The Trench - Tapa dura

A BBC documentary series, to be shown in autumn 2001, aims to recreate everyday life for soldiers in World War I. A group of volunteers has been recruited from the streets of Hull, exactly as the "Hull Pals" - the 10th battalion of the East Yorks Regiment - were recruited 85 years ago. They face life in a specially reconstructed trench in northern France under as many privations as can realistically be recreated according to the testimony of surviving World War I veterans and the official Regimental War Diary. The series has the official stamp of the Army, the Imperial War Museum and the British Legion. This companion book, based on extensive interviews with veterans as well as new research, vividly reconstructs the reality of war: what it felt like to see the front line for the first time, how the trenches themselves were constructed, how soldiers passed their leisure hours, where they slept, and what they ate. It takes a profound approach to the history of the Great War bringing it home in unimaginable horror by recreating in extraordinary detail the everyday realities of trench life.

RICHARD VAN EMDEN is the principal researcher on the television series and a respected authority on the First World War. He is the author of a number of books about it, including Veterans and Prisoners of the Kaiser.