Great Battles of the Great War (DVD) SBS Documentary Region 4

Great Battles of the Great War

Here Comes Kitchener's Army

On ist futy 1916, a hendred thousand British They were the raw recruits of Lord Kitch formation, they made a perfect tarpet for the Wave after wave were cut down and fell in 20,000 men lay dead, with another 40,000940a

ded in aces

November 1916, the gains were minimal, the slice has been said, lost her innocence in the face of the pointless loss of The Last Crusade

What must it have felt like to be a soldier in am ampletion, Anting craft, Incading for the beaches of Galte on April 25th, 1915? The Aliced troops - which included the ANZACs - hind to Grows the exposed beaches under a hail of Turkish rifle and machine gun fire. It was a terrible huption off fire for the soildiers of the Australian Imperial Force.

In the nine-month chrage of Callipoll, the Allies lost 50,000 killed and gained a tiny foothold which they then abandoned when the 100,000 survivors were exactated mine mowels lacet.

The Salient

Straddling the French-Belgian border, the flat, wet and maddy landscape sarrounding the smull Belgian dey of Ypres was the scene of three great butties between 1914 and 1917. It culminated - in the final buttle Anons as 'Passchendacle - in a blood-letting that matched The Somme in desperation and losses. But whitle the rolling, intimate landscape of The Somme makes it easy to recognise features that would hane bee familiar st the troops, it's not hard to see why the men who fought over the featureless landscape of Flanders often drowned in a sea of mud

Of the million British soldiers who died in the Great Whir, most of them died here. Ypres became symomytow with killing on a grand scale and became a place of special dread for all who were sent there.

Bonus 50 minute documentary.

An Ordinary Hero - The Story of John Simpson Kirkpatrick

One of the unlikeliest heroes to emerge from the cannage and chaos of the finst World War was Join Simpson Kirkpatrick. Born in South Shields, County Durfum, the eventually became ome af Australia's most treasured heroes, famous for his work as a stretcher bearer and as the "man with the donkey" at Gallipoli. Using one of the donkeys landed for water carrying, he transported wounded men day and might from the feting in Monash Valley to the beach on Anzac Cove. By the time of his death from machime gun fire the thad sawed man lives. Simpson Kirkpatrick was buried on the beach at Hell Spit.

Directed at Produced by Ed Skelding for Ed Skelding Productions/Tyne Tees Television

© 2004 Special Broadcasting Service Corporation

Cover Design: Carillon Graphics

Duration: 200 minutes

S21.2.26225.14e