inadequate in 1915, and we saw that in you know uh Aubert, we saw that in Neuf Chapelle, and we can see just how difficult the Neuf Chapelle, okay, could have been glorious if you like inverted commerce, but the reality is is that we see the limitations of shell supply because Kitchener thought, great, well, I'll just put a few more extra orders into the factories for shells, and we'll be fine.

But of course, the factories can only produce as much as they can produce.

You need a much more nationalized and significant approach, which of course is what happened in 16 onwards.

So let's look at siege breaking mining.

Mining is spectacular, it is a huge effort, it's you know, there's a lot of war underground, it's it's in many ways uh inhumane warfare, and that's why it has taken the public imagination, uh, particularly, I think, through Birdsong.

Of course, there's no clay underground on the song, but anyway, let's not uh split hairs here with that book.

But the reality is uh that this image of Hawthorne Ridge, which we've spent a bit of time studying, you know, shows the power of that in uh 1916.

In 1914 to 1915, we're looking at this in an early stage uh with small-scale mines, which are terrifying to the infantry, but again have limited effect.

So Luce did war.

There were some mines there, and if you go onto that battlefield, you will come across those mine craters, spectacular as they are.

Now, the thing is, who doesn't love a tank?

And the great thing about a tank is rivets.

That's just an amazing set of rivets on that one, isn't it?

So, um, but the point about the tank is that these are mobile fortifications capable of crossing the Trenches crushing wire.

Uh, they came in 16, they came of age 17, 18, they won the war alongside everything else, aviation.

So this is incredible, but it's not going to be available in 1915.

Although, of course, it was in planning.

And a lot of time is spent on thinking, well, tanks are very vulnerable to poor ground conditions, and how dare Hague send the trench tanks in at Passhondale.

You're a general, you've got a war winning machine, you're gonna say, Now I'll keep them back.

I don't think so, is is a reality.

What needed to happen is uh more clarity over where they could go and where they couldn't, and uh certainly um there's there's a few studies been done in this.

Okay, so you're thinking when's he gonna get to the gas?

Gas.

Okay, so here we are.

So this this image is a famous one.

I think there's some people think it's the Western Front, some people think it's eastern front, but there's one thing that this shows absolutely what is driving the gas.

Anybody like to tell me the wind.

Okay, that's what people are gonna be thinking.

Wind always, that's what you need for the gas.

I'm here to tell you yes, but there you go.

So, yes, but so gas um is terrifying because it's a weapon, vidious, uh, it's green at this time or yellowish, it is awful, it's a cloud, it creates horrifying images, it it destroys man's uh ability to breathe.

And many of you, I'm sure, know of stories, maybe have them as family stories, uh, valid stories of the horror of gas.

But the reality is get a gas mask, use it properly, you'll be okay.

But that's the challenge.

Gas clouds are also dependent on environmental conditions, which is why the science bit is coming in in a moment.

And the thing that you may not be aware of, you may be, is that sloping landscape also assisted in the development of gas warfare.

Um, and that was known.

So, Hugh Pollard, uh, again, writer of many uh or several accounts of the thing, quite a fire eater.

And again, he's looking at this strange green cloud of death.

Uh, the Easterly Brieve wafted it towards the defenders.

Okay, so you can't blame them for breaking and fleeing.

Obviously, not because you've got no protection in this period, you don't know what this stuff is, you don't know what it's going to do to you.

Why wouldn't you run away?

Uh, I'd probably be uh an Olympic sprinter in that one.

But the principle behind it is really significant.

So if we look at the first cloud gas, which means you release it as a cloud, and you think about this uh in the second battle of Yape, you know what's gonna happen here is the Germans released their cloud gas in the northern part of the salience, uh, and of course, the uh Allied soldiers, the French colonial soldiers and and British and others who were there were faced with this incredible greenish cloud heading towards them.

Now, the thing that you possibly know, you possibly don't, is if you look at that, the I Lee, you can see in the uh Isaacanal, this is slopes, very general slopes, but they're draining downwards towards that.

So, whether there is an easterly breeze blowing towards Epa or not, uh, there's the capability of that gas to flow.

Um, so uh Fritz Harbour's son knows this in his famous book in 1986.

He's talking about 6,000 cylinders, 150 tons of chlorine, it moves at 0.5 meters a second, the gas rising and flowing.

So he's saying that the wind is not only the possibility of pushing it, but the density of the gas means it runs downhill.

So you're getting where um I'm coming from here, I hope.

So here's the science.

Okay, we can make a cup of tea now, or hopefully you you can stay here.

So the science of gas escape is really significant, but they didn't really know about this in 1915 because they hadn't really done much about it.

Um, so my part of the world, I'm from the northwest, uh, from uh near Liverpool, but nearby in Runcorn, that's where chlorine gas for the British was manufactured.

That's where its capability could be delivered.

Of course, the Germans were preeminent in uh chemistry in this particular time, and Fritz Haber, who came up with the use of gas, received the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1919.

So think of that as you will.

Um, one thing, a couple of things you need to know about.

So you don't have to look at all the numbers, but basically, chlorine is two and a half times heavier than air.

So, you know what's going to happen.

These lads are in the trenches, the the cloud of gas goes over, boom, down into the trenches or the shell holes.

Don't be in a shell hole and don't be in a crater, and don't be in a trench when that's coming.

And you can see that it is, you know, um quite dense in that sense.

Uh, one thing that you need to be also be aware of is actually you need to be in high concentrations to die from chlorine.

I mean, it's horrific, but uh, we can see that it is at 240 milligrams per cubic meter.

There you go, first science for you.

It is going to incapacitate you without necessarily killing you.

But that would mean that being incapacitated, you are a battlefield ineffective, and also you're going to flood the casualty clearance stations who are not going to be necessarily able to deal with you.

Then, how the hell do we treat this guy?

And it's so you need really high concentrations to kill you outright.

So, this is not a gas, this gas is not necessarily going to kill you outright, but it is going to lead to potentially lingering death, uh, which is a thing that we all are aware of.

Now, in Utah, uh, in 2015, 2016, uh, if you've ever been to Utah, as I have, uh, you'll see many wonderful sites, but you probably haven't seen containers at the side of a road with them releasing chlorine gas.

I think just a couple of weeks ago there was a chlorine gas escape in a laboratory in the UK, and it was a major lockdown of that.

It's not a laughing matter, as you can imagine.

So, this is in you can chase it up if you want in the journal Atmospheric Environments.

Um, last first time I gave this talk, there was an actual expert of this in the room.

I couldn't believe it, but I got away with it.

It was fine.

So, early studies then are showing that because of the toxicity, yeah, it's gonna incapacitate you, but it's not gonna necessarily kill you.

The early studies really overpredicted the number of casualties by 10 times, you know.

So if you're thinking about using this as a weapon, you're gonna be thinking, hold on a minute, these lads could potentially survive this.

So, is it gonna work?

Not only that, the chlorine doesn't just kindly roll roll over in one big cloud, it sort of rains out as droplets and forms on the ground in pools, but also evaporates upwards into what we called aerosols.

So, this cloud effect is not just a dense cloud of gas, it's it's all stuff going on, and the more it goes on, the thinner and weaker it becomes.

And so we're looking at this lethality reducing rapidly.

So, why I'm going through all this is because Haig, the guy that everybody thinks, or many people think, is anti-science, is thinking, great, uh, new toy.

Yes, uh, this worked for the Germans.

I can use this, can't I?

Uh, but he probably didn't know all this stuff.

So, um, here you go, Dr.

Tickle in the Journal of Hazardous Materials.

That is a fairly prosaic name for a journal, isn't it?

So, Dr.

Tickle has looked at uh how gas forms on a slope, and what you get is a wedge.

So, Harbor, Fritz Harbor's son, absolutely got it right in that gas moves down a slope, but wind can push it, but you don't necessarily need wind.

So, when we are hearing of people saying, Well, you know, there was no wind, and why would they release it?

If they knew they had a slope, then the gas is gonna flow.

That's my point here.

Without either of those, it's not gonna go anywhere.

So there's a spoiler alert here.

I'm gonna tell you a bit of all of those when it comes to the battle of loose, and what we get on a really steep slope, alone, a big wedge.

So you'd probably be better off taking releasing your gas on a big old slope.

And there was some discussion about gas being used at Gallipoli, it wasn't, but it could have been, and if it could have it had been, it probably would have been devastating.

I can tell you that because of this concept.

Roll it down, Anzac, and away you go.

So the steeper the slope anzac would have been good, faster the gas.

Um, and obviously it gets diluted.

Okay, so you're getting my point, I think.

So, oh, I forgot about this one.

Even more science.

This is what we call in science wiggly line science, a graph.

Don't ask me what it means, it just looked good.

But what we're looking at is the maximum gas travel, which is the MDD, maximum downwind distance, is affected by what's known as roughness.

And when we're talking about roughness, we are talking about the L front line and how that front line affects the flow of the gas.

Okay, so yeah, we can have constant wind helping, but this is a risky business.

So if you're releasing gas with no slope and you're releasing it, hoping you've got wind, and you've got a load of other stuff in the way, such as trenches, such as um heaps of waste, then you're gonna find some challenges.

So let's look at some examples.

If you had solid barriers in the way of gas, that's going to increase the concentration.

You're also going to have porous barriers, i.e., barbed wire, that's going to cause more turbulence.

And you're also going to find the challenge of valleys, which is going to increase the concentration.

So it's very different.

Some men could survive depending on where they were on that landscape, which is really fascinating.

So we can see gas concentration, uh, we can see gas turbulence, we can see shell holes, all the things that we know to be the case.

But these lads at that time would not have known it.

How many of them had worked in the chemical industry?

Quite a lot of those chemical industry guys were working in the Royal Engineers and releasing the gas.

So, pressurized release, you let it out of your uh barrel or in our case cylinders, wind velocity, yeah, the speed of the wind, but the slope or the shape of that landscape is going to affect your gas.

Uh, it's going to go up into the air, it's going to pull out of the ground, and therefore, although it rolls as a wedge, it's affected by all these barriers, so it decreases in concentration.

So, what you're hearing from me is that gas is not a perfect weapon, i.e., is it gonna kill or maim or wound or injure?

Well, to a certain extent, but it depends very much on circumstance.

Okay, so sorry, you can come back from your tea now, um, taking a wee whatever you're doing, it's fine.

So, we're back now with Luz, the first British gas attack, and this is an amazing image.

Uh, I don't know if you've ever read um The Big Push by Patrick McGill, uh, who was present, London Irish Rifles, really worth reading.

Um, it's overshadowed by the sun.

So we weren't thinking about Luce.

So he's he's pointing out that the Germans are saying, We know you're gonna do this.

When is it coming off?

Well, waiting, come on, lads, let's do this.

Whether they knew there was gas coming is another matter.

So then the absolute winner of mustache, in my view, of course, is gonna be Kitchener.

Um, and uh also the fact that he's got a slight turn in one of his eyes means it's even more scary when you look at him because he's following you around.

But Kitchener is telling you that whatever you think of the landscape, we need to play our part because remember, Kitchener raised Kitchener's army on the basis of doing its bit for Europe, it was making sure it met with uh the you know the needs of the many.

So that was what he's trying to do.

So help France in their offensive, even though there's going to be heavy losses.

This is what Kitchener is saying.

Uh old uh field marshal French, who really was irritated by Kitchener turning up in his uniform.

If you've got a uniform, wear it, come on.

Uh, that's he's not happy with that.

So, but he knew that he had to do this, so he's saying the first army will attack with all its resources south of the Basse Canal.

That's what the plan is, and therefore, Haig uh, who had surveyed the land and said, now this is bad, he has to fight in this area, and he picks, therefore, gas as a means of filling in the gaps between the artillery pieces and to deliver a weapon which is not just multi-arm, if you like, not just artillery, but also gas.

Uh, and we can see that little heart um opinions differ on little heart, but basically, little heart again is putting the the point that this ill-fated battle was against the opinion of Haig, but he had to carry it out, he had to carry out his orders.

So, if we look at the order of battle, uh, we can see the first army in some senses, uh, in terms of the assault corps, um, and that's really the first corps and the fourth corps.

Um, there's also a subsidiary attack at Aubert Ridge, which is the Indian Corps, the 7th Miirut Division, uh Pietra in Aubert.

So uh that will come into our consideration in a moment.

And in reserve, and this is what put paid to Sir John French, the uh 11th Corps uh in reserve at Lillier.

And I'm having got time to talk about that because we're concentrating on the gas thing, but really it was that uh and the guards division, um, the fact that he deployed them late in the game that really put paid to French.

So we can look at the the battlefield as we see it, the Battle of Leurs.

We can see where the most of those divisions are deployed, and a huge number of those are actually Scots.

So 9th Division, 15th Division, uh Scots, and they are, of course, uh, particularly 15th Division, uh they are Kitchener's men as well as uh regulars and others.

Uh, north of the La Basse uh canal, uh, you're going to see the deployment of a number of attacks intended to be subsidiary, to assist, and if there's a chance they break through, so be it.

And that, of course, is uh the uh Indian Corps.

So 21st to 24th of September, we see the bombardment.

Um, it's 10 times that of Neuf Chappelle, but only actually 336 more guns.

So we're looking at 871 guns, and we know if you look at like Robin Pryor uh and his work at Passchendale, we know that the concentration of guns per unit meter is really important if you're gonna break through.

So, two-thirds of these were naturally field guns because that's what the army was deployed in, and most of those are going to have uh shrapnel as well as high explosive.

And this is uh well rehearsed view, of course, that uh there were a thousand rounds per gun, that's all they had, um, can easily be pooped off, and 30% of them are duds, which again is down to the desire to manufacture more of these weapons, but of course, the inability to do so and therefore purchase elsewhere.

Uh, shrapnel was not adequate in wire cutting, it's a very, very technical business having this storm of steel uh to create the wire cutting.

So the gas assault was something that certainly Haig uh fell upon.

Wow, we can do this, we can create the opportunity, and it was that that persuaded him that yes, we can win this battle with the use of gas, having seen what the Germans could do.

So we can see early on this uh there are lots of postcards from uh the Daily Mail series of the psalm, and we can see of kind of similar kind of pictures.

But we're looking here at an earlier issue of these.

Um, and this is of course the Battle of Luce.

So you can see the strength of the German uh barbed wire.

So once again, Philip Gibbs is as a war correspondent, not in the front line, he's sitting on a or standing on a slug heap seeing this sort of incredible pounding away, but is it doing its job?

It's not really cutting the wire.

So the gas attack.

It's crazy to think, but uh the royal engineers had to bring the accessory, as it was called, into the trenches and set them up.

So gas was sanctioned after second deep.

As soon as the Germans had carried it out, the British said thanks a lot, and the French will do it too.

Why not?

So um the British were on the back foot, they had to go to experts in Imperial College who said, Yeah, we can produce chlorine gas, the only one we could really produce at this stage in the war.

And so these were in cylinders, um, about 5,000 plus cylinders, or Rogers as they were called.

Uh, so the accessory, uh, gas released from cylinders known as Rogers.

All of this kind of boy's own stuff is to stop a soldier saying, I'm gonna bring the gas up.

Um, now we're gonna bring the accessory up, and it's gonna be in a Rogers, meaning, you know, something that's clearly not a cylinder.

So 140 tons of chlorine gas.

And the idea was this would be sufficient to overcome what was felt to be the effectiveness of the German masks.

As mentioned, the German masks or any mask are going to be countering the use of gases as long as they're worn properly, they will do that.

But after a while, they become saturated, uh, cap or capable, incapable of holding on.

And so that was the intention.

The problem was that there wasn't, there weren't enough, uh, there wasn't enough gas produced, and also you can see this real Heath Robinson paraphernalia of pipes and cylinders and what have you.

And so a lot of the special companies awore these brassards here.

You can see the stripes there, the officer won, which is the green and black, um, from the 47th division, and you can see also uh this sort of strange stripe thing.

These are indicating that these men are allowed to be in the trench, they're not going to go over the top, they're in the trench, releasing that.

You can see the spanner on the ground here.

The spanners didn't necessarily fit the cylinders.

This is something that Robert Gray's love him or hate him.

I think his book's fantastic, but um, he he would say this is you know bloody balls up because they they could not um fit this, so there was a lot of faffing about with this kind of stuff.

What is crazy is the idea was we would the British didn't have enough gas cylinders or gas, but tell you what, we'll use smoke candles, um, kind of flares, if you like, which would make up the density of the cloud.

It's not gonna kill anybody, but it's gonna look like it's gas, so the guys are gonna run away.

That's the idea behind it.

So, this is from uh Gail, who has there's a diary in the Imperial War Museum.

You can see again, he was in the uh in the Royal Engineers, as far as I'm aware.

You can see the gas cylinders placed in uh see how this pipe is put over the parapet and released, and you can see how the smoke candle in front is also there, and so we can see the pipe, you see the smoke candles.

This is exactly on uh the 25th of the 9th, 1915.

Um, um behind me, I have a replica of one of these.

Um, so this is a replica.

Um, so I know this is theatrics, but hey, what the hell?

So you can imagine how difficult it is to fight never mind talk uh with one of these things on.

Uh, I do have an original behind me, but already it's steaming up in here, and uh, I'd have to hold so uh that's hopefully not disrespectful, but the principle behind this is showing how difficult this thing was made out of flannel.

It was disgusting because it was actually soaked in uh phenolhexamine, which I think is used in the uh in the uh photography business.

But anyway, there we go.

So the cylinders are placed there, variety of different pipes and and uh connections, really difficult.

The smoke is there to give an impression of the cloud.

But we already heard what's going to happen to this gas as it flows.

So there you go, there's the goggle-eyed bugger with the tit.

The really important thing about this is I would have been dead, or at least incapacitated because I didn't tuck that in my tunic.

Yeah, you have to tuck it in a tunic, you have to seal it up, you have to breathe uh in through the bag and out through this pipe.

And of course, those eye holes are not going to really help you.

It's hardly surprising that the men, when they attacked, these drawings are absolutely horrific.

You see the variety of different types of grenades, but uh there's no joking matter this uh attacking with these things on because you can just imagine how claustrophobic it was running into this gas cloud.

So, you know, many men could not stand it, took it off, and were of course incapacitated by gas.

So that was the idea behind it.

Um, a lot of discussion about Haig and his decision to go.

As I've said, if you are a general, you're committed to this, and the only way that you're going to allow your uh battle to succeed is to use a particular weapon, and you cannot use it, you can't call it off uh because these guys are ready to go, so you have to take a chance.

So, what they were hoping was that the the wind would have something to play for, and I think what we can see here is the chief flatulence flatulence officer, wind um officer, if you like, officer commanding.

He he was there to measure wind speed and direction, and um, really what it was all about was thinking about wind direction and velocity.

The sense was early on.

Maybe this is not gonna work, but we're gonna go anyway.

Uh, there was some some opportunity provided by wind.

Uh, a cigarette, I think, um, was lit and there were puffs moving.

So, yeah, let's go.

So, uh, obviously, it didn't take long for the recriminations to to come uh back, so there were errors at um at least.

We can see not only the gas attack but also the reserves thing that's the paid to French.

Um, you can see this idea of the not like soldiers but like devils.

You can understand that with a horrific um smoke helmet, and a case again the sense of the British using us, repaying the Germans in their own coin.

So, again, we're back to our famous photograph.

So 550, we're looking at artillery bombardment, and the gas and smoke were released and for zero hours at 630.

So the gas readily and steadily moved over the German lines.

The men engaged with their smoke uh helmets um tucked into their tunics, one would hope, would go over the top.

Now, I gave this talk just a few days ago in Dundee, and I'll be perfectly honest, my book, which uh little guide here, which I can I can talk about a little bit too, does not mention um the fourth Black Watch at all.

Um, and it's it's only when you realize that the main battle south of the La Basse uh canal, and you know what we expect to be loose, was spacked up by other um smaller engagements like the one at Aubert Ridge.

So here we these are men of the Dundees owned, these are territorials.

The territorials were major in um in Scotland.

So I've just heard Hugh Strawn talking about this and how it was a particularly large effort in joining the territorial highlanders, and so these are officers of the Fourth Black Watch here, and what they'd been mauled at Neuf Chapelle, they started out with around 700 men by the end of that battle.

They had 430 effectives, so 430 effectives in the um Marut division uh in this battalion who were going to go over to the top uh in a frontal assault.

So, what was going to happen was there was going to be a mine explosion, which didn't do much, but you know, was there to uh confuse the Germans, artillery as far as it could, and the sense of this release of some level of gas, and you can see smoke balls, candles, and so on and so forth.

But what all this did was create it more than impossible to see just a few yards.

So these men ran into uh the German front line and were moaned down.

There's no doubt about this.

So we'll talk about that later.

So here we can see in Aubert where there is a slight gradient, but in the wrong direction.

So they are they are attacking uh in the wrong direction, and of course, i.e., up the slope, it's not going to help them, it's gonna stay put.

So uh I just wanted to point that out because it's really significant to show you that the Battle of Luz uh has these small events which had major impacts.

So if you think about uh the first core, you can see the the point here.

Ian Hay, who wrote, of course, or John Beath, uh who wrote the first hundred thousand amazing uh propagandic book, but even so incredible book about the raising of Kitchener's men.

And we can see here his description of the Honesolon doubt, this sort of great mass of trenches.

So, what we can look at is the gas at 550 in the first core front at uh was was actually flowing towards the lines, but seemed to halt at the Labasse Canal.

And this is means that as it's halting, the uh the attacking men are moving into the gas themselves, not expecting it.

So, what we see is the seventh division pushes up to the first line, but the second division is held by the wire.

So the vagaries of that landscape are really affecting uh the nature of the battle, and of course, the Hohenzoller, no doubt, uh, was reached, but it was again, although we were bombing down those trenches, it was really difficult to carry.

So there we there we have it.

You know, we can see the sense of this attack.

What we can see is the second division is held up by a gas failure.

Uh now I'm going to test you here.

So the gas is flowing through an area where we have a village and brick stacks.

So you would say, aha, we're talking about surface roughness, aren't we?

We're looking at a gas being held up by that, and also low.

This is a La Basse Canal.

There's no gradient to talk about.

We look at uh the middle part, the ninth division, we start to see there is actually a bit of a gradient.

There are fewer of those uh areas.

You can see the quarry there, which of course would have been filled with gas, but we can see that there's some sense of the gas moving, and we're seeing uh as we look down here in the grenade uh sparer and all of that, we're starting to see some sense of the gas moving, and we can see how there the quarries were taken, and probably because the gas was moving alongside this and the driver, the men clearly the Hohenzoller doubt is going to remain.

Remember, its duty is to break up the attack.

So we can see how uh the bombers were bombing along this, the Sherrod Foresters uh and others who were bombing along these trenches using the SAPs.

Uh, but clearly, you know, again, Hohenzoller doubt was a formidable, formidable uh thing to crack.

If we look a bit further south, we're looking in the fourth core front.

The gas is flowing towards the lines in the 47th division, the London Division, but halts on the grenade spur, that's because it can't go over the spur.

Okay, so this causes British gas casualties as it concentrates, and the British are going through this, and uh it's getting concentrated in front of them.

So, yeah, they they push on.

Um, although the first division is held up on that spur, we can see the 47th, the London, and 15th Scottish are moving forward again.

The vagaries of this battlefield is assisting, and Luce is captured by this sort of verve of the Scots from the 15th and the Londoners, too.

If you think about the Londoners, um, we think about if we think about footballs and we think about uh trench warfare, we think about Neville and we think about the Some.

But uh newsflash, there was one earlier than that, it was the Battle of Luce, and so we're looking again at Patrick McGill.

This is the the actual football, so not like uh some of The disputed footballs from uh Neville, but this is the actual football of one of them that was hanging on the old barbed wire um and was kicked forward.

So Patrick McGill in the London Irish Rifles.

Um, again, I said, What are the chances in the game?

Well, the chances were challenging.

So, again, these images, uh, you can see these guys are rolling the gas huts on the top of their heads.

It shows you that if this is accurate, the gas is dissipated, or at least you'd hoped it would be.

But this is the challenge of engaging with this.

So, if you look at the Cameron Highlanders in the 15th, uh, we can see how they're moving towards the the village of Lust where the machine guns are raking the streets, the bayonet fighting.

Remember that Lust is going to be built into using Stelling's bow into the front line and making sure it was a fortress in its own right.

So, let's look at the the point here.

So, there's the grenade spur, and we can see um how the men is going to be challenging if the gas is pooling on this side.

But as soon as it's flowing down the slope, I mean it makes it sound like it's a huge hill, but it isn't.

But there is a slope for sure.

That is allowing the gas, whether there is any need for wind or not, the the gas was flowing down into loose.

And of course, what we see here is that would also happen from double crassier, you know.

Once again, with surface roughness, you know, the gas would flow downwards, and of course, the men swept past um the tower bridge and up hill 70, where they milled about like a bank holiday crowd because they are inexperienced soldiers, they had breasted the German front line and had gone on behind that.

What do we do now, lads?

Um, it meant that it was unconsolidated.

What you need is you need to be a big lad with a kilt and a pipe in set of pipes, uh, that'll do the job for you.

So, joking apart, Piper Laidlaw of the Kings and Scottish Borderers, he pipes the men forward in many ways.

You know, the point is that the Scots are being held up by their own gas.

This is the challenge, but uh Laidlaw was no man to uh sit around with that, and of course, deservedly being awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions.

So, what we're looking at then is the first division is held up.

We know why, because it's a low land, there's not much in terms of topography, and there's not much really in terms of uh things which are going to hold the gas in position.

Uh, what we see is the grenade spur, which is the gas has to go over that, and of course, many of those Scots had difficulties with that, but they were able with the 47th Londoners and the 15th Scots were able to just take once the gas moved down into and the area of Luz and taking Tower Bridge, of course, had the capability.

So, what we're looking at is whether or not the gas is any good.

Uh, I'm gonna have to move you guys because I can't see that.

Um, so what we see here is was it any good?

Well, the gas refused to budge in the north.

Um, that's because of the low ground, it sticks on the plateau in the middle, the gas attack stutters because again, there's nothing to drive it, no wind.

And in the south, the valley is allowing the gas to flow down in the absence of wind.

So if we go back to my science, told you, well, I didn't tell you it was going to be a test, but here it is.

Um, so here we go.

Then the distance it can travel is affected by the density of the gas, the dispersal of the gas, and the surface of the gas.

We talked about that the trenches, the hills, the town, all that's gonna affect it.

It's gonna pool in low areas.

So around La Basse, that's what's gonna happen, and it's gonna stick on the gas plateau.

Lack of momentum where there's no slopes on the plateau.

But when we're looking into the valley, we get that wedge, okay, and that wedge allows the gas to flow down, roll down, whether there's any wind or not.

So this might seem a bit of an arcane, you know, small point, but it does show you how complex, even just the small battlefield becomes when you release gas.

It's not just open attaps and away we go.

The gas is already dissipating and the gas is not necessarily moving.

So we can see uh the position of the maximum advance, we can see how the Holland Zullen Dow is a major, major point of contention, it cannot be broken in that sense.

So at this stage in the war, so we can see how it holds the north of that.

The gas has not moved in any location down further to the south.

Again, we can see uh how gas has assisted, but the failure to consolidate Hill 70 again with the Germans building that into their front line, as it was then, meant that this was the maximum advance that could have been achieved.

Oops, okay.

So uh the battle held on to the 13th of October when, of course, that was it.

Um, there's there was no going forward.

So the maximum advance that we're seeing it ran out of momentum because of the strength of the German Stalin's bow, the open landscape, the failure of the gas move uniformly, and of course, something that I haven't had time to talk about French's poor command choices, hedging his bets, bringing in and really making uh a mockery out of the about the divisions that were deployed, these new army men who were really castigated for their inability to take this, and yet they had to march for miles overnight.

It's just absolutely horrific.

The gains were minimal, but from this point on, gas warfare would evolve.

There would be new ways of delivering it.

So cloud gas was not the way of doing it.

You would use Stokes mortars, for example, you would use Livens projectors, you would use even uh delivery, believe it or not, on railway carriages and so on, using the terrain and using gas, and gas becomes part of the artillery shells.

So it becomes a weapon of war, yes, but not in the manner that was expected.

Um, yeah, so both allies gained experience, but probably uh as at this point, and this is again a little hard, it was the Germans who were benefiting at this point, but no, needless to say, the British Army did learn from this for sure.

The casualties were pretty horrific.

A lot of officers, quite a lot of senior officers, which brings the lie to the fact that senior officers were nowhere near the front line.

That is just nonsense in in many ways, and so many uh commanders, um, divisional commanders.

You see, 35 senior officers killed 20,000 German casualties.

And if you look at Dundee's share of the sacrifice, a phrase used, uh, it's absolutely incredible.

This uh book I've only just recently come across, The Haunting Years.

And if you've come across that poll, if you haven't, it's one for your old front line, I would say, because it's incredible.

Um, and what this is showing, remember they were really uh hit hard an F Chappelle and left after an F Chappelle 130 of the men were priority were killed, and 19 out of 20 officers were killed or wounded.

So there we have it.

So um thanks for coming along.

Uh always a pleasure to chat with with you and to support Paul's frontline.

I listen to it regularly when I'm uh on my travels.

Um I I hear none better, I have to tell you.

So thank you for that.

I'll stop sharing.

Happy to take any questions, but don't ask me any hard signed stuff because I've you know I'm run out of that.

No, I'm joking.

And you can ask what you like.

Thank you.

Thank you, Peter.

That was absolutely fantastic.

Uh you know, on the eve of the battle, it's kind of really good to uh to hear some some different perspectives on it.

And I mean, you know, you and I, and many people here present, have seen the historiography of the first world war change and change again, really, over the years.

And I kind of think that landscape might be moving into having its its its moment, really, in terms of our understanding of the first world war, because it's something I think that's been missing for all too many studies, really, isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely, 100%.

I mean, I think it's you know it's beneficial to be able to think it's okay for me because I have those those sides.

But I think, as you've said, Paul, the historiography is changing, people are looking at all manner of different ways of considering this, and uh one thing though that's I'm always aware of and have been ever since I was that eight-year-old, is the fascination with trench warfare and how those men could actually have stepped out of those trenches and moved towards the enemy.

It's just beyond my comprehension.

I don't think I'll ever understand that.

Um, and I think you know that one of the first books I bought on that uh was in when I was a 13-year-old, and I still have it with me today.

It still allows me to try and challenge that.

So I think I think we are thinking about trench warfare in many, many different ways.

Um, and I think every way combined, all of the experience we have in this virtual room again will will probably combine to make a really fascinating view on what we perceive uh to be trench warfare in that old front line.

You've been listening to an episode of the Old Frontline with me, military historian Paul Reed.

You can follow me on Twitter at Somcore, you can follow the podcast at Old Frontline Pod, check out the website at oldfrontline.co.uk where you'll find lots of podcast extras and photographs and links to books that are mentioned in the podcast.

And if you feel like supporting us, you can go to our Patreon page, patreon.com slash oldfrontline, or support us on buymea coffee at buymeacoffee.com slash oldfrontline.

Links to all of these are on our websites.

Thanks for listening, and we'll see you again soon.