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00:00we're here at the magnificent belton house in lincolnshire but for once we're not looking for
00:13some lost wing or digging up the ornamental gardens about a century ago there was another
00:20community in residence here and they weren't the servants of the brownlow family who owned the
00:26estate for years the army camps on the brownlow's property just beyond that run of trees over there
00:34there were thousands of them and during the first world war they came here to learn how to operate
00:39something very modern and very lethal yeah dad if this is real you are very very dead right we'll be
00:46uncovering the history of an elite force the machine gun corps who underwent intensive training here at
00:52belton and their massive army camp that once covered this landscape less than hundred years
01:01ago there's a whole town here and it's gone it's fairly impressive isn't it god and rather heavy
01:11too we're going to turn the clock back a hundred years and find out what happened when belton went
01:17to war and we've got just three days to do it
01:21we're here at belton to uncover the story of the machine gun corps a little known section of the
01:46british army who played a vital role in world war one and to discover what's left of their training camp
01:52which was dismantled lock stock and barrel after the war
01:56francis prior is in charge and he's spotted what he thinks is one of the very few imprints of a building
02:07on the site where are we going to dig first i think the first trench is going to be over there
02:12in those stingy metals i think there's something really juicy in there he's deploying time teams
02:18phil harding and landscape archaeologist stuart ainsworth to investigate stuart yeah francis
02:25reckons this is the right place to start do you buy that well it is if we're looking for the ymca that's
02:30for sure are you serious yeah really we know on this site there's a ymca building yeah and it's
02:37marked on this plan of 1960 there you are ymca well that's a pretty good clue isn't it why would
02:44we want to look for the ymca well laying aside the fact it was a sort of social center of the camp
02:50more to the point we know there is a building here you can see earthworks and we're going to go
02:57down and look what the evidence looks like in the ground and that's what we don't know at this
03:02stage but what we do want to try and find is some evidence of the people that actually
03:08functioned in this building so the ymca is is then it is tony and we better do it fast
03:15the young men's christian association had a presence on most military camps in world war one
03:22back then it would have been one of the few places where soldiers could go to get a break
03:27from the rigors of training that might be it there's a nail there's bits of glass i don't think
03:35we're going to need to take off much more than that to be quite honest
03:38we're looking for finds that'll help us reveal the story of the 170 000 elite soldiers who trained here
03:47to be machine gunners their stories partly lost because most of the machine gun corps records were
03:53destroyed in a fire and in the blitz in world war ii our dig could help to put the gunners back on the map
04:03belton park had been occupied by the army since the late 1890s with the men housed in rows of tents
04:10but in 1915 it underwent a transformation extensive infrastructure was put in including a sewage
04:19works and a railway station it even had electricity at a time when the majority of homes had none
04:30with such a complex site we've brought in military archaeologist martin brown to help us decide where
04:37to focus our efforts so how does this all fit with what we know about the military yeah well each of
04:42these sort of pairs of of rows here these are barrett blocks in the middle of them you've got the wash
04:48houses the pollution blocks and their cook houses there's officers quarters to go with them so that
04:53there's a very you know literally regimental structure regimented structure across the landscape um
04:59but then of course there are the attendant features that support those there's a the church of
05:03england room roman catholic and then up here the ymca hut and that's where you can go you get a cup
05:10of tea you can write a letter home slightly outside the military structure but still within the camp
05:14so how long were people actually living this life in in the camp i mean how long was their training
05:20when the machine gun schools here it's six weeks intensive specialist training and you know that sounds
05:25like quite a long time but what you have to remember is you're taking people who've got very little
05:30experience of of the specialist work they're doing and at the end of it they're meant to leave here
05:34and be able to go to the western front and win a war i mean why don't we go out and geofiz one of
05:41these blocks i'm glad you're saying one of these blocks because it's such an extensive complex and we
05:47can only sample part of that but if our survey takes in a variety of buildings then hopefully we may
05:54get a better understanding how they were constructed what they were used for john's geofiz team sets to
06:03work they're targeting a selection of buildings including a barrack hut a canteen a washing block
06:10and one of the camps roads to see if there are any solid remains in the ground so you've got the
06:16footprint of a building there yeah there and there john's results give us possible targets in two
06:24different types of building one in a kitchen block and another in a barrack hut enticing enough to open
06:31two more trenches cassie newland is going to take on the barrack trench and there's some extra help from
06:39martin brown he's unearthed photos from belton house archive which shows some of the hearts under
06:45construction what's interesting is if you compare that to the photograph they were clad with modern
06:50materials of the day corrugated iron and asbestos sheeting it just speaks of wartime emergency and
06:58throwing these camps up doesn't it with uh you know the minimum minimum frame and uh cladding them in
07:04the asbestos yeah but when you stand them against the tents oh massive improvement yeah so for anyone
07:10sitting over here just out of shot waiting for their home to be built oh yes they must have looked
07:14very cozy but what was it about the war which made building the hundreds of wooden huts at belton so
07:21urgent the answer was in the killing fields of the western front where trench warfare was being
07:30transformed by the horrors of the machine gun it had been invented 30 years earlier but it was the
07:37germans who'd realized its true potential they created special machine gun companies who deployed their guns
07:44in concentrated groups our forces weren't so well prepared each infantry battalion had two machine guns
07:54but these were spread out thinly across the entire front we were outgunned our men being slaughtered
08:02so in october 1915 a year into the war the unprecedented decision was taken to form a new force
08:09the machine gun corps was born it needed somewhere to train and fast belton came into its own it was a vast
08:18site that the army was already using for training and was easily adapted for the new machine gun corps
08:26back at the ymca trench phil hasn't found any of the building's structure so he's extended the trench
08:32now the ground contains more debris including loads of white pottery and one piece leaves us in no doubt
08:40we're in the right place
08:44what you got there trace well we're in a ymca and there you go ymca look at that this isn't going to be your normal time
08:54team with lots of deep trenches the archaeology is so near the surface here that these are going to be more like scrapings
09:01martin what have we scraped up so far well some really rather nice stuff um there's a whole range of
09:08fines here um but this this is really lovely look at that w adams and company 1915 date on it and the w in
09:19the lozenge war department contract perfect piece of dating material that isn't it this is actually my
09:24favorite you've got three little pieces of pottery what could that word possibly be what could that
09:33word be
09:37it's horlicks
09:38it's cold it's wet it's miserable you've been out all day doing training
09:46actually if you go up to the ymca hut or the church army hut there's probably a nice local
09:51lady who will serve you a warming mug of horlicks as a bit of comfort
09:56a pint of beer from the ymca anybody
09:59now i've seen these before on other campsites i've got a theory about these pink mugs the army
10:06try to keep the camps relatively alcohol free so what i suspect they're using these pink mugs for
10:11in places like the ymca is to serve pints of cocoa and in a pink mug yes because if the soldiers pinch
10:18them and take them back to the barracks you can do an inspection and you can spot them straight away
10:22if you tried that you might not look so rough in the morning a kilometer from the ymca at the barrack
10:37hut the photograph showing the construction of the site reveals chimney pipes on the exterior of each of
10:43the buildings these match where geophys picked up a solid structure just inside the wall of cass's
10:50barrack hut where now something's coming up do you know what i think it is you know fire clay when
10:57you're making connections between stoves and fluids and things like that i think it's flat it's a fire
11:02clay join so i think what we do have is whatever's left of that stove just dropped through the floor
11:12it's sat directly on just a big pile of asbestos really yeah stove's a valuable item that you can
11:19reuse somewhere else whereas bits of broken asbestos ain't yeah do you want to just clean back the last
11:25of it and then we'll get in and tidy and see what's going on the asbestos could be from the stove surround
11:31and while it's damp it's not a danger to the diggers but those who built the camp in 1915 would have had
11:36no idea it was dangerous across the road at the cookhouse trench they've found a drain and a water pipe
11:45which is surprising because even the pipework was supposed to have been removed in the cleanup which
11:50took place after the camp was decommissioned the thorough cleanup of the site and the fact we're
11:57dealing with buildings that don't seem to have solid foundations is proving frustrating for matt
12:03there's no indication at all of any ground surface or any certain or any the level that the building
12:08would have been on so it's not looking good for finding the buildings i'm getting the strong
12:12impression that these buildings were all raised you know if you look at the photographs very carefully
12:19you can see that they are actually raised on on short wooden posts so i think archaeologically
12:24this is this is a nightmare frankly
12:30if all the buildings are wooden and built above ground it's questionable how much more geophys can do
12:36but john hasn't given up yet with a site that's a mile wide there's still hope that some of the
12:41buildings may have solid foundations the archives of the machine gun corps may have been lost but our
12:51presence here has already attracted people who've been turning up with photos and documents that are
12:57adding to our understanding of the camp this is rather nice lads hot off the press we've just been given
13:04this by a local resident ymca number two heart belton park that is incredible i mean how often do you
13:15actually see in a photograph an image of a building you could be looking at in the ground some of those
13:22those objects in that photograph who knows they could be some of these objects in the trail we know that
13:30these come from the ymca building what is most incredible is this piece here this is absolutely
13:37unique i mean it is the reason that we've come here look machine gun corps it's even got crossed
13:45machine guns isn't it like you would get cross sword so we've had a great first day the stuff that's
13:50been coming up has been fantastic here in our first trench we know where we are the ymca and we know who
13:59we're here the machine gun corps who knows what we'll find tomorrow
14:14beginning of day two here at belton park in lincolnshire and the good news is the sun's shining
14:20but the bad news is that the world war one machine gunnery training camp that we've been looking for
14:26is proving surprisingly hard to find which is odd given that it's only about a hundred years old
14:31but the word the archaeologists were using yesterday was ephemeral in other words most of the buildings
14:37were made of wood but yesterday evening john came up with this geophys which seems to show something
14:42much more robust down here francis what do you think that might be well we're actually over one of the
14:48kitchen blocks several buildings all about food preparation and actually eating meals but what's
14:55fascinating is that the geophys shows a mass of blobs you know there's a lot of archaeology there so
15:01where do we put the trench in um i'm going to put the first trench in over there which will be on the
15:05corner of that building there um and i'm putting quite a big trench about a five meter square one
15:11there were more than a dozen of these kitchen blocks across the site and each would have been
15:20making meals for a thousand men this was an industrial scale operation for machine gunners
15:27about to play a part in europe's first industrial scale war
15:33right across the site fines have been coming from just below the surface
15:37and matt and rakshar's new trench is no different so we're going for unfortunately there's no uh
15:45there's no design on it there's nothing on the base is there no unfortunately not it's pretty clean
15:51that white glaze is all over the place well it's not bad for the first few swings of the bucket is it
15:55no it's not bad at all and well spotted right
15:58this is the vicar's machine gun there's not been one here at belton for 90 years since world war one
16:10it was much loved by the gunners because it was reliable so good that there were some still in
16:15service in the 1960s we want to understand how this powerful weapon revolutionized the british army's
16:23approach to the war to help us we've called in military historian andy robertshaw
16:30does this come real this is a real thing this is a a vicar's machine gun
16:36what we're going to do is set it up um actually on its tripod here yeah that barrel assembly sits on that tripod
16:45and this is something that they would have been doing here on a regular basis
16:48you know during the war as they learned to be machine gunners what's so special about the machine
16:53gun what's special is that this really is a full machine gun rather than something like the
16:58gatling gun you know where you've got to crank a handle at the side yeah that depends upon you
17:02actually you're putting your arm and turning it around this thing what it does is it uses the energy
17:08from the bullet on the way out to reload itself how does it do that well if you can imagine you've
17:12got a belt of bullets going into it and then when you fire the weapon what then will happen
17:17is that the bullet will go towards the target you know up to about three kilometers but then all
17:22the working parts are thrown back and as long as you're holding the safety caption trigger it'll
17:28continue to cycle through it'll fire itself even though you're doing nothing as long as you're
17:32holding the safety action trigger together this implies that we're actually going to fire it
17:38yes we really are we really are
17:40back at the trenches the archaeologists are determined to find something left behind after
17:50the 1922 cleanup operation when the camp was closed down first thing this morning rakshar and
17:57matt made a good start in the kitchen trench with an early find but there's been nothing on the finds
18:02front since in our first trench though the ymca is continuing to produce find after find
18:14as one of the few non-military organizations on the camp the ymca would have been a focal point for the
18:20young gunners when off duty and we're getting some really lovely sort of objects of the social side of
18:27the the soldiers at the camp but we're rather suspect we've also got military objects here as
18:32well how about that um well that that speaks of uh of people training and firing uh this is uh
18:40a british round 303 it's been fired i think i mean is that the sort of cartridge you'd expect from a
18:46machine gun could be a machine gun could be a rifle they are the same here um so it's difficult
18:50to tell really but nonetheless it speaks of training and that is very very nice that's the
18:57end of a swagger stick it's a stick about about that long with a little ferrule on one end and
19:03this end would have been shiny either copper or silvered um and it's designed so that when a soldier
19:09is walking out going out into town he doesn't put his hands in his pockets and basically you're
19:14encouraged to buy those fairly cheap you know piece of stick little ferrule on one end and you just
19:19walked around in your hands the nearby town of grantham would have been transformed by the presence of
19:29thousands of young soldiers some wolfram's church is one of the only places where the men of the machine
19:36gun corps are remembered with the loss of most of the records it's up to the gunner's descendants to
19:44keep alive the memory of the sacrifice they made in world war one one such soldier is charles pashler
19:53who trained at belton in march 1917 he was posted to france on the western front four months later near arras
20:02he was killed by a shell his possessions were gathered up and returned to his widow in a bag which
20:08his grandson bill has brought in what was in the bag well several things really the first thing which
20:16was very personal was his pipe well chewed slightly battered around the bowl what must it have been
20:23like for his widow you know he would have had it with him when he left the house and he wasn't coming
20:28back but this had that's right possibly to my mind the most poignant of the lot was the diary
20:36that actually was on his body of course and inside the diary are the names of a lot of the men he
20:43trained with and even the hut numbers in belton park the last entry yes 23rd of july went into line
20:53yes and that's it and but the reverse of the diary itself is something particularly poignant
21:02that there looks differently like blood stains where there's a shell fragment or a fragment of
21:08metal that's penetrated the diary and it was a tiny fragment yes but the fact there's blood on it
21:17is again one wonders what my grandmother thought when she received all these that have and she would
21:22have perhaps flicked through it and found that she would he had three little girls and she had to bring them
21:28up alone for seven years from 1915 the sound of machine guns reverberated around this park
21:44and to understand the role of belton camp you have to understand how battlefield tactics changed because
21:50of the machine gun and why such a huge effort was being made here to train specialist soldiers
21:57andy hi so that's it you're actually going to fire it that's the idea just such an amazing thing to
22:05actually see that i mean my grandfather went through the entire first world war yeah i know he wasn't in
22:12the machine gun corps but he would have heard that weapon and that hasn't been heard it around here for
22:17a few years has it we'll be firing blanks but don't want to spread panic among the golfers 2000 meters away
22:27attention all golfers be aware we are about to fire a machine gun thanks that's fine
22:36until andy pressed that trigger this because machine gun hadn't been fired for over 70 years
22:58and it was quite incredible it was i mean let's say we've got those uh golfers down there i mean they
23:08would be they would be dead if we wanted to get them we could have got no problems at all and running
23:14wouldn't have helped just beggars belief doesn't it what would have been going through somebody's mind
23:20knowing they had to clamber out of a trench walk across open country into literally what was well a hail of
23:28bullets a wall of death it's just a matter of luck you know whether you make it or not you know just
23:33that question will you get to the other side
23:43by 1916 the british army had made up for lost time and the machine gun crews who trained here at belton
23:50were matching up to the german machine gunners
23:52at the barrack hut trench where yesterday cassie discovered asbestos she's continuing to dice with
24:01danger
24:04with time team's newest recruit rob hedge she's found another bullet which amazingly still has
24:10its explosive charge lovely partridge and lots and lots of yummy looking spaghetti spaghetti cordite
24:18is a nice explosive charge send the bullet out to kill people yes i'm just having to look
24:25i can't see any stamp on that no very plain quite badly corroded but it is definitely unfired hence the
24:33cordite
24:39when the machine gun training was at its most intense here they could easily have been firing a million
24:46rounds a week but we found just two bullets there must be a huge area we haven't found yet that's
24:54littered with them which means so far we've only got half the story
24:58what seems really important is to find out where people actually trained to fire the machine guns
25:06because it was these things which were the whole reason for the existence of belton park camp
25:20we're here at belton park in lincolnshire looking for an old world war one training camp where they
25:26used to teach the guys how to fire machine guns but the archaeology is really ephemeral rakshar what
25:32have you got in this trench well we've drawn a blank again there is nothing in this trench you see what
25:38i mean but all may not yet be lost because they did an extension to the trench and can you see where
25:45this brushing's going on it looks like we may have the beginnings of a wall meanwhile over on the rest of
25:52the site you can see how enormous it is the rest of the archaeologists looking for bullets
26:01and there should be millions of them but only if we can find where the machine guns were fired
26:07francis has given that task to stewart if you look at the map of the camp what it shows in this position
26:15here yeah it's a rifle range it's just this one thing here about 50 yards long but i mean it's
26:21it's ludicrously small isn't it it's absolutely tiny i mean i wouldn't have thought you'd be you're
26:26shooting off you know pea shooter so presumably the main machine gun ranges have got to be away from the
26:32camp i think so there's no indication on any of these maps that's machine gun areas in here i think you've
26:37got to be somewhere out in the countryside around this camp to be doing proper machine gun training
26:45while stewart goes off searching for the training ground francis is still hoping to find more evidence
26:50of the hundreds of buildings where the gunners lived earlier in the day we opened a trench over
26:57what we believe is a kitchen block where it looks like there could be a structure below the ground
27:02rakshar and matt have made some finds that take us right back to the early days of world war one
27:11look at this this actually has the date on it 1914 yep so that's pretty bang on the money i think you
27:20don't need a pottery specialist for that do you no but something that's really really interesting that's
27:24come out of this pit is this pipe that's exactly part of a clay tobacco pipe it is because whenever i
27:31think of the first world war soldiers now i always think of you know cigarettes hand-rolled cigarettes
27:35you're right but you're also wrong because this is something called a kaja pipe and we know that
27:40because it's much thicker the stem's thicker on the this bowl would have been massive and very
27:45ostentatiously uh decorated but these were still smoked during the first world war so it is possible
27:52that maybe an officer was smoking a very highly decorative pipe you can just imagine it can't you
28:01that's what's going to happen
28:05our military historian andy robertshaw has always fancied the role of officer in charge and now he
28:11has his chance he's conscripted a squad of local archaeologists and he's going to put them through
28:18some of the training of a world war one machine gun crew that'll do i think
28:22the machine gun corps trainees were the cream of the army's recruits they needed to be good at maths
28:32and had to be mechanically minded but tough enough to construct defenses for the machine guns and their
28:38crew of six what's going on andy i didn't know we're putting in another trench uh we're not doing
28:45another trench of exploration this is experimentation here the trying out the techniques that we used in
28:511915 to build a machine gun position we've actually got a drawing which was done by somebody in the
28:56camp and this is what you're recreating that's the idea what we've got then is a plinth where we'll put
29:01the machine gun we'll put that in there later on and what that allows us to do then is have it firing
29:06down the valley that way or if the germans come from our sort of your right my left we can swing it
29:12round and fire down the valley as well you're going to be able to rig that up in the day and a half that
29:17we've got left we hope so but we do have some experts with us uh john john can i borrow you
29:24this is john john's grandfather was actually here doing the same job he was trained in the camp wasn't
29:31he he was i'm sam's photograph which one's he then this gentleman sat here behind the vickers and when
29:38was he here february 16 oh great this is a real family thing isn't it it is isn't it and what he may do
29:43is just leave it all to john because he's obviously the expert obviously runs in the family you know
29:47as long as you can get it done before the end of tomorrow we'll all be happy uh we hope so uh team
29:53lads let's just crack on we've got to keep going that's clear all right
30:04stewart's piecing together clues from reports of the machine gun firing ranges there are a couple of
30:10place names on these documents that seem to be relevant alma woods and peas cliff we've got a few
30:18clues as to where they might be uh the name peas cliff is mentioned a lot where the golf club is
30:24over there and alma wood over there is mentioned so we've got at least two clues which i can go and
30:28have a look and see if anything's alive how can you identify them from the air well what we should be
30:32looking for is a is a is a great big bank which is used to stop the bullets it's a big earthen bank
30:38good luck yeah thanks very much dense tree cover at alma woods rules out any observation there
30:48so stewart heads over a railway line which disappears into a tunnel on the map it's marked as pease cliff
30:56tunnel it's the adjacent golf course where stewart turns his attention this landscape is a challenge
31:03but amongst the man-made bunkers and greens he spots a much larger land form obscured by trees
31:10only further investigations on the ground will confirm whether or not this is part of the lost
31:16pease cliff firing range that's good
31:23back on the site and his squad of trench diggers are attempting to build a machine gun emplacement
31:29from where the gun can be fired this is exactly what john gary's granddad would have been doing
31:35before he went off to the front john it was your granddad was here wasn't he it was yeah yeah so he
31:42was doing this kind of job yes well we assume he was but unfortunately he never told so no absolutely
31:49never gave his opinions on how to build the better trench positions no no or his experiences of it
31:54unfortunately so yeah never at all no wouldn't talk to anybody about any aspect at all it was like
32:00so many of them yeah that's the way things were unfortunately so what their way of dealing with
32:04it and helping other people deal with it yeah they only have a day left to finish it ready for the
32:10firing of machine gun while our archaeologists still have the small matter of the lost firing range
32:17and buildings to contend with but it's the end of day two and everyone's off to our makeshift machine
32:25gunners arms nearby grantham may be famous for producing the first woman prime minister
32:37but there's another famous local woman who had to contend with the realities of thousands of soldiers
32:42here the most interesting strong woman in my opinion is edith smith and she was the head of the first
32:50women's uh branch of the police force set up in grantham first one anywhere that were allowed to arrest
32:54people and her express job was to hang around outside belton camp picking up ladies of the night
33:00shall we say so they didn't come and interfere with machine gunners
33:03you know that we said that we thought one of the most important things to find would be the place
33:14where the guys practice firing their machine guns well stewart's been up in the helicopter this
33:20afternoon and he thinks he's got the answer has he we'll find out tomorrow
33:28it's our last day at belton park and we've got just eight hours left
33:32to complete our investigation of the training camp where over 170 000 men were trained
33:38during world war one but when the camp was closed in 1922 the site was thoroughly cleared
33:45finding anything significant in the ground has been a big challenge for our diggers
33:53at the barracut trench we opened on day one we've uncovered the edge of the camp's main road
33:58in the ground we found the remains of a wooden structure our first thought was that this was a
34:04sill beam which is a beam set in the ground acting as a foundation for the barrack hut but it turned
34:11out to be a wooden gutter now though martin brown believes the hut was set a meter further back from
34:17the road good yes i think we've got something structural for you go on what that looks like is a
34:25timberline gutter just at the side of the road what we've got in here is this dark stain there and
34:35that's the ghost of the sill beam it is all very tenuous though isn't it oh is this a sill beam no it's
34:41a drain is this a sill beam we don't know well not really tony i mean if that was on an anglo-saxon
34:46site you'd be in no doubt that would be a sill beam it is frustrating but isn't the great thing about
34:51this you know less than 100 years ago there's a whole town here and it's gone yeah and that
34:58the road and just these very ephemeral traces that's all we've got left of it
35:05we're struggling to find any of the barrack huts but luckily we can still see one of them today
35:11after the war when the belton camp was closed building materials were in short supply so many
35:22of the huts were recycled and some even taken down and reassembled martin and cassie have gone off site
35:31to the nearby village of denton with the last 90 years one of belton's huts has been the village hall
35:40thank you oh no this is great isn't that nice yeah that's perfect you can really sort of see
35:49sort of the layout of the whole thing now can't you because what it would be bunks down the edges
35:52coming in the beds on either side mess tables centrally down the middle which they use for
35:58eating and actually we've got picture here that gives you a fair idea of what one of these would
36:02look like that's amazing it could actually just be this high it could yeah and the beds are clever
36:07because they they slide back to create space a little bit like a sort of modern futon you know
36:12you look at this you just imagine the smell of damp soldiers wood bines machine gun oil and you're
36:19there fantastic
36:20the machine gunners who lived here were part of an elite force vital to the war effort theirs was such
36:31a high risk job that unofficially they were known as the suicide club on the western front the machine
36:39gun units were often called upon to hold off the enemy so that others could retreat to safety
36:45local heroes second lieutenant graham musson met his end doing just that at the somme having stayed at
36:53his gun until the very last moment he was shot in the back as he tried to rejoin his comrades where
36:58he's buried no one knows graham trained at belton so his descendants have come here to share their story
37:05with phil my my grandfather was at passion dale too you know it's one of those things that everybody
37:13knows somebody who was yes yes in the first world war on the western front and actually it was we're
37:20quite lucky edith his sister gave me this letter and it's obviously a treasured letter she'd kept
37:27so i felt quite honored to be given it this physically came from the front yes this is what yes it's got
37:33france there on the top think of the happy times we have been privileged to have in the past
37:43so face the future with a courage based on the thoughts of these i always have believed that our
37:50destinies are mated out by god and wherever we are when our time comes we have to go so there is no
38:00greater peril for me here than elsewhere it's a very sort of eloquent way of it is yes and a very
38:11philosophical approach to the dangers that he was obviously facing yes it's a very cruel way to go
38:20no i mean if he would have been shot at his guns that's one thing but to be withdrawing
38:30it's uh it's not really fair is it graham's stoical bravery and sacrifice won him no special medals
38:42like so many others he was just doing his duty
38:45yesterday by combining information from documents maps and observations made from the air
39:00stewart came up with some ideas as to the whereabouts of the firing ranges
39:07now francis has deployed a crack team to the nearby golf course
39:11to settle once and for all the mystery of one of the lost firing ranges of the machine gun core
39:18seeing this i've staggered when i saw it from the air and i came i came straight down i had a look at
39:23this thing this morning and went into this and thought magic this is what we've been looking for
39:28and this magic staggering thing is a big bank hidden in those woods with a ditch in front of it and
39:36there's there's lots of things to see once we get around that corner over there so we're always
39:40wary of things on golf courses this isn't a golf course i'm pretty sure this this isn't some hazard
39:46created around the other this is the the locals who've helped us with our investigation
39:53have come up trumps again with an astounding piece of evidence
39:56this picture is absolutely fantastic it's taken from somewhere just a little bit up from where
40:04we're standing i reckon layers out there is more or less where these guys are now
40:10and the sort of muddy ditch in front of us actually is really quite a substantial deep excavation
40:17but you can be absolutely certain that this is our range and that is taken during the first world war
40:23definitely first world war belt tents in the background what the people are wearing that all
40:28fits and the mechanism is absolutely right as well all this pulley arrangement looks a bit heath robinson
40:34but it'll raise the targets up you fire at them you drop them back down again you can see how the guys
40:38are doing he's getting excited by gadgets i get excited by these great big earthworks phil and i know
40:44you get excited by fine so let's have a look hand it up john and richard we'll get that in place back on
40:53site and his recruits are getting a taste of what it would have been like to be a trainee gunner
40:59don't get your head down if this is real you are very very dead all right and it was the training
41:03officer's job to push the men to the limit get low get low get low pass it up and then get over there
41:09right that place ammunition coming what they learned here would give them a fighting chance at the
41:15front right either of those drop pull them out of the way and replace them in a foreign position
41:24crikey andy i feel scared well i suppose it's as real as we can make it it it really is you can just
41:31imagine yeah and it's fairly safe here low up on the surface where you are dangerous okay i'm off
41:40francis makes a hasty retreat to the safety of the kitchen trench after two days of digging
41:46we're finally making sense of one of the very few structures we've uncovered here we've been thinking
41:52about this concrete thing here as being a drain haven't we in a cookhouse but actually this concrete
41:58thing lines up pretty well with one of the hut walls so that concrete is the foundations and then
42:05there'd be blocks or bricks to form the the main part of the heart here so this is the first time
42:12and it's on the 59th minute of day three that we have got a sure fire hot wall with cinders on the
42:20inside so that's showing that that's probably floor coming up to the wall and not going outside i mean
42:27i'm really excited about that this is a 100 genuine hot wall and i'm exhausted that so am i
42:39at last a building and on the golf course hidden in the trees is a ditch behind which there's a raised
42:47bank here stewart's hunting party are in the rough looking for more evidence of the firing range
42:52that was quite interesting so is this where the targets would have been down in this hollow here
42:58yeah because then you've got the guys who are working them are out of danger from incoming fire
43:04and the targets get usually get raised up fired out lowered down again to get your scores and the
43:09bullets are coming straight up here yeah just straight down from yeah but from about 600 yards away
43:15down there and this is designed to stop them basically and when you think about it
43:22millions of bullets must have hit this bank over the course of the year's training here
43:27so we've got a wait you got one i've got two look look there's one there one there and another one
43:39there oh another one having been embedded in the bank all those years ago erosion has finally exposed
43:47them over there as well there some over here one air so what um what caliber are these martin well
43:55they look like 0.303 which is the standard caliber for the for the vicars and for the enfield rifles
44:02i tell you what you talk about solid and they heavy yeah and they heavy oh yeah i mean that's not
44:07going to do you a lot of good if i throw it at you let alone traveling at sort of the speed of sound
44:18the firing range was enormous wide enough for as many as 20 machine guns to be firing at once
44:24the sound of the guns would have been heard a mile away at the belton army camp and for long
44:30range firing of over 600 meters they had to close the road so that the gunners could fire over it
44:38our dig has revealed that of the hundreds of buildings few had foundations and all of them
44:44were built in a hurry in response to a crisis on the battlefield yet after the war just seven years
44:52after the machine gun corps was formed the elite force was disbanded the belton camp was no longer
44:59needed so piece by piece it was dismantled there's another dimension to what we've achieved the dig has
45:09brought together people from the locality and beyond each of them adding something to the
45:14history of the machine gun corps it's been quite a tough few days isn't it it has tony it's been
45:21very challenging indeed i mean i think the fines that we've revealed in the excavations have brought
45:26the lives of the men who served here to life but i think our real legacy will be that we have actually
45:34put the machine gun corps on the map i think it really is important that we should remember them
45:40because of the 170 000 men who trained here over 12 000 went to war and never came back again
45:48and it's in memory of them that phil's now going to fire a final salute okay john ready when you are
46:07so
46:2225 past seven for channel four news tonight but for unique insight on the day's big stories whenever you
46:27want sign up to snowmail at channel 4.com slash snowmail a funny movie next on four with an eco-friendly
46:34message so educational to boot brendan frazier stars in furry vengeance
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