Old Front Line
WW1 Podcast with Paul Reed
Forgotten Battlefields: The Lone Tree, Loos
In this week’s episode we travel to another ‘Forgotten Battlefield’ of the Great War and walk the area around Loos, on the site where the ‘Lone Tree’ was located in 1915. Walking from Le Rutoire Farm, near the village of Vermelles, to the Lone Tree in the very heart of the 1915 Loos Battlefields. We visit battlefield cemeteries and discuss the story of Rudyard Kipling’s son, John, who fell at Loos with the Irish Guards. Our object this week is a poignant photo of a young girl, a postcard lost on the battlefield.
Podcast Extras: WW1 Loos Maps & Images
Podcast Extras: The Battlefield Today
Great!
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One of the major highlights of my week is going somewhere quiet in the house and settling down to listen to Paul Reed’s podcasts. I don’t know what I am going to do when one day they come to an end. I have followed Paul’s books with great interest for years, tramping along the paths through the fields where all these brave men fell, guided by his texts.Listening each week is the next best thing.
Superb productions, Paul. Very, very emotive readings.
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Thanks, Henry. I’ve no plans to stop them so you’re stuck with them at least for now! Verdun next week!
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Loved this episode. My great-uncle Edgar Faulks RAMC was buried by his fellow officers next to the Vermelles lane you were walking on. He was killed on his first day in action on 26 September 1915. He was with 24th Division artillery which could not get forward so fired from the forward slope by Lone Tree under the enemy’s view. He died tending the wounded of his battery as the Germans shelled them.
My grandfather’s unit, 5th Leics, was then in the attack on the Hohenzollern Redoubt.
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Loos had a major and lasting effect on where I come from (Angus). Really enjoyed this podcast.
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Excellent stuff. Loos is one of those battlefields I really need to get to know better, and this podcast has certainly inspired me to do that.
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Get the book Most Unfavourable Ground LOL
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I shall seek it out, Niall. 😉
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Nice dodge of contoversy on the Kipling grave debate Paul, personally having read all the arguments I fall on the side it’s not his and CWGC would never accept that level of evidence for anyone else.
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Once again, another brilliantly put together podcast, this time about Loos. You spend 37 minutes just listening, looking and thinking………what these men, and women, went through. Incredible to believe.
Thanks once again.
Paul
ps. now onto 11 & 12……catch up Sunday. 🙂
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Thanks, Paul!
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Just listened to this brilliant podcast. My Great Uncle Harry Percy Baulk of the Queens (Royal West Surrey) Regiment was lost on 25th Sep 1915 at the battle of Loos & is commemorated on the wall at Dud Cemetary, Loos. I had the amazing chance to be there 100 years to the day (25.09.2015) with Paul as our guide. Listening to this podcast has taken me back 5 years, thank you Paul.
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Thanks, Mary!
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Thoroughly enjoying the weekly episodes. By chance came across Piper Laidlaw’s grave yesterday – in Norham Churchyard near Berwick upon Tweed. Gravestone (1950) carries the image of his VC.
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Thanks, Andrew.
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