First World War: 1918

Voices from the BBC Archive

By: Sarah Kilgarriff

Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble

A unique collection of historic recordings in which the last brutal encounters of the war and the mixed emotions of the armistice are remembered by troops from both sides.

By the end of March 1918, Germany's Spring Offensive had thrown British forces back over the old Somme battlefields. But this last push failed, and with the stalemate of trench warfare broken, the Allies swept from near defeat to victory. However, their joy was tempered by sorrow. Too many would not come home. For the Germans, the mood was despairing as their 'endless columns rolled eastward', the November fog and rain adding to their melancholy.

Memorable reminiscences include an evocative portrait of poet Wilfred Owen, killed shortly before the armistice; American troops on their initiation into the horrors of battle; and reflections on the 'punitive' demands of the Paris Peace Conference. As the Treaty of Versailles was being drafted, the German navy decided its own fate in one final act of defiance, witnessed by a group of schoolchildren on an outing in Scapa Flow.

These enduring recollections from the men who fought and the women who waited are a poignant and powerful reminder of the shocking realities of the war.

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