To mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, the BBC has released a collection of 13 previously unseen interviews with veterans and civilians filmed in the 1960s. The interviews are derived from the footage shot for the 1964 BBC series The Great War, and were restored for this Collection in collaboration with the Imperial War Museums.
In these poignant B&W interviews, veterans and civilians, by then already into their late 60’s, share memories of what it was really like to experience at first hand the grim reality of this most brutal of conflicts. The interviews have been selected to show a cross section of experiences of war; from life in the trenches, the horrors of artillery bombardment and fleeting outbreaks of peace on the battlefield, aerial warfare, as well as life on the home front. It includes veterans from British, Australian and German battalions.
The Collection is curated by Sir Max Hastings, who provides an introduction to the interviews based on his personal experience of working on The Great War series as a researcher in the early 60’s.
The interviews will be permanently available to view on BBC iPlayer.
More details are available here.