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00:00On the morning of the 2nd of August 1914, the Belgian countryside is peaceful and undisturbed.
00:08But 48 hours later, all hell was let loose.
00:14Germany invaded.
00:17Could a small country stop a German army ten times larger than its own?
00:23What followed in the first few days of the First World War in Belgium changed warfare forever.
00:31In this war, in which over 20 million died,
00:35amazingly, two private individuals were still able to make a significant difference and change the outcome of the war itself.
00:44What happened during the invasion of Belgium halted the German plan for the conquest of France
00:51and locked the opposing armies in a vice-like grip, from which they would only emerge four years later,
00:57by which time 57 countries had issued declarations of war against one another.
01:03It was truly the First World War.
01:06A small First World War military cemetery, Saint-Sainphorion, near Mons in Belgium.
01:25Here, in this tranquil place, lie 614 soldiers from the British and the German armies in almost equal numbers.
01:36In 1915, when the Belgian farmer who owned this land was asked by the Germans for permission to bury their dead,
01:42he agreed only on the condition that the soldiers of both armies be interred in his ground.
01:50And so they are.
01:52Enemies in life, but united in death.
01:56Western Belgium, near the border with France.
02:07Here in Flanders, remarkably, the countryside looks much as it did to the opposing armies in August 1914.
02:15But the signs of the horror that was to follow are everywhere.
02:19In the many cemeteries and memorials at every turn of the road.
02:32In 1914, Great Britain, with the largest navy in the world, was the world's superpower.
02:40Yet it had one of the smallest armies.
02:42Three hundred and fifty thousand professional soldiers spread across the globe, controlling its vast empire.
02:52France, in contrast, could quickly call upon an army of one million and Germany one million three hundred thousand men with more in reserve.
03:01Belgium had 237,000 men in uniform, of which 130,000 were garrisoned in the forts defending the cities of Antwerp, Namur and Liège.
03:20At the end of the 19th century, these fortified cities were considered impregnable.
03:26This war would change all that.
03:31On June 28th 1914, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated by a Serbian nationalist, Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo.
03:50As a result, exactly one month later, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, dragging the rest of Europe into war as well.
03:59Early on the 2nd of August, the German army marched into the tiny Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.
04:08There was no discussion with the Luxembourg government.
04:12Later that same day, Germany demanded free passage for its army to march over Belgian territory in order to invade France.
04:19The request was refused.
04:25The Belgian King, Albert, seen here in happier times, in the company of the German Kaiser Wilhelm and the British King George V, was a professional soldier and commander-in-chief of his army.
04:37Having received the German ultimatum, he appealed to the British to assist him in defending his country.
04:46On the morning of the 4th of August, units of the German army entered Belgium.
04:51Great Britain immediately declared war on Germany.
04:56The First World War had begun.
05:00In 1914, an invasion was mainly achieved on foot.
05:12German soldiers were marching slowly into Belgium towards the city of Liège, a distance of 40km.
05:21In their way was the town of Visay, where they were opposed by a group of military policemen, gendarmes, defending the bridge over the river Meuse.
05:31This saw the first action of the war.
05:33The Visay garrison were no match for the German infantry.
05:38Two gendarmes, Auguste Boucault and Jean-Pierre Thille, were shot and killed.
05:43They became the first Belgian casualties of the war.
05:50One hundred years later, their memorial remains close to the spot where they died.
05:55Having taken Visay, the German army now slowly approached Liège.
06:09Civilians have always been casualties of war.
06:12But on the 6th of August, a new horror was unleashed on the citizens of Liège.
06:17The first air raid specifically targeting ordinary people.
06:24A Zeppelin airship, flying from Germany, dropped bombs on the city.
06:29It was the first of many such indiscriminate attacks that terrorised the local population.
06:35On this first attack, the airship was hit by anti-aircraft fire from the Liège batteries and as a result was badly damaged.
06:42But the Zeppelin raids continued unopposed over Belgium, whose aircraft could not reach the altitude of the high-flying Zeppelins.
06:53However, the first successful aerial attack on a Zeppelin did occur over Belgium.
06:58But not until the 7th of June, 1915, when a British pilot, Lieutenant Reginald Warnford, flying a French monoplane, attacked the German airship LZ-37.
07:08After a 45-minute chase, he succeeded in dropping his small 20-pound bombs on it, which set the Zeppelin on fire.
07:18It crashed on the outskirts of Ghent onto a convent, killing two nuns and two civilians.
07:26Amazingly, one of the Zeppelin crew, Alfred Muller, survived the fall from 10,000 feet in the ship's control cabin.
07:34Reginald Warnford was immediately awarded the British Victoria Cross and the French Légion d'honneur.
07:43But life as a pilot in the First World War tended to be short.
07:47Tragically, Lieutenant Warnford was killed two weeks later.
07:51In 1914, Liège was surrounded by a group of 12 massive forts, approximately four kilometres apart, forming a defensive ring securing the city.
08:06Each one accommodating several hundred soldiers and artillerymen.
08:0923,000 Belgian soldiers were dug in, defending the land between the forts on the east of the river Meuse.
08:18On the night of the 5th of August, six German brigades, about 25,000 men, attacked them.
08:23Only one managed to break through the gap.
08:27The 14th Brigade, under General Eric Ludendorff, broke through overnight between the forts Florent and Ervenier and managed to secure the bridges over the river.
08:3536 hours later, they carefully entered the city of Liège.
08:43Strangely, they encountered no resistance.
08:46General Ludendorff commandeered a Belgian car and drove up to the citadel overlooking the city, an ancient defensive structure and containing several hundred Belgian soldiers.
08:58Ludendorff found himself alone, but undeterred, banged on the gates.
09:03The Belgian soldiers inside surrendered at his summons.
09:09It was an act of outrageous bravado, for which he was awarded Germany's highest military honour.
09:16But the 12 Liège forts themselves were not so easily taken.
09:26These were massive fortifications completed at the end of the 19th century
09:31and were built up with several metres of concrete, protecting their gun emplacements.
09:38When finished, they were considered virtually indestructible, but the advances in German artillery proved otherwise.
09:45The fighting would last for ten days.
09:49The German artillery pounding the forts into submission, generally ending in the death of most of the defenders.
09:57It was brutal, and a foretaste of what was to come.
10:00The coup de grace being delivered by the latest howitzer from Krupp's steelworks, which at 42cm could hurl its enormous shell nine miles.
10:11In fact, these massive 98-ton monsters had only left the Krupp works in Essen four days after the siege started.
10:23Travelling by train, they had been held up when Belgian sappers had blown up the linking railway tunnel, 20 miles from Liège.
10:30For 36 hours, the guns, christened Fat Bertha, were hauled over the roads the necessary 11 miles to bring the forts into range,
10:41and assembled by the 200 men who serviced the enormous howitzer.
10:44The first shell was fired at Fort Pontice at 6.30pm on the 12th of August.
10:56For those inside the forts, it became a nightmare.
11:02In Fort L'Encin, enduring the siege was the commander of the Belgian forces at Liège, General Gerard Le Mans.
11:09On the 11th, the Germans started bombarding us with 7 and 10 cm cannon.
11:16On the 12th and 13th, they brought their 21 cm guns into action.
11:21But it was not until the 14th that they opened their heaviest fire and began their destruction of the outer works.
11:27The third phase of the bombardments began at 5 o'clock in the morning of the 15th.
11:32I have only learnt since that when the big siege mortars entered into action,
11:39they hurled against us shells weighing 1,000 kilos, the explosive force of which surpasses anything known hitherto.
11:46Their approach was to be heard in an acute buzzing, and they burst with a thunderous roar,
11:52raising clouds of missiles, stones and dust.
11:55Two hundred and fifty men were buried in the explosion inside the fort, and there they remain.
12:10Fort L'Encin has been left just as it was on that fateful day,
12:14described by the German officer whose guns delivered the final blow.
12:18By this time, our heaviest guns were in position.
12:23A well-placed shell tore through the cracked and battered masonry,
12:28and exploded in the main magazine.
12:32With a thunderous crash, the mighty walls of the fort fell.
12:37Pieces of stone and concrete, 25 cubic metres in size, were hurled in the air.
12:44When the dust and the fumes passed away, we stormed the fort, across ground literally strewn with the bodies of our troops,
12:54who had gone out to attack the fort, and never returned.
12:59All the men in the fort were wounded, and most were unconscious.
13:05Buried in the debris, and pinned beneath a massive beam, was General Lamont.
13:12The last defensive fort around the city of Liège, Fort Bancel, fell silent on the 16th of August.
13:23The heroic Belgian defense of Liège had held up a large part of the German army,
13:29but nevertheless, a significant number of troops had managed to push on west, through the countryside,
13:34in the direction of the French border.
13:38Nothing, it seemed, could stop the German advance.
13:43But just outside the Belgian city of Mons, dramatic events would unfold,
13:49and the German soldiers would face new opposition.
13:52200,000 men of the British Expeditionary Force.
13:56In the two weeks since the beginning of the First World War, the German army's progress into Belgium has been slow but effective,
14:10and there had been very few casualties.
14:27German soldiers were marching between 25 and 35 kilometres a day towards the French border.
14:33It was a punishing schedule.
14:37The German novelist, Walter Blum, was a captain in the 12th Grenadiers advancing into Belgium.
14:43The fact is, that by this time, the whole war seems to have lost its true perspective for us.
14:52It had become a joke, though a hard-working one.
14:56Nothing but march, march, march, to an extent never imagined by us.
15:03We had now done 14 consecutive days without a single rest day.
15:10It had apparently become a matter of beating the enemy with our legs.
15:16Where was he anyhow, the French and the English?
15:20Tomorrow, if all is well, we are to cross the French frontier.
15:27But Captain Blum was mistaken.
15:30France and Britain were rushing troops into Belgium in an attempt to stop the German advance.
15:35On the 20th of August, the German army marched into the Belgian capital, Brussels,
15:45and one day later, the British army arrived in and around the small Belgian city of Mons.
15:51The British set up a defensive line along the southern border of the Canal du Centre,
15:58a natural barrier running around the north of the city.
16:04Neither army knew precisely where the opposition was.
16:09Although the war saw the first use of aircraft to report on enemy positions,
16:13these primitive planes were unreliable.
16:16So, troops on bicycles were commonly sent ahead to probe for the enemy.
16:25Private John Parr was a battalion cyclist in the 4th Middlesex Regiment.
16:31He was ordered to cycle out from the defensive line of the Mons Canal
16:34with the perilous mission of seeking the whereabouts of the enemy.
16:39He was seen by an advance party of German soldiers, shot and killed.
16:44He was the first British soldier to die in the war.
16:49Private Parr is buried in the Mont Saint-Sainphorien cemetery.
16:52The following day, at 7am, a cavalry unit of the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards
17:11were near the village of Castaux when they saw a group of German cavalry.
17:15Corporal Edward Thomas dismounted and fired off a shot at the German lancers.
17:20Some 400 yards away, a German officer immediately fell to the ground.
17:26It was the first shot fired in anger by a British soldier in the Great War.
17:35On the same day, two officers from the British Royal Flying Corps,
17:40Lieutenant Vincent Waterfall and Lieutenant Charles George Bailey
17:44were flying on reconnaissance over the German advance
17:47and were shot down by ground fire.
17:48They were the first airmen to die. Both were 23 years old.
17:59Incredibly, Captain Walter Blum's grenadiers were responsible.
18:07We passed through the village of Engin, halting in a field somewhere for arrest.
18:12Suddenly, an aeroplane appeared overhead.
18:16I told two groups to fire at it and soon everyone seemed to be firing at it.
18:21It turned back as if to return southwards, but too late.
18:24Its nose turned down, it made several corkscrew turns and then fell like a stone a mile or so away.
18:30Lieutenant's Waterfall and Bailey are buried side-by-side in the cemetery at Tournai.
18:37Around Mons, the British defensive line at the south of the canal was 30 kilometres long and crossed by some 16 bridges.
18:52Thinking that they might continue to advance, the British army left them intact.
19:01It was a massive mistake.
19:02On the 23rd of August, the German army attacked.
19:07When the order came for the bridges to be demolished, it was too late.
19:12Over half of them remained intact and the German soldiers were able to overrun the British positions and cross the canal at various points,
19:20thus putting the whole defensive line under threat.
19:23Captain Blurm's men encountered the enemy about eight kilometres to the west of Mons.
19:37We had no sooner left the edge of the wood than a volley of bullets whistled past our noses and cracked into the trees behind.
19:45Five or six cries near me. Five or six of my grey lads collapsed on the grass.
19:50Over to our left, around the village of Tut, the rifle and machine gun fire was even more intense.
19:57We gradually walked forward by rushes of a hundred, fifty, then thirty metres towards an invisible enemy.
20:04At every rush, a few more fell, but one could do nothing for them.
20:08There were acts of extraordinary courage on both sides,
20:12especially in the assault on the bridges around the village of Nimi, just north of Mons.
20:16Over the canal at Nimi, the railway bridge was still in one piece.
20:22To prevent the Germans from crossing, Lieutenant Maurice Dees, in command of a machine gun section,
20:29had placed two guns in sandbagged emplacements.
20:32But so cramped was the space that whenever a man was hit, he had to be removed before another could take his place.
20:38Whenever a gun stopped, Dees ran across open ground to organise replacements.
20:47He was wounded several times as he repeated this action until, finally, a shot killed him.
20:54He was awarded the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest award for gallantry.
20:58Lieutenant Dees' grave is also in Mons-Saint-Saint-Faurien cemetery.
21:08On the German side, the bravery could be its equal.
21:12The second bridge at Nimi was a swing bridge.
21:16It had been swung to the British side to stop the advance.
21:19But in the afternoon of the fighting, a young German, Musketeer Oskar Neimeyer, swam over the canal and managed to operate the swing bridge mechanism on the British side of the canal.
21:31It moved back into place and the German infantry surged across.
21:36Musketeer Neimeyer was, however, killed during the fighting and lies in San Sanforium, not far from Lieutenant Dees.
21:46Enemies united in death.
21:53Back at the railway bridge at Nimi, the British were retreating.
21:59At the machine gun post, Private Sidney Godley was asked to prevent the German army from crossing for as long as possible.
22:07Despite being shot several times, he managed to remain at his machine gun for two hours until it was put out of action,
22:15holding up the German advance long enough to allow his comrades to retreat in relative safety.
22:21Sidney Godley was also awarded the Victoria Cross, the first VC to be awarded to a private soldier in the war.
22:30Though seriously wounded, Private Godley was lucky.
22:33Taken to a German hospital unit, he eventually recovered and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner.
22:41In 1939, Sidney Godley attended the ceremony at the unveiling of this plaque at the New Nimi Bridge, which commemorates the heroism of that day.
22:50In the Belgian countryside, the German army was taking revenge on Belgian resistance by systematic destruction of towns and villages.
23:03Captain Walter Bloom thought this inevitable.
23:10As our leading cavalry patrol was riding through the village, three of our hussars were shot dead in the street.
23:17Three others, dismounted, entered the house where the shots came from and found two peasants with rifles still in their hands.
23:28They seized them and they've been shot and orders given to burn the village to the ground.
23:37A suitable and just revenge.
23:40But these reprisals were to have an immediate effect on the British public.
23:47On 30 August 1914, the Sunday Times in London published a front page headline.
23:52Mons and Cambrai, losses of the British Army, fight against severe odds, need for reinforcements.
24:02The same newspaper also carried a report that shocked everyone.
24:06The city of Louvain had been systematically destroyed and the world famous library containing unique medieval manuscripts and hundreds of books printed before 1500 was deliberately torched.
24:25Over 150 innocent Belgian civilians were rounded up and shot.
24:30If any doubts had been harbored about the war, this action against the ordinary people of Belgium would remove them forever.
24:42This report was to produce an extraordinary effect on the British public.
24:46Between 30 August and 5 September, 174,901 new recruits joined the British Army.
24:55But at this moment, the British, French and Belgian armies were all retreating from the advancing Germans.
25:07Namur, surrounded by more 19th century forts, was attacked by heavy artillery.
25:12And just as at Liège, the forts were demolished one by one.
25:17The Krupp Miracle Howitzer, the English called Big Bertha, inflicting the worst of the damage.
25:25The Belgian army fell back once more, this time towards Antwerp.
25:36The British retreated towards France.
25:39The race to the sea was now on.
25:41If the Germans could secure the channel ports in Belgium and France, cutting off British reinforcement and outflanking the armies, the road to Paris would be open.
25:51Presenting Germany with a total victory.
26:00But two very unlikely Belgian civilians would have other ideas that would change the outcome of the war.
26:06In 1914, the Belgian army would be unique in one very special way.
26:21King Albert had been educated at the Belgian Military Academy and had joined the Regiment of Grenadiers in 1892.
26:27Twenty-two years later, he was commander-in-chief of his army and remained so throughout the war, the last European reigning monarch to do so.
26:40At the end of August, he received a letter from General Le Mans, the commander at Liège.
26:49Your Majesty is not ignorant that I was at Fort Lencon.
26:55You will learn with grief that the fort was blown up yesterday at 5.20pm, the greater part of the garrison being buried under the ruins.
27:04I was carried into a trench, after which I was made prisoner and taken to Liège in an ambulance.
27:12I am convinced that the honour of our arms has been sustained.
27:17I have not surrendered either the fortress or the forts.
27:20Dain, sire, to pardon my defects in this letter.
27:27I am physically shattered by the explosion of Lançois.
27:30In Germany, whither I am proceeding, my thoughts will be as they have ever been, of Belgium and the King.
27:41After the fall of Liège, the retreating Belgian army fell back on Antwerp.
27:46In late August and early September, they distinguished themselves by attacking the forward German columns and pushing them back several kilometres.
27:55The result was some 60,000 German soldiers diverted from France to Belgium,
28:01helping to relieve the pressure on French and British forces who had halted the German advance into France.
28:07But casualties were increasing on both sides.
28:16Captain Blum of the 12th Grenadiers himself fell victim, when in September 1914, he was shot and badly wounded.
28:27He was carried out of the front line by four of his men.
28:31When I came to again, I told Grandarte and Sherman to go back to their section where they would be badly missed,
28:41and thank them with all my heart for their kindness and care.
28:45I never saw them again.
28:47Both lie buried in France, near Arras.
28:50Eventually, I had to part with Nistrovsky and Polenz.
28:55In six weeks, at most lads, I'll be with you again, I said.
28:58But I have not seen them.
29:00Nistrovsky lies buried in the valley, not far from where he left me,
29:04and Polenz, away somewhere, in Russia.
29:07The small Belgian army were heroically holding up the German advance,
29:14but it could not hold out forever on its own, against overwhelming forces.
29:21The German heavy artillery began bombarding the Antwerp forts at the end of September.
29:25By the morning of the 10th of October, with Antwerp in danger of being surrounded,
29:3180,000 Belgian soldiers managed to outmaneuver the Germans and march west towards Ostend.
29:38Nothing, it seemed, could hold up the German advance for very long.
29:49By mid-October, the German army had captured the coastal ports of Zeebrugge and Ostend,
29:54and were now heading towards the remains of the Belgian army holding the line from the coast,
29:59along the west bank of the River Issa.
30:07King Albert was determined to hold on to the last remaining part of Belgian soil
30:11not occupied by the Germans.
30:18October 1914 is called the Race to the Sea,
30:21and it was the sea that was to have a decisive and dramatic effect.
30:36Vital support for the Belgians arrived on the 17th of October
30:40in the form of a group of British Navy ships
30:42which began pounding the German army with thousands of artillery shells.
30:53The ships were constantly under attack from submarines and German artillery,
30:57but with a great amount of skill and daring,
30:59the flotilla kept up the attack, giving invaluable support to the Belgian army
31:03and helping in preventing the Germans from seizing the important lock system at Newport.
31:08If the Belgian army on the coast could not stop the German advance,
31:13then the road to Dunkirk and Calais would be open,
31:16the defenders would be outflanked,
31:18and the war might well have been over by Christmas.
31:21This was the moment for a 51-year-old Belgian civilian,
31:28captain of a river barge, Hendrik Hierart, to take centre stage.
31:33By now, the all-conquering German army had already advanced to the east bank of the River Issa,
31:40which had been reclaimed from the sea hundreds of years before.
31:43In a desperate attempt to halt the attack, a plan was hastily agreed to flood this land using the locks and sluices at Newport,
31:53creating a large lake in which the German army would be unable to operate.
31:57With Newport under constant bombardment from German artillery, the official lock keepers had left the town along with most of the civilian population.
32:12The army now needed someone who could show them how to operate the complicated locks and sluices.
32:17Hirart volunteered.
32:23On the night of 21 October, Hendrik Hierart led an officer and 17 soldiers to the Spring Sluice,
32:30and by 2300 they had raised both gates and the sea began to enter the land.
32:36It was none too soon.
32:40Next day, the Germans managed to get over the River Issa to the west bank, south of Newport,
32:45the bridgehead they established posed a real danger to the Belgian defence.
32:51Now more desperate measures were needed.
32:56Another civilian, Carol Koha, a 59-year-old water authority supervisor, came forward with a plan to flood the west bank of the river,
33:06forcing the Germans back to higher ground and giving the Belgian forces a natural defensive position.
33:12It was a large engineering undertaking as many connecting canals had to be dammed.
33:18Koha's local knowledge helped the army achieve this crucial task.
33:23However, progress was still very slow, and Hendrik Hierart again came to the rescue.
33:30In order to increase the flow of water to the land, he and four soldiers made their way to the large north fart lock to open the gates.
33:39They were very close to German lines.
33:42They opened 16 gates, letting in the tide.
33:46But this procedure had to be reversed as the tide receded.
33:49This action was carefully repeated every day for four days, all within hearing distance of the German forces.
33:57The water has risen markedly. Since yesterday morning, it has increased in depth by about one and a half metres.
34:10All companies are standing with their feet in water, and ground water is being encountered at the depth of a single spade.
34:18It is impossible for the battalion to attack, because the major drainage ditch in front of the embankment is now about ten metres wide.
34:30On 31 October, the order to retreat was given to the German army due to the rising waters, forcing them back several kilometres.
34:37It was a total success for the Belgian war effort.
34:49As a result, the coastal area around Newport was never to fall into German hands.
34:55The Belgian army had lost 14,000 men, but the race to the sea had been won, with the aid of two very unlikely men.
35:07Carole Coher was personally awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Leopold by the King.
35:15At great personal risk, Henrik Hierart stayed with the soldiers controlling the locks at Newport for the rest of the war,
35:23maintaining a key role in regulating the level of the water over the flooded land.
35:28For this service to his country, Henrik Hierart received several decorations.
35:33He survived the war and died on the afternoon of 17 January 1925.
35:40The following morning, King Albert arrived to personally pay his respects.
35:49With the coastal route to the French channel ports blocked, the German army now focused their attention on the next available access road to France.
35:57And that ran through the small Belgian city of Ypres.
36:02That today the city looks very much as it did in the autumn of 1914 is something of a miracle,
36:09as it was totally destroyed in the four years that followed,
36:13when it became infamous for the death and destruction that accumulated on the armies of both sides.
36:18Death in the Great War was to reach every family, even the British monarchy was to suffer.
36:32On the 27th of October 1914, in the defence of the Ypres salient, a cousin of the King of England, Lieutenant Prince Maurice of Battenburg, was hit by shrapnel and killed.
36:46He is buried in Ypres.
36:49Like every British and Commonwealth soldier to die in Belgium, he remains in the land he defended.
36:55The following year, things were to get infinitely worse for the defending armies in Belgium.
37:03An unimaginable horror that could never have been foreseen.
37:07On the 22nd of April, at 5pm around the village of Lanemark,
37:12the Germans released 180,000 kilos of gas over a six-kilometre front from 5,700 cylinders.
37:19A yellowish, greenish cloud emerged from the German lines.
37:28None of the defenders knew what it was, as it headed gently on the wind towards two French infantry divisions and their trenches.
37:37It was the first mass poison gas attack of the war.
37:41The gas was chlorine.
37:43Without protection, it killed and maimed by turning the human body fluids into hydrochloric acid.
37:55At least 6,000 Frenchmen died in this first attack.
37:59The exact number is unknown, with many more dying days later.
38:04It was an agonising death.
38:07This is the memorial to those who died that day.
38:14The French soldiers could not remain in the trenches which became death traps.
38:30But remarkably, here, at the village of Steenstraat, the Belgian infantry held the line of the canal against repeated German attacks,
38:40despite a constant artillery barrage of chlorine gas shells.
38:44None of the defenders having gas masks, as no one had envisaged a poison gas attack.
38:51It was beyond anyone's thinking.
38:53Not one German attack successfully made it across the canal.
39:00Once again, the Belgian army distinguished itself.
39:04Just to the south is the infamous area known as Hill 60.
39:10This tranquil place is Hill 60 today.
39:13With great loss of life, it was captured by the German infantry from the French on 10 December 1914.
39:23The British were determined to take back Hill 60.
39:27To avoid the massive loss of life of a frontal attack, they tunnelled under the hill and placed their five huge mines totalling 10,000 pounds of high explosive.
39:38Just after 7pm, on 17 April 1915, they set off the mines.
39:51It was the largest man-made explosion to that date.
39:55Over 150 German soldiers on the hill simply vanished.
40:00The British army rushed men into the five massive craters that had been created.
40:04For the next 13 days, it was under constant German artillery bombardment.
40:10On the 1st of May, the first chlorine gas attack on the British was made on Hill 60, followed by more in the following days.
40:18On the morning of the 5th of May, another gas attack finally cleared the trenches of British soldiers and the Germans retook the hill.
40:25The short defence of Hill 60 had lost the British army, over 3,000 men killed and many more wounded in those few days.
40:36Defending Belgium had become a war of attrition.
40:39To the utter dismay of the inhabitants of the Belgian city of Ypres, on 7 October 1914, an advanced reconnaissance cavalry unit of the German army had ridden straight through the city.
40:53On the old pre-war men in gate stood two sculpted lions guarding the road.
40:54After the Germans left, the superstitious residents of Ypres placed straw in the mouths of the lions.
40:56It was believed that they had been killed by the Germans.
40:57It was believed that they had been killed by the Germans.
40:58To the utter dismay of the inhabitants of the Belgian city of Ypres, on 7 October 1914, an advanced reconnaissance cavalry unit of the German army had ridden straight through the city.
41:07On the old pre-war men in gate stood two sculpted lions guarding the road.
41:14After the Germans left, the superstitious residents of Ypres placed straw in the mouths of the lions.
41:22It was believed that the Germans would not re-enter Ypres again until the lions had eaten the straw.
41:29The lions played their part.
41:31The straw would remain uneaten and the German army would not be seen at the men in gate.
41:37But their artillery would utterly destroy the city.
41:45In June 1915, Captain Morgan Crofton of the 7th Cavalry Brigade described what was left of the once picturesque medieval city.
41:55The town is a mere heap of rubble, cinders and rubbish.
41:59Not a cat lives there now.
42:02It is the abomination of desolation.
42:05The fields around the town are crammed with the graves of our dead.
42:09The smell is awful, and the hum of myriads of awful-looking flies which have been holding orgies on the putrid bodies of countless dead along the trench lines is unmistakable.
42:20By 1915, the battle around Ypres has become a stalemate, where offensive and counter-offensive achieved very little.
42:29Captain Crofton wrote in his diary what it was like to move into the frontline trenches at night.
42:34After a long wait, we filed down the narrow communication trench which led to our frontline.
42:41A group of ten dead soldiers were laid in a line next to the ration dump which was going to be issued to us.
42:46We stumbled down the trench, making slow progress, and halfway up was blocked by a dead man over whom we slipped and fell in the darkness.
42:56At the end of about fifty yards, we came to our frontline of trenches which stretched away to the left and right of the communications trench up which we had come.
43:04A man lay across a front trench, very badly wounded. He was removed after a great deal of difficulty and delay, for the trenches were very narrow and only about five feet deep.
43:18The majority of casualties in this war were caused not by rifle or machine gun fire, but by artillery.
43:25At about ten a.m., the first shells fell over our trench. These increased in number until about ten-thirty, when a perfect inferno was raging all over our line.
43:36At about eleven a.m., I saw four shells burst in a line about ten yards from me.
43:42The force of the explosion went through my ears like a knife, making me perfectly deaf.
43:47Wounded men with panic-stricken faces now began to drag themselves painfully along the narrow trench.
43:53Some were hit in the head, some in the stomach and one or two in the legs, all by splinters.
44:00We had no doctor and could do very little for them.
44:06In just one month, May 1915, the British Army defending Ypres would lose 3,600 officers and 26,346 regular soldiers.
44:21One thousand young men were dying every day.
44:27On the 24th of May 1915, the war claimed another victim.
44:33On that day, a gas attack killed a young man, one of the youngest soldiers to die in the war.
44:40Private John Condon, from Waterford in Ireland, was just 14 years old.
44:51He lies not far from where he fell, defending a small part of Belgium.
44:56In this cemetery lie 7,479 British and Commonwealth soldiers.
45:07On these headstones, all made from the same Portland stone, some 6,230 have no name.
45:18Nearby is Tyne Cot, the largest British and Commonwealth cemetery containing nearly 12,000 men.
45:31Here again, almost two-thirds of the graves are known only unto God.
45:37John Condon was not the only 14-year-old defending Belgium.
45:44In September 1917, also in the trenches around Ypres, Private David Ross was wounded.
45:52He was 13 years and nine months old.
45:55He recovered and returned to his regiment in March 1918 and was again wounded in the huge German offensive which began on the 21st of the same month.
46:08The young man from South Africa, David Schalker Ulundi Ross, died of his wounds aged just 14 years and three months.
46:17Despite massive gains in the battlefield elsewhere, the German army never captured the city of Ypres.
46:31The autumn of 1918 saw a dramatic change in the conflict.
46:36The defending armies went on the attack themselves.
46:39For that final campaign against the German army, King Albert was appointed Allied Commander,
46:48in overall charge of troops from Britain, France and Belgium,
46:52in the offensive that finally pushed the German army from his country.
46:57After four horrific years, in which countless millions lost their lives,
47:02on the 11th of November 1918, at 1100 hours, hostilities finally ceased.
47:13The German army, which regarded itself as the most powerful fighting machine in the world,
47:18was in retreat to its own frontiers, broken and defeated.
47:25But the Saint-Symphorium cemetery illustrates the heartbreak of the last stories of the First World War.
47:32Shortly before 11am, on the final day of the war, the 5th Royal Irish Lancers were five miles east of Mons.
47:43Private George Edwin Ellison was shot and killed.
47:50He was 40 years old.
47:52He was the last British soldier to die in the war.
47:56But unfortunately, not the last fatality.
47:59Shortly afterwards, close by, in the village of Ville-sur-Raine, at 10.58am, only two minutes before the ceasefire, a shot rang out.
48:15A German sniper had opened fire to take one final life.
48:22A Canadian private, George Lawrence Price, was hit and killed.
48:27These two men lie in the cemetery at Saint-Symphorium, which contains the first death and the last deaths of the war to end all wars.
48:39King Albert of Belgium, a passionate and experienced mountaineer, died in a climbing accident in 1934.
48:54A grateful nation built, in tribute, this memorial in Newport near the locks and sluices that had played such an important part in defending his beloved Belgian soil.
49:07This cafe, very close to those same locks, commemorates the name of Hendrik Hierart, the very ordinary hero who organised the flooding of the fields, which stopped the German army advance.
49:22Walter Blum was wounded several times, and was twice awarded one of Germany's highest military honours, the Iron Cross.
49:33He survived the war, and on his return to civilian life, he continued writing books and plays, including three books describing his experiences in the trenches.
49:43He died in 1951 at the age of 83.
49:50Captain Sir Morgan Crofton was a professional soldier and, unlike many of his contemporaries, survived the war, dying in 1958 at the age of 79.
50:04The First World War still continues to cast its shadows over Belgium, particularly around Ypres.
50:10Unexploded ordnance still litters the land.
50:15In the summer of 1955, a lightning strike caused a World War I bomb to explode, creating an enormous crater.
50:25But there are still at least four unexploded mines left under the ground somewhere close by.
50:31The remains of soldiers from the Great War are still being found and reburied in the cemeteries with full military honours,
50:42finally joining their comrades who were laid to rest 100 years earlier.
50:46In this small stretch of land, they called the Ypres salient, there are now three great memorials to the missing soldiers who fell in the defence of Belgium and have no known grave.
51:03At Tyne Cot Cemetery, on the Wall of the Missing, are 34,957 names.
51:16And at the Great Memorial at the Menin Gate, in the rebuilt city of Ypres, the walls contain 54,896 names.
51:33Their stories are mostly forgotten, but one will suffice to illustrate the painful realities of the war.
51:46Here on this wall are the names of two Seabrook brothers from Australia, Theo and George, killed by the same artillery shell on the 20th of September, 1917, whose bodies were never found.
52:00At the same time, their younger brother, 21-year-old William Seabrook, was seriously wounded and carried from the same battlefield to a medical centre.
52:12William died the next day.
52:15Unlike his brothers, his name is not on the Wall of the Missing.
52:20He lies buried 10 kilometres away in Lysentuk Military Cemetery.
52:24They are not forgotten, they who do not grow old.
52:36At the Menin Gate, in Ypres, every evening at 8pm, 365 days a year, the last post is played, in remembrance of the world.
53:05He died, in remembrance of all those who died between 1914 and 1918, in the defence of Belgium.
53:14A very stable, in remembrance of all women's nine-year-old Craig, indeed.
53:15He died, in remembrance of all the nations who died in the defence of the رأevi, in the defence of the United States,
53:17by the menin Cemetery, on the first his own household of the menin Cemetery.
53:19The people who died in the defence of the sea to be discouraged.
53:21The people who died in the defence of the landis, in the defence of beautiful countries,
53:23and were of the tsarines, in the defence of theplay,
53:24in the defence of the south seas, in the defence of the south seas,
53:25the one who died in the honour of the west seas...
53:27He was chosen to act with the force of the nightman and the chef de Kieson,
53:28the other people who died in the tower of the tower.
53:29¶¶
53:59¶¶
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