Airship footage of World War I shows war-torn battlefields

[VladTepes]

This footage is incredible:

BBC News - New footage of World War I shows war-torn battlefields

( sorry you have to sit thorugh an ad first, but it's worth it! )

[newhue]

amazing, it always leave me with a bit if a chill when you get something new regarding wars. Just how any body survived is beyond me.

When we were in Laos, we learned the yanks had dropped more bombes on the Laos-Vietnam border than the whole of Vietnam. The land was so compacted they could not farm it or do much with it. Some of it is still stuffed even today.
It would have looked like those WW1 fields I think. Heavy machinery being required till it and to level it off.

no wonder those ww1 diggers were shell shocked....

[easo]

Its just astonishing when you see things like that. I visited France/ Belgium in 08 and looking at what is left after 90 odd years gets you thinking about what it was.

Easo

[Bigbjorn]

Its just astonishing when you see things like that. I visited France/ Belgium in 08 and looking at what is left after 90 odd years gets you thinking about what it was.

Easo

I read where the Belgian Army is still disposing of several hundred tons of unexploded shells every year.

In the areas where the AIF did most of its service, the Somme villages were non-existent by 1918, just heaps of rubble in a muddy wasteland.

An old pom I worked with in the early 60's (he was over 70 and still working full time) was in a Royal Navy Division unit on the Western Front. He said barely thirty of the originals of his battalion who went to France in 1915 survived the war and most of these survived because they were badly wounded or invalid and safely back in Blighty early in their service.

[Tikirocker]

Thanks for posting that mate ... I'm a bit of a War Historian and my Great Grandfather served in France with the Australian 1st Field Artillery Brigade in the 1st Bty ... he also served in Gallipoli with the 1st FAB. They were a great generation of men. Lest we forget.

Simon.

[VladTepes]

I had to post it - it's just incredible, and moving and compelling, and sad.

[drivesafe]

Extraordinary, thanks Vlad