Finding the Fallen - The Rings (S2 Ep6) Ending

all right yeah alfredo fantastic yeah good morning date right there's a nice statue on top complete with the iron cross dislike his ring i wonder if he did a family left you miss him well you never know we might find out but the fact is there's there's becker's like you say there's becca's up here so he would have had relations on that side two wedding rings have brought the trench detectives back to alfred martin's hometown [Music] but can the team complete the journey and return the rings to a descendant [Music] the team's search for surviving family members is without success their last chance is to try the local archives we thought that martin was actually quite a common name but um there's only one on the morning so it may not be that common in this area [Music] there he is that's alfred martin byron through regiment 23 9 company that's right in it that's that man there we go there he is [Music] if we get these photos off to the german researcher then they should be able to translate it all for us to give us a better idea it's quite amazing when you actually see a face looking back at you i mean you know it's archaeology you don't usually see that you see the bones then you know sort of like i can visualize that moment as we cleaned him we've photographed him before lying in his grave um with his head up sort of crushed into the into the foot end of the grave with that slight shattering of the skull and it was a skeleton but now actually to look into his eyes the team digs deeper accessing the town's family tree registry martin oh my martin oh yeah oh excellent oh julius yes yes 1857. and that's his dad 18th january 1857 is his birth here in alton kirkham that would make him 25 when they get married and i assume this is the 29th marathon marriage date 29th of may 1883 oh she's carolina here that's his mum born in 1866 in albuquerque [Music] a wedding in 1883 matches an engagement date of 1882 the date inscribed on the rings all in accordance with bavarian custom [Music] sadly she dies we have a date here 19th of september 1891 again alton kirkin so she would have been she's 25. this is another marriage in 1994. juliana hess oh we've got some children here as well the team's hard work has paid off with a major discovery alfred's father julius martin remarried and had three more children two of whom seem to have survived into adulthood so our assumption that his father must be dead for him to carry be carrying both rings isn't necessarily true is it no it's not actually he would be carrying his his late mother's his late mother's ring and his father's original original ring because his father's now wearing a ring with jay hess written on the inside of it alfred martin's story has taken an unexpected twist an only child born a year to the day after his parents marry a boy whose mother dies when he's only seven years old and whose father remarries and has a second family there is a chance that alfred martin a man who appears never to have married or had children of his own may yet have family descendants through nephews and nieces but where can they be before the trench detectives continue their search for descendants they have one last place to visit in alton kirchen this old protestant church where alfred martin's parents were married also carries the names of hundreds of fallen soldiers from the altam kirchen area second world war names of those lost in both world wars yeah there is oh yeah under 1915. yep alfred martin and he's not the only one the only person for me having this experience either all these lads are going off these are just the ones that died that was pretty all the other ones who fought and came home so the the extent to which the war has touched the villages is enormous you know [Music] coming back to this village you know is taught me about alfred martin i've seen his picture now which is fantastic to be able to go to the museum and the archives and see that but it's also shed a lot more light on these rings and about his parents and his parents history and it means that much more when you walk into this church protestant church in this this town where these rings would have been in 1882 1883 at the marriage service of alfred's parents at this very spot probably but it seemed just fitting just to bring them back into the church one last time this is where they meant so much all those years ago and to see alfred's parents wedding rings sitting like that together on the bible or on the altar in this church i think is quite emotional and what's also nice is to be able to bring back with those rings the ring that alfred may have actually made himself this ring has never been in this church as far as i'm concerned it may have been made by alfred while he was out on the western front he never came back his name is on the memorial inside the church his name is on the memorial outside the church and in the record book in the museum but he never came back but his ring has now just for a short time before we take it on its journey to try and find relatives so it's quite nice to see that a little piece of alfred has come back to the start point of the whole story [Music] intensive research has revealed that alfred martin's father had more children with his second wife [Music] amazingly the team has located a nephew of the soldier whose remains were found at loose david kenyon is on his way to germany's baltic coast a thousand kilometers north to meet him [Applause] hello i'm david kenyon you've probably seen we spoke earlier hello hello and you are nicole nicole nice to meet you nice to meet you um yeah there's a spot just over here we're going to have a sit down and uh i think you've heard a little bit about what i have to tell you but not [Applause] just gerhard martin a retired engineer does not speak english but has brought along his daughter nicole a professor of architecture to interpret kenyan shares the information the team has gathered about alfred martin he's single yep um if he had children this would be recorded here but there are none and then this is there he learns that the martins were winemakers and alfred was working in the family winery before he enlisted but the military records only tell part of the story and nonsense and alfred did not deal with the swine correctly so it wouldn't even be vinegar that could serve so everything was broken and there was no money left oh there mine bag of steight house first our stem contact alfred in the familiar an absolute thief is nevo so everything had to be possibly sold and the family did not like alfred anymore from this time on my father so my grandfather said if it would have come back to the family his father would have bitten them up or something right so so the black sheep of the family then not not popular that's uh well i i think the army might have done him some good in that case because over here his his performance in the army is listed as so good so maybe the army got control of him he was the only one who was buried carefully the fighting must have been uh low enough that there was time but also there must have been friends or people who liked him who took the trouble to very improperly between how he was buried and the desert in here we think maybe he made a better soldier than he did to winemaking um [Music] in his pocket we found these and this is a man's wedding ring and a woman's wedding or engagement ring wedding or engagement ring and in this one we have jay julius martin so this is your grandfather's first wedding ring and how to add a bike up so that seems to us that he did not break with his family as his family broke with him we what interests him was to think about why was alfred wearing this rings why did he carry them all this way around and so close with his heart and why did they how how did he get them but the ring itself is nothing the idea and he starts thinking about maybe the family history has been different than it has been told to him and we are forced to [Music] [Music] [Music] normally when we find a soldier's body when he gets the military burial all the the personal effects all the objects that are found with the body stay with him and are reburied and so normally these rings would go into the ground again with alfred thanks for watching it's really fascinating for me to hold these rings in my hand and to think about um what kind of a trip they made how long they've been buried with family member of mine and well that i can hold them now and they signal something so special like a wedding and something in which you you lay so much in the future and now they have this future they do something more than 130 years after they've been produced really absolutely rings found in a shallow grave in northern france have given back a soldier his identity a legacy that has redeemed him in the eyes of a family he never forgot [Music] you

Channel: DJ 222

Views: 18,465

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Id: T9rD6qWb688

Length: 16min 9sec (969 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 23 2021