- 11 hours ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00On the morning of the 2nd of August 1914, the Belgian countryside is peaceful and undisturbed.
00:07But 48 hours later, all hell was let loose.
00:13Germany invaded.
00:17Could a small country stop a German army ten times larger than its own?
00:22What 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
00:50and locked the opposing armies in a vice-like grip, from which they would only emerge four years later,
00:56by which time 57 countries had issued declarations of war against one another.
01:02It was truly the First World War.
01:19A small First World War military cemetery, Saint-Sinforian, 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
01:42dead,
01:42he agreed only on the condition that the soldiers of both armies be interred in his ground.
01:49And so they are.
01:52Enemies in life, but united in death.
02:03Western 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, in the many cemeteries and memorials at every
02:22turn 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.
02:43350,000 professional soldiers spread across the globe, controlling its vast empire.
02:51France, in contrast, could quickly call upon an army of 1 million and Germany 1,300,000 men with more
03:00in reserve.
03:04Belgium had 237,000 men in uniform, of which 130,000 were garrisoned in the forts defending the cities of
03:13Antwerp, Namur and Liège.
03:19At the end of the 19th century, these fortified cities were considered impregnable.
03:25This war would change all that.
03:37On June 28th, 1914, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated by
03:45a 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
03:58as well.
04:01Early on the 2nd of August, the German army marched into the tiny Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.
04:07There 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
04:19France.
04:20The request was refused.
04:25The Belgian King, Albert, seen here in happier times, in the company of the German Kaiser Wilhelm and the British
04:33King George V, was a professional soldier and commander-in-chief of his army.
04:38Having 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.
04:52Great Britain immediately declared war on Germany.
04:56The First World War had begun.
05:09In 1914, an invasion was mainly achieved on foot.
05:14German soldiers were marching slowly into Belgium towards the city of Liège, a distance of 40 kilometres.
05:20In their way was the town of Visay, where they were opposed by a group of military policemen, gendarmes, defending
05:28the 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.
05:59Having 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.
06:18The first air raid specifically targeting ordinary people.
06:23A 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.
06:34On this first attack, the airship was hit by anti-aircraft fire from the Liège batteries and as a result
06:41was badly damaged.
06:42But the Zeppelin raids continued unopposed over Belgium, whose aircraft could not reach the altitude of the high-flying Zeppelins.
06:52However, the first successful aerial attack on a Zeppelin did occur over Belgium.
06:57But not until the 7th of June, 1915, when a British pilot, Lieutenant Reginald Warnford, flying a French monoplane, attacked
07:06the German airship LZ-37.
07:10After a 45-minute chase, he succeeded in dropping his small 20-pound bombs on it, which set the Zeppelin
07:17on fire.
07:20It 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.
07:37Reginald 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.
07:54In 1914, Liège was surrounded by a group of 12 massive forts, approximately four kilometres apart, forming a defensive ring
08:04securing the city.
08:06Each one accommodating several hundred soldiers and artillerymen.
08:1123,000 Belgian soldiers were dug in, defending the land between the forts on the east of the River Meuse.
08:17On the night of the 5th of August, six German brigades, about 25,000 men, attacked them.
08:24Only one managed to break through the gap.
08:25The 14th Brigade, under General Eric Ludendorff, broke through overnight between the forts Florent and Ervenier and managed to secure
08:34the bridges over the river.
08:3836 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
08:54containing 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.
09:27These were massive fortifications, completed at the end of the 19th century and were built up with several metres of
09:33concrete, 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.
10:01The coup de grace being delivered by the latest howitzer from Krupp's steelworks, which at 42cm, could hurl its enormous
10:09shell nine miles.
10:13In fact, these massive 98-ton monsters had only left the Krupp works in Essen four days after the siege
10:22started.
10:23Travelling by train, they had been held up when Belgian sappers had blown up the linking railway tunnel, 20 miles
10:29from Liège.
10:31For 36 hours, the guns, christened Fat Bertha, were hauled over the roads the necessary 11 miles to bring the
10:39forts into range and assembled by the 200 men who serviced the enormous howitzer.
10:48The first shell was fired at Fort Pontice at 6.30pm on the 12th of August.
10:55For those inside the forts, it became a nightmare.
11:01In Fort Lausanne, 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 10cm cannon.
11:15On the 12th and 13th, they brought their 21cm guns into action.
11:20But it was not until the 14th that they opened their heaviest fire and began their destruction of the outer
11:26works.
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,
11:38they hurled against us shells weighing 1,000 kilos, the explosive force of which surpasses anything known hitherto.
11:45Their approach was to be heard in an acute buzzing and they burst with a thunderous roar, raising clouds of
11:52missiles, stones and dust.
12:01250 men were buried in the explosion inside the fort and there they remain.
12:09Fort Lausanne has been left just as it was on that fateful day, described by the German officer whose guns
12:16delivered the final blow.
12:17By this time our heaviest guns were in position.
12:22A well-placed shell tore through the cracked and battered masonry and exploded in the main magazine.
12:31With a thunderous crash, the mighty walls of the fort fell.
12:36Pieces of stone and concrete, 25 cubic metres in size, were hurled in the air.
12:45When the dust and the fumes passed away, we stormed the fort, across ground literally strewn with the bodies of
12:53our 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.
13:13The last defensive fort around the city of Liège, Fort Bancel, fell silent on 16th August.
13:24The heroic Belgian defence 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 in the direction of
13:35the French border.
13:38Nothing, it seemed, could stop the German advance.
13:43But just outside the Belgian city of Mons, dramatic events would unfold and the German soldiers would face new opposition.
13:52200,000 men of the British Expeditionary Force.
14:15In the two weeks since the beginning of the First World War, the German army's progress into Belgium has been
14:22slow but effective and there had been very few casualties.
14:27German soldiers were marching between 25 and 35 kilometres a day towards the French border.
14:34It was a punishing schedule.
14:37The German novelist Walter Blum was a captain in the 12th Grenadiers advancing into Belgium.
14:44The fact is that by this time the whole war seems to have lost its true perspective for us.
14:51It 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.
15:38On 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.
15:52The British set up a defensive line along the southern border of the Canal du Centre,
15:57a natural barrier running around the north of the city.
16:05Neither army knew precisely where the opposition was.
16:09Although the war saw the first use of aircraft to report on enemy positions,
16:14these 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.
16:30He 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 Mons Saint-Sainphorien cemetery.
17:04The following day, at 7am, a cavalry unit of the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards
17:10were near the village of Casto 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 and were shot down by ground fire.
17:53They were the first airmen to die. Both were 23 years old.
18:02Incredibly, Captain Walter Blum's grenadiers were responsible.
18:07We passed through the village of Engin, halting in a field somewhere for a rest.
18:13Suddenly, an aeroplane appeared overhead.
18:15I told two groups to fire at it and soon everyone seemed to be firing at it.
18:20It turned back as if to return southwards, but too late.
18:24Its nose turned down, it made several corkscrew turns
18:27and then fell like a stone a mile or so away.
18:32Lieutenant's Waterfall and Bailey are buried side by side in the cemetery at Tournai.
18:46Around Mons, the British defensive line at the south of the canal
18:50was 30 kilometres long and crossed by some 16 bridges.
18:55Thinking that they might continue to advance,
18:57the British army left them intact.
19:00It was a massive mistake.
19:03On 23 August, the German army attacked.
19:07When the order came for the bridges to be demolished,
19:09it was too late.
19:12Over half of them remained intact
19:13and the German soldiers were able to overrun the British positions
19:17and cross the canal at various points,
19:19thus putting the whole defensive line under threat.
19:30Captain Blurmsman encountered the enemy about eight kilometres to the west of Mons.
19:37We had no sooner left the edge of the wood
19:39than a volley of bullets whistled past our noses
19:42and cracked into the trees behind.
19:45Five or six cries near me.
19:47Five or six of my grey lads collapsed on the grass.
19:51Over to our left around the village of Turtel.
19:53The rifle and machine gun fire was even more intense.
19:56We gradually walked forward by rushes of 100, 50, then 30 metres towards an invisible enemy.
20:03At every rush a few more fell, but one could do nothing for them.
20:08There were acts of extraordinary courage on both sides,
20:11especially in the assault on the bridges around the village of Nimi, just north of Mons.
20:18Over 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,
20:36he had to be removed before another could take his place.
20:39Whenever a gun stopped, Dees ran across open ground to organise replacements.
20:46He was wounded several times as he repeated this action until, finally, a shot killed him.
20:53He was awarded the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest award for gallantry.
21:00Lieutenant Dees' grave is also in Mons Saint-Symphorien 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.
21:20But in the afternoon of the fighting, a young German, musketeer Oskar Neimeyer,
21:25swam 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.
21:37Musketeer Neimeyer was, however, killed during the fighting
21:40and lies in Saint-Symphorien, not far from Lieutenant Dees.
21:46Enemies united in death.
21:52Back at the railway bridge at Nimi, the British were retreating.
21:58At the machine gun post, Private Sidney Godley was asked to prevent the German army from crossing for as long
22:04as possible.
22:07Despite being shot several times, he managed to remain at his machine gun for two hours until it was put
22:13out 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
22:29war.
22:29Though seriously wounded, Private Godley was lucky.
22:34Taken 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,
22:48which commemorates the heroism of that day.
22:54In the Belgian countryside, the German army was taking revenge on Belgian resistance by systematic destruction of towns and villages.
23:06Captain 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.
23:18Three others, dismounted, entered the house where the shots came from and found two peasants with rifles still in their
23:28hands.
23:29They seized them and they've been shot and orders given to burn the village to the ground.
23:36A suitable and just revenge.
23:41But these reprisals were to have an immediate effect on the British public.
23:46On the 30th of August 1914, the Sunday Times in London published a front page headline.
23:53Mons and Combray. Losses of the British Army.
23:57Fight against severe odds. Need for reinforcements.
24:02The same newspaper also carried a report that shocked everyone.
24:09The city of Louvain had been systematically destroyed and the world famous library containing unique medieval manuscripts and hundreds of
24:17books printed before 1500 was deliberately torched.
24:24Over 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
24:38forever.
24:41This 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.
24:57But at this moment, the British, French and Belgian armies were all retreating from the advancing Germans.
25:06Namur, surrounded by more 19th century forts, was attacked by heavy artillery.
25:12And just as at Liège, the forts were demolished one by one.
25:16The Krupp Miracle Howitzer, the English called Big Bertha, inflicting the worst of the damage.
25:31The Belgian army fell back once more, this time towards Antwerp.
25:36The British retreated towards France.
25:38The race to the sea was now on.
25:40If the Germans could secure the channel ports in Belgium and France, cutting off British reinforcement and outflanking the armies,
25:48the road to Paris would be open, presenting Germany with a total victory.
25:59But two very unlikely Belgian civilians would have other ideas that would change the outcome of the war.
26:15In 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.
26:3022 years later, he was commander-in-chief of his army and remained so throughout the war, the last European
26:38reigning monarch to do so.
26:43At the end of August, he received a letter from General Le Mans, the commander at Liège.
26:50Your Majesty is not ignorant that I was at Fort Lançon.
26:54You will learn with grief that the fort was blown up yesterday at 5.20pm, the greater part of the
27:01garrison being buried under the ruins.
27:05I was carried into a trench, after which I was made prisoner and taken to Liège in an ambulance.
27:11I am convinced that the honour of our arms has been sustained.
27:17I have not surrendered either the fortress or the forts.
27:22Deign, sire, to pardon my defects in this letter.
27:26I am physically shattered by the explosion of Lançon.
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
27:54kilometres.
27:55The result was some 60,000 German soldiers diverted from France to Belgium,
28:00helping to relieve the pressure on French and British forces who had halted the German advance into France.
28:06But casualties were increasing on both sides.
28:18Captain Blurm of the 12 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.
28:32When I came to again, I told Grandarte and Sherman to go back to their section where they would be
28:39badly missed,
28:40and thank them with all my heart for their kindness and care.
28:45I never saw them again. Both lie buried in France, near Arras.
28:51Eventually, I had to part with Nastrowski and Polenz.
28:54In six weeks, at most lands, I'll be with you again, I said.
28:58But I have not seen them. Nastrowski lies buried in the valley, not far from where he left me.
29:03And Polenz, away somewhere, in Russia.
29:09The small Belgian army were heroically holding up the German advance, but it could not hold out forever on its
29:16own against overwhelming forces.
29:20The German heavy artillery began bombarding the Antwerp forts at the end of September.
29:26By the morning of the 10th of October, with Antwerp in danger of being surrounded,
29:3180,000 Belgian soldiers managed to outmanoeuvre the Germans and march west towards Ostend.
29:37Nothing, it seemed, could hold up the German advance for very long.
29:48By 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.
30:06King Albert was determined to hold on to the last remaining part of Belgian soil not occupied by the Germans.
30:18October 1914 is called the Race to the Sea, and it was the sea that was to have a decisive
30:24and dramatic effect.
30:36Vital support for the Belgians arrived on the 17th of October in the form of a group of British Navy
30:41ships,
30:42which began pounding the German army with thousands of artillery shells.
30:52The ships were constantly under attack from submarines and German artillery, but 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,
31:12then the road to Dunkirk and Calais would be open,
31:15the defenders would be outflanked,
31:17and the war might well have been over by Christmas.
31:23This was the moment for a 51-year-old Belgian civilian,
31:28captain of a river barge, Hendrik Hierart, to take centre stage.
31:34By 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.
31:45In a desperate attempt to halt the attack, a plan was hastily agreed to flood this land using the locks
31:51and sluices at Newport,
31:53creating a large lake in which the German army would be unable to operate.
32:02With Newport under constant bombardment from German artillery, the official lock keepers had left the town along with most of
32:09the civilian population.
32:12The army now needed someone who could show them how to operate the complicated locks and sluices.
32:18Herart volunteered.
32:22On the night of the 21st of October, Hendrik Hierart led an officer and 17 soldiers to the spring sluice,
32:29and by 2300 they had raised both gates and the sea began to enter the land.
32:35It was none too soon.
32:39Next 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.
32:50Now 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
33:05bank 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.
33:24However, progress was still very slow, and Hendrik Hierart again came to the rescue.
33:31In order to increase the flow of water to the land,
33:34he 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.
34:00The water has risen markedly.
34:03Since yesterday morning, it has increased in depth by about one and a half metres.
34:09All companies are standing with their feet in water, and groundwater is being encountered at the depth of a single
34:17spade.
34:18It is impossible for the battalion to attack, because the major drainage ditch in front of the embankment is now
34:27about ten metres wide.
34:29On 31st October, the order to retreat was given to the German army due to the rising waters, forcing them
34:36back several kilometres.
34:38It was a total success for the Belgian war effort.
34:48As a result, the coastal area around Newport was never to fall into German hands.
34:54The Belgian army had lost 14,000 men, but the race to the sea had been won, with the aid
35:02of two very unlikely men.
35:08Carol Kohar was personally awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Leopold by the King.
35:14At great personal risk, Henrik Hierart stayed with the soldiers controlling the locks at Newport for the rest of the
35:22war,
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.
35:34He survived the war and died on the afternoon of 17 January 1925.
35:39The following morning, King Albert arrived to personally pay his respects.
35:48With the coastal route to the French Channel ports blocked, the German army now focused their attention on the next
35:55available access road to France.
35:58And that ran through the small Belgian city of Ypres.
36:03That 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,
36:12when it became infamous for the death and destruction that accumulated on the armies of both sides.
36:27Death in the Great War was to reach every family, even the British monarchy was to suffer.
36:33On the 27th of October 1914, in the defence of the Ypres salient, a cousin of the King of England,
36:41Lieutenant 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.
36:56The following year, things were to get infinitely worse for the defending armies in Belgium.
37:02An unimaginable horror that could never have been foreseen.
37:06On the 22nd of April, at 5pm around the village of Lanemark, the Germans released 180,000 kilos of gas
37:15over a six-kilometre front from 5,700 cylinders.
37:22A yellowish, greenish cloud emerged from the German lines.
37:27None of the defenders knew what it was, as it headed gently on the wind towards two French infantry divisions
37:34and their trenches.
37:36It was the first mass poison gas attack of the war.
37:41The gas was chlorine.
37:44Without protection, it killed and maimed by turning the human body fluids into hydrochloric acid.
37:54At 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.
38:09This is the memorial to those who died that day.
38:26The 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
38:38attacks,
38:39despite 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.
38:50It was beyond anyone's thinking.
38:54Not one German attack successfully made it across the canal.
38:59Once 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.
39:14With 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
39:34huge mines,
39:35totalling £10,000 of high explosive.
39:41Just 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.
40:05For the next 13 days, it was under constant German artillery bombardment.
40:09On the 1st of May, the first chlorine gas attack on the British was made on Hill 60, followed by
40:16more 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
40:23Germans retook the hill.
40:27The short defence of Hill 60 had lost the British army, over 3,000 men killed and many more wounded
40:34in those few days.
40:36Defending Belgium had become a war of attrition.
40:54To the utter dismay of the inhabitants of the Belgian city of Ypres, on 7 October 1914,
41:00an advanced reconnaissance cavalry unit of the German army had ridden straight through the city.
41:08On the old pre-war Menin 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.
41:21It was believed that the Germans would not re-enter Ypres again until the lions had eaten the straw.
41:27The lions played their part.
41:31The straw would remain uneaten and the German army would not be seen at the Menin Gate.
41:37But their artillery would utterly destroy the city.
41:44In June 1915, Captain Morgan Crofton of the 7th Cavalry Brigade described what was left of the once picturesque medieval
41:53city.
41:54The town is a mere heap of rubble, cinders and rubbish.
41:59Not a cat lives there now.
42:01It is the abomination of desolation.
42:04The fields around the town are crammed with the graves of our dead.
42:09The smell is awful.
42:11And the hum of myriads of awful-looking flies which have been holding orgies on the putrid bodies of countless
42:17dead along the trench lines is unmistakable.
42:21By 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.
42:35After 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
42:45be issued to us.
42:47We stumbled down the trench, making slow progress, and halfway up was blocked by a dead man over whom we
42:53slipped 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
43:01and right of the communications trench up which we had come.
43:05A man lay across the front trench, very badly wounded.
43:09He was removed after a great deal of difficulty and delay, for the trenches were very narrow and only about
43:14five feet deep.
43:17The majority of casualties in this war were caused not by rifle or machine gun fire, but by artillery.
43:26At about ten a.m., the first shells fell over our trench.
43:30These 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.
43:54Some were hit in the head, some in the stomach and one or two in the legs, all by splinters.
44:01We had no doctor and could do very little for them.
44:07In just one month, May 1915, the British Army defending Ypres would lose 3,600 officers and 26,346 regular
44:21soldiers.
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.
44:41Private John Condon, from Waterford in Ireland, was just 14 years old.
44:50He lies not far from where he fell, defending a small part of Belgium.
44:58In this cemetery lie 7,479 British and Commonwealth soldiers.
45:06On these headstones, all made from the same Portland stone, some 6,230 have no name.
45:21Nearby is Tyne Cot, the largest British and Commonwealth cemetery containing nearly 12,000 men.
45:30Here again, almost two-thirds of the graves are known only unto God.
45:39John 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
46:03began on the 21st of the same month.
46:07The young man from South Africa, David Schalker Ulundi Ross, died of his wounds aged just 14 years and three
46:16months.
46:23Despite 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.
46:35The defending armies went on the attack themselves.
46:42For 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.
46:56After four horrific years, in which countless millions lost their lives,
47:02on the 11th of November 1918, at 1100 hours, hostilities finally ceased.
47:12The 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.
47:24But the St. Symphorium Cemetery illustrates the heartbreak of the last stories of the First World War.
47:35Shortly before 11am, on the final day of the war, the 5th Royal Irish Lancers were five miles east of
47:42Mons.
47:45Private George Edwin Ellison was shot and killed.
47:49He was 40 years old.
47:51He was the last British soldier to die in the war.
47:55But unfortunately, not the last fatality.
48:04Shortly afterwards, close by, in the village of Ville-sur-Raine, at 10.58am, only two minutes before the ceasefire,
48:13a shot rang out.
48:16A German sniper had opened fire to take one final life.
48:21A Canadian private, George Lawrence Price, was hit and killed.
48:29These two men lie in the cemetery at St. Symphorium, which contains the first death and the last deaths of
48:37the war to end all wars.
48:47King Albert of Belgium, a passionate and experienced mountaineer, died in a climbing accident in 1934.
48:55A grateful nation built, in tribute, this memorial in Newport near the locks and sluices
49:01that had played such an important part in defending his beloved Belgian soil.
49:10This cafe, very close to those same locks, commemorates the name of Hendrik Hierart,
49:16the very ordinary hero who organised the flooding of the fields which stopped the German army advance.
49:25Walter 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,
49:40including three books describing his experiences in the trenches.
49:44He 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,
49:57dying in 1958 at the age of 79.
50:03The First World War still continues to cast its shadows over Belgium, particularly around Ypres.
50:11Unexploded ordnance still litters the land.
50:14In 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.
50:34The remains of soldiers from the Great War are still being found and reburied in the cemeteries with full military
50:40honours,
50:42finally joining their comrades who were laid to rest 100 years earlier.
50:50In this small stretch of land, they called the Ypres Salient, there are now three great memorials to the missing
50:59soldiers
50:59who fell in the defence of Belgium and have no known grave.
51:07At Tyne Cot Cemetery, on the Wall of the Missing, are 34,957 names.
51:19At Pleustriot Memorial, there are 11,447.
51:26And at the great memorial at the Menin Gate, in the rebuilt city of Ypres, the walls contain 54,896
51:37names.
51:38Their 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,
51:51Theo and George, killed by the same artillery shell on the 20th of September, 1917, whose bodies were never found.
52:01At the same time, their younger brother, 21-year-old William Seabrook,
52:06was 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.
52:18He lies buried, ten kilometres away, in Lysentuk Military Cemetery.
52:31They are not forgotten, they who do not grow old.
52:54At the Menin Gate, in Ypres, every evening at 8pm, 365 days a year, the last post is played, in
53:05remembrance of the world.
53:06In remembrance of all those who died, between 1914 and 1918, in the defence of Belgium.
53:13The End
53:14The End
53:17The End
53:18The End
53:22The End
53:23The End
53:27The End
53:28The End
53:30The End
53:33The End
53:40The End
53:41The End
53:45The End
53:47The End
53:50The End
53:57The End
53:58The End
53:58The End
53:58The End
54:08The End
54:08The End
54:11The End
54:11The End
Comments