NEW | Digging Band of Brothers: Time Team Special with Tony Robinson (2023) - FULL EPISODE

foreign this is the beautiful and very quiet little village of old worn in Wiltshire which 80 years ago became home to a battalion of U.S paratroopers who were preparing to take part in the D-Day Landings one of these men David Kenyon Webster recorded his memories in a recently discovered manuscript one day old born was asleep with her cows and her memories but next she was tingling with six companies of wild young Yankees given a jumping from airplanes in flight this was the famous Easy Company otherwise known as The Band of Brothers they took up residence in Nissan hearts in tar and paper Huts in camps in The Villages as well as in stable blocks private houses and lovely pubs like that one our good friend Richard Osgood the chief archaeologist at the ministry of Defense has been working at this site since 2019 and this year time team is really pleased to join him and his team for the full eight days as we try and unravel and understand how this sleepy Wiltshire Village became a training ground for those brave Soldiers for Dido foreign [Music] after undergoing rigorous training in Camp Toccoa at the base of Mount karahi which inspired their famous karahi Battle Cry a scrapbook gives us insight into the experience of these young volunteers as they prepared to be dropped into the battlefields of Europe not knowing who would make it home it describes gruesome conditions on the Crossing from New York to Liverpool their first glimpses of England on the train to Hungerford and their arrival at the camp by Torchlight Webster picks up the story we arrived in oldborn in a blacked out Convoy one Frosty September night in 1943. when we awoke the next morning we saw the England of nursery rhyme and children's story fairy tale Cottages with thatched roofs and Rose vines on trellises stood all around us 80 years later our team of archaeologists and veterans are anxious to uncover the next chapter of their story thank you yeah we're looking for Nissan huts and we're looking for maybe different styles of Hut this is that this is the Hub this is what makes easy company this is the origins of easy company before they go and do all their fighting in Europe they've done no fighting before they start living here so they're eating in the mess houses they are sleeping they're about uh the 16 people in one of these Huts so quite cramped and I think it must have been pretty cold but we'll see yeah and um yeah they're doing everything that makes them soldiers right but they were only here from September 43 to May 44 so so it's less than a year in total yeah that's right what can we hope that they might have left behind for us what I'd really like to find out is what what keeps them human because they're doing all this training for um horrific world events that were completely essential bits of training but you know what about the down time that they had you know working and living with the locals um trying to make the best of the rations that they're getting so I'd really like to find out the the the personal stories and if we could find any traces of an individual I mean the great thing about this is that we do have a lot of photographs as well of the particular individuals that are here um it was a nice one there oh yeah um the chap on the back uh sitting on the bike seat is called forest gooth and he's um a Pennsylvanian and a lot of easy company did come from that Eastern State of America big industrial estate so even people like dick Winters the commanding officer in the end he's from that state and you can see he's sat on the bike but he's in front of one of the things we are looking for we're looking for these Nissan Huts these prefabricated buildings and hopefully we'll find traces of you know the Hut just behind Forest goof yep and you have a plan of the area yeah now this this is an intriguing one because um this was done by memory from one of the veterans of easy company um and you'll notice they've got the kind of cues here and that's Quonset right that's the American term for Anderson Hut okay so you've got all of these and the person reckons that this is where easy company was so more or less um where we're looking at the moment and then F company Fox company is where our second trench is and then what they call a drill field so this is done from memory and as you know that can be quite a Fickle thing so let's let's go with the real archeology as well to augment this and you can see all the Huts right and this is this is really what we're after so that is where that sketched Fox company was that's where easy company was and you can see the Hut so that's our our really good starting point so this is um the modern photograph and what we've done is we superimposed the plan of the Nissan huts on top of it and that'll geolocate exactly where each of these Huts was and hopefully our excavation will pick those up and I thought that'd be a useful tool for the team to be able to see where they're where they're situated Nissan Hearts came in kit form and were designed to be put up by six men in four hours we believe that some of the ones here were erected by the British army who were stationed here in the early War years before the U.S paratroopers arrived the Huts were secured with metal fixings set into concrete post pads which we hope to locate using metal detectors [Music] we're looking at this row here possibly going off at an angle and where that flag is to your left that could be the back pad John's hoping that we'll be able to identify some of the other features of the camp using magnetometry [Music] so John what's the plan of action well this Field's been surveyed well most of it has but we don't know what's happening to the South behind us so we're extending the magnetics you can see now we're collecting the the data over there we've got a whole range of possible targets maybe a rubbish dump more Nissan huts and there were sort of tense here I think they'd be a bit more difficult for us to actually map but we're just going to see what we get yeah and when do you think we'll get some results we've only just started 600 men were put in huts and barracks on a meadow that could well have supported at least two cows The Village soccer field became the combination Gridiron bald Diamond parade ground drunks fell in the cow Pond and BD movies were shown in the Memorial Hall Roger I've got the Aero photograph here we had Easy Company here we had Fox company here but what I really want to know is how did they fit into this whole U.S military structure okay well I think I need to start right at the very top they were part of the 101st Airborne Division that division arrived in England in September of 1943 moved South by train through the industrial Midlands to the to Southern England to the kennet valley which is where we are now and divisional headquarters was at Green and large just on the outskirts of Newbury regimental headquarters was established at littlecoat house which is a Tudor manor house about five or six miles from where we are now and then the the the regiment was made up of three battalions first second and third and those battalions that were then split into companies the men from Easy Fox and dog companies were part of the second Battalion of the 506th regiment commanded by Colonel sink they belong to the famous 101st Airborne Division known as The Screaming Eagles commanded by General Maxwell Taylor an impressive array of fines discovered over the last two years have pride of place in the Heritage Center relics of their training include all kinds of ordinance a parachute pool and even parachute silk this Cricket would have been used on Landing in France to help identify friend from foe that is quite loud isn't it it is it is definitely and there are personal effects like a pair of nylons and an ATS badge presumably left by visiting women after a night out but one find that really stands out is an identification tag belonging to one of the men so last year our star find was this dog tag which says Carl F phantomac on it and he's easy company Carl is um fantastic guy he's done all of the most famous jumps he wasn't just a paratrooper he was also a Pathfinder and so they were the ones who went ahead of paratroopers laid down signals and then the paratroopers could land at those spots on this dog Target says call F fenstermaker he's not Carl fenstern stomach and we did our research he's actually called el fenstermacher um and he's got his his number he's got his um blood type and things like that listed on this but there's a bit of a misprint there as well and this is as you can see folded in half so do you think he chucked it because it was incorrect yes yeah I would have just discarded it otherwise if he lost one of these it that's that's a big problem in the military you could not do that a massive offense to do it he jumped at uh D-Day in Battle of the Bulge in Boston in Belgium uh was one of 20 guys to jump and make basically save everyone in battle of the balls by getting those resupplying then went to Dachau as a German speaker they needed him and so he was somebody who helped with um getting all of the rest of the people out and kind of communicating what did happen in Dachau all of this actually really affected him after the war but he did end up at the very end in Eagle's Nest um so he's done it all one of the best best finds we could really ever find yeah and here in Auburn it's amazing operation Nightingale has been using archeology as part of the recovery program for Veterans for 12 years and this year the team that has been joined by some ex-servicemen from 101st Division I think a lot of veterans are similar as as I am where I might not be the most social of people but I like to be around people maybe doing similar things and I think with the archeology you just you know you get down in the mud and you just kind of focus on what on your task is and veterans are very good at a task you give us a task and we can do that second nature second nature as a soldier so right and you're standing in the footsteps of people who are doing a similar job to you 78 years ago right right exactly yeah and we're standing in the same field they showed up in the middle of the night and saw the same Hills and and it's all relatively still the same so it's very very kind of overwhelming when you're in the forces uh when you have your brothers and sisters to your left and to your right whether in combat or or not you know there's a bond that is formed um I think that's the we we get that here as well I think that uh you know when you're in the rain in the mud working towards a common goal of uh you know recovering this Heritage um and helping out on site I think that bond is kind of re-established what got you into it how did you start um basically I had a mental breakdown in the military and I was stuck on the the rear party when everybody deployed to Afghanistan and one of the guys said I've been tasked with getting a few guys together for an archaeological dig Jordan's come along it's operation I think I said I'd love to change here if he helps me out I was still serving when I did the first dig the second day I was in the process of doing resettlement of moving away from the military into commercial archeology where I started working for Wessex and then I moved around and now I work for West Yorkshire archeology and now I'm leaving 200 200 digs [Music] straight away they're in the money 1916 George fifth you know the nails are used for the corrugated Yeah Yeah by the end of day one we've got fines relating not only to the Huts but also life in the camp the guys have also found some ammunition which is uh I was joking earlier with Matt about it's not like doing pre-history because it's all date stamped so when in prehistory or whatever other periods you're talking I don't know 3000 plus or minus 200 years or something even with some good scientific dating this one says 42 on it so made in 1942 which is quite fun so it's a nice tie down um it's a 50 cal round but that's really nice so that's a heavy caliber piece of um munition that has been fired so it's completely inert and safe that's an American used piece of Kit which is great and then the last thing oh another thing oh it's a little plate you find loads today um that's a plate I think it might be from a harmonica and that's we were talking earlier about the human story about the guys being here they're here for pretty much nine months there's a lot of training there's a lot of becoming military people but there's a lot of boredom as well and there's all sorts of things that the guys got up to here in their downtime we'll find evidence for some of it hopefully not all of it but one of the things passing time maybe you can imagine them sitting around running campfire playing a mouth organ something like that just appear whenever but it's not just the fines from the fields that can tell us how the paratroopers spend their time in England Webster's Memoirs are incredibly descriptive and were discovered totally by chance in an attic it was completely random and we live in an old house in Old born and um it was just searching through hundreds of years of old papers and paintings and photograph albums and this manuscript just dropped out of the um one of the boxes and I had a little look at it and it had this Vivid description of life in Old born and written by what it seemed to be a soldier so I I started researching it more read through the the um document and I discovered that it was David Kenyon Webster Webster appears to relish painting an extremely colorful picture of life in Audible the non-jumping cooks astonished nearby civilians with their festivities these not only included great sex orgies but also drinking bouts financed by the black market sale of the or rather our steak and butter the shrieks titters foul-mouthed drunken Oaths creaking beds and coarse panting that echoed from their bedrooms and Hayloft caused many a cackle Among The Village hens Mark Lawrence starred in the HBO series Band of Brothers and has brought an original copy of his script for John to display in the Heritage Center there you go [Music] you're welcome you don't want to trade it for the things you found last year do you I'll take a clicker oh I think Richard might have something to say about that yeah I know maybe I can like finagle in my pocket on the way out acting in the series had clearly been much more than just a job to him the guy I played was a guy called William jewman and he was originally from Colorado and uh he got killed on October the 5th 1944 in Holland um so he never came back but um luckily I got to know his family since then and um I lived in Colorado which it was where he was originally from and there's all these similarities during the war my grandmother um she lived in Swindon which is about 10 miles from here so during the war her and her mother my great-grandmother they used to drive buses up to oldborn to take the U.S soldiers into Swindon so they could get their drink on on a Friday night and um so there's all these crazy similarities you know and it's um no it's been it was the role of a lifetime you know it really was it really was and I I'm sort of a local boy because I grew up in Swindon uh so to know that this was on my doorstep and I never really knew about it until I got this job so um you walk into an audition 20 years ago and you're still talking about it today so it's it's a very special thing it is a very special thing it's very heartfelt thing day two Dawns and Richard has Matt working in trench one where he's exposing a line of post pads belonging to an easy company Nissan Hut you'll see these orange spikes Mark these we think are potentially where there's a wall of one of the the Nissan huts [Music] probably looking at maybe a bit less Where You Are as we're down the slope but that's definitely it so there's the ah beginnings of the surface coming up it's a coin but it's been snipped someone's been it's like the most relaxing way to spend a week Ivan Penny and Kenny are test fitting in some of the gardens where we think the Red Cross Hearts might have stood and where the pump house brings oh look what have we got here Kenny there's some kind of chain link there with it with an attachment still no sign of post pads in trench one but we've hit something entirely unexpected I'm just trying to get between the spokes is actually quite tricky and there's a story that Forest Guth buried his bike here it's all rusted so badly rusted you see this that's very loose so I've got to be really careful in trench too we 've revealed a line of brick foundations where the fox company Hut stood these are a totally different construction to the Easy Company huts on the other side of the field [Music] somewhere between the two were some pretty unpleasant sounding latrines which had no running water no lights and no heating even in the depths of winter [Music] on such evenings constipation was universally preferred to a brief interlude with the Arctic wind tunnel the floor was usually a vile litter of caked mud cigarette butts and scraps of paper and the North End was universally moist Texans thought nothing of padding shoeless through our privy but when I went there I always wore shoes and tucked the laces inside while the men were freezing to death in their Nissan huts with rotten mattresses and terrible toilets this is where the officers were staying little cart house magnificent Tudor mansion I know where I'd rather be don't you during the 17th century a Roman villa completed with Orpheus Mosaic was discovered in the grounds and littlecoat it was covered over until the 1970s and according to Webster it was believed to have been destroyed in the woods surrounding the house the men of Easy Company practice Maneuvers often over several days and nights and they left their Mark quite literally in the trees what's lovely about to beat trees such as this is the Bark is slow growing and whilst any lettering or pictures might warp you that you tend to be able to see what the writing is even with some significant age and I'd suggest this has got some age to it you've got some slight warping going on it's not as fresh as it would have been if it had been carved and we've got the word I don't know if you can make it out down here but we've got Ohio written down which would make sense so if we got American soldiers stationed nearby wow now this is more like it it's staggering isn't it there's just so much going on it's I mean this stands out like a sore thumb it does we've got I mean that's got to be a Stars and Stripes yep US flag so we've got the US connection again like with Ohio it almost seems like there's multiple panels leading into each other telling a bit of a story as well yeah I mean there's stylized writing here and two notable names from from anyone that's seen the series or read the books buck and Butch I mean they are leading prominent and members of the the division but and USA there and just um to confirm it The Men Who left these carvings were learning skills that might mean the difference between life and death they were about to be scattered across northern France and needed to be able to read and use the landscape both to outmaneuver the enemy and to survive and they needed to be able to identify a friend from foe right Crickets at the ready [Music] all right Bruce and I are slowly advancing to where we think Derek is hard not to make a lot of noise in the woods much of the men's physical stamina was put down to the often cruel training regime of Captain Herbert Sobel but all the exercises around all born his tactical weakness was exposed curtain sink was forced to make a decision that would change the fate of Easy Company when a long-running feud between Sobel and Lieutenant dick Winters came to a head Sobo had tricked Winters into failing to inspect the latrines Winters refused to accept the minor punishment and demanded a court martial age of the company had it in their stripes in support of winters and sync was faced with what was effectively a mutiny on his hands it is a staggeringly nice room isn't it beautiful one of you so things sitting here probably in this very seat I think this is the one I'd have chosen to watch the men and he's got this massive decision to make hasn't he either he sides with the men but if he does that he's undermining the principle that you've got to obey your officers or he stays with his officer and if he does then the men are just gonna walk out on him and then you've got added complication that you've got this Lieutenant Winters uh who sober wanted to punish and Witnesses going no I will go for a court martial chances which is going to be much more public absolutely it's a nightmare if I was thinking I'd have walked straight out of that room it was an incredible Command Decision and I think he must have thought really heavily about this um and to make that decision to somehow not remove sovel because he did acknowledge that it was Sobel created easy company at the end of the day so he said to Sobel you're a good guy you've trained these men up this is all going to be brilliant absolutely chest is all puffing up thinking he's done a fabulous job and they said oh by the way I'm going to get you out of here I want you instead to do a very important job I want you to train Vickers how to jump out of planes base that's exactly what he did I mean you know Chilton Folia it's a jump School a couple of miles up the road from here I want it to feel like this is going to be a good thing for Sobel that he's been given command of a complete jump School units rather than just of a company um but it allowed him then to gently move Sobel out of the way and move dick Winters up children foliage wasn't far from oldborn a new recruit is a replacement under when they're training there the course lasted about two weeks so they spent the first week learning how to pack parachutes how to jump out of mock fuselages yeah and I've got actually got a picture here of the of them a couple of fuselages one of them has been made of sort of corrugated tin and in the background you can see the rear of what was a B-17 fuselage this is the door they're jumping out that's the door this of course is quite a short jump whereas that one is much higher yeah yeah the skies were frequently filled with thousands of parachutes of different colors practicing dropping personnel and supplies and the villagers would race to collect the silk to make underwear huh because they've done their training they needed to make five jumps from a c47 to get their wings and uh they would come from children foliate they'd be brought up here by truck they get in the c47 c47 takeoff drop them in a field behind the case at shortened Folia they'd land Dash back to the parachute sheds grab another parachute jump on the truck come back up here to run through get in another c-47 and and they tried if they could to get their five jumps in in one day but as their training came to an end Winston Churchill and general Eisenhower were treated to an impressive display of airborne's potential back on site and John and Adam have completed their surveys in this area we're getting these really clear very strong responses now those are over foundations of brick structures or maybe iron pads are on the floor they look quite modern they're not sort of archaeological as such so these could easily relate to something you know to do with the encampment but when you look at your plan there's nothing in that area that's the limit of the Nissan Huts isn't it that's right in red and this is the area where these responses are showing so that's the first point of Interest the second point is coming back into the field we're standing in now that's the limit of the tents yeah there's a tent basis concrete tent bases well there's the limit we've clearly got similar strong responses this side of the goal post um suggesting two or three structures there as well so they're not marked on the plan and that's not marked would you make of that then Richard that's intriguing isn't it with the air photographs from where we've we've taken these these Huts in 1946 does that mean there are early instructors pre-1946 that are on that photograph that correspond with with your elements or is it something later I think we'll have to have a let's have a look at that as far as accommodation was concerned you had the gloriousness of the Tudor mansion and the grimness of the Nissan Huts but halfway between were these there were a lot of stables which had originally housed racehorses which were around the back of the office's mess this one's been moved here now just to preserve it and these were David Webster's favorite place on the whole site you can understand why can't you there's a real Haven compared with The Madness of what was going on everywhere else I lived in many places in the Army but none were quite as enjoyable as those box stalls in aldorn perhaps this was because I had a craving for privacy that they alone satisfied or perhaps it was Freudian the love of a small warm dark place in which I could curl up and hide I don't know whatever the subconscious reason if any there were many more tangible things to recommend the Stables to soldiers where else may I ask could one share in the rich Spoils of the officer's mess with a small select company of three instead of a greedy Barracks of 60. The Stables were dismantled piece by piece and moved from their original location partly to little count Manor and partly to the karahi military museum in Toccoa following on from the TV series there was massive interest in the guys of easy company and tours were set up to follow in their footsteps they turned up here found out that the Stables were going to be demolished so a hasty plan of action was formulated my father myself our two friends Sam and Tim we carefully dismantled them they were shipped up to Bryce Norton flown over to Toccoa and yeah we followed on the four of us we carefully put it all back together again and it now forms the major exhibits in the korahi military museum in Toccoa Georgia for the vast majority of the men of second Battalion the Nissan hard Square Excavating were home as they waited with mounting impatience to find out where and when they were going to be deployed the latrines were second only to the Red Cross Hut as a social Center where gossip was exchanged rumors spring fully grown from the Honey Buckets NF company Rifleman might come in with a copy of the Daily Mail read it use pages one and two and pass the remainder to his neighbor a mortarman from headquarters company along with a rumor that the outfit was going to Italy by the end of day two we're just beginning to see the next as we try to build up a picture of life in the camp for the American servicemen six days left to see what else The Band of Brothers Left Behind fast to find if you want us to investigate more sites you can make it happen so help us reach 10 000 members on patreon [Music] day three is underway and there are now tangible signs of easy companies Nissan Hutt in trench one as well as what now appears to be a motorbike wheel foreign [Music] really nice and respectable lovely wide-eyed school children looking at it but over here it's just like a dodgy Music Festival isn't it you've got all these tents and vans that's the tent belonging to our cameraman Steve hello mate there's the shower tent This one belongs to Kerry oh and over here this is the office hi Karen and a sort of kitchen thing there but this is the big deal Matt actually owns this he must be making a fortune mostly it's also where we do the the sound recording I'm Matthew in here in here Tony lovely motor thank you you made it how are you all right Richard hello Matt good morning trench one is looking great what's the plan for today then well I suppose the bottom line is to find our heart but uh the the where Pat's working here he's got the can you see the the tar paper there's the waterproofing layer at the bottom of the Huts uh that we're looking for the Nissan Hut and it's also with the motorbike wheel with the idea is really to clean this up get it photographed and then join them together if we can and make sure that the tar paper continues along and then we've really got the outline of our of our Hut in this trench right and you've had some great finds out of here haven't you yeah we have we have we've had um really really quite exciting things that link us to exactly what we're looking for really um so we start off with this sort of prosaic thing it's an ointment tube but remember these guys aren't aren't fighting all the time or or training all the time they have their kind of medical conditions that you know everyone would have you put 16 people in a heartless chance of this sort of thing spreading so uh one of those um and then we're getting into into the soldiers themselves which is obviously what we want to be finding and you remember in the in the first day I was talking about little horseshoes the bottom of boots that um people do bring bring them in as mule shoes or something but they are they're military-issue boots and that's the the heel plate uh of a military boot so one of those there probably will be more of these actually I'd expect to find more um so that's great but what we really want is to find the Americans right um and I think this is probably our our first really good glimpse of the Americans got a leather strap and a buckle oh yeah look at that and there's writing on there everybody what does it say uh down the bottom there it's a pro r o RI RI and at the top r-a-u-f dot Co yeah so that's the the company name and Prov RI Providence Rhode Island ah so that's definitely American 100 American this offer a definite trace of Americans and two two of these on each boot um so all sorts of bits and pieces actually is another thing that the patch just just found eggs came from your hold the knit part do you know what that is it did Richard so this is the equivalent to the modern day cleaning Rod uh attach a string on one end and you put your patch to run through the barrel you pull it through and it cleans out the uh the barrel and I believe it's uh from the M1 Duran it's an American cleaning kitchen brilliant so that connects us to our all paratroopers really well nice find this find gives us a nice link to Forest Garth pictured outside this very Hut Guth became the armorer for his comrades and could adapt an M1 rifle to become fully automatic he adapted his uniform to carry all the equipment he needed by sewing on extra pockets on the other side of the field the teams revealed more of the Nissan Hut than Fox company occupied here we've got as you can see we've got brick foundations coming back we're actually at the back of the hut and that's the you can see here there's the one of the back entrance here we're running along the wall here and running along the wall here and have you got any evidence for the floor in here yet at the moment no we've come down onto sort of like this Gravelly clinker we think it's like a sub bass at the moment which is in here and we're going at the moment we're digging down onto that as the first stage so why is this base made of brick and the other one concrete so the only the only reason we can think about in the moment about why there is a difference is that it was done in two phases for construction potentially this was done in one and then the second phase over on the other side it could be that this was done first of all and that the reason that there isn't the same build is two things one lack of material and two time and as if by Magic the first signs of a floor surface appear oh yeah I found a bit of concrete as well of the flooring so that's quite interesting in trench one it's time to lift the wheel carefully to try to identify it [Music] foreign wow look at that this is what I love archeology come to Old born looking for the Nissan Huts we've got the concrete floors we've got the geophysics got the L photographs day three and we found a motorbike wheel the wheel looks very like the ones you find on M1 machine gun carts and to add to this a sign was donated to the Heritage Center made from a box that's stored you've guessed it M1 machine gun carts and underneath the wheel is something that takes me back to the dodgy sandwiches from my childhood shippums thank you shippens which could well be for fish or meat paste sounds like so what we got for dinner then well what I thought I'd introduce you to is the K ration which is of what the American soldiers do in the second world war would have got either in the field or on exercise may be used as a waterproof container for matches cigarettes and other items I wouldn't say that nowadays the security hide the empty Cannon wrappers so they can't be seen well that would be if you go and leave your rubbish all over the place the enemy's going to know where you've been and where you are yeah it does make sense doesn't it right let's have a look and see what's inside yummy yum yum what's that box of tissues carries filled the box with modern equivalents of the K rations the men would have had to survive on a couple of nice bags oh I'm not a for a while well every ration pack has a packet of cigarettes in it this is what this is sugar is it sugar yep yep and this one is instant coffee very nice yeah oh what are these okay I'll open for you lovely then chewing gum she wanna get me up because you wouldn't have a toothbrush necessarily you can clean your teeth gum a little bit of cheese very nice bit more cheese and that's my main course I suppose yep colds but that's a ham and egg or spam in there or like a bit of spam but I think tonight I'll just go for the cheese option oh boy how many calories do you written there are in this little nut there's about 2 800 calories in all three meals for the day until you get through these you get three of these one for breakfast one for dinner and one for supper the trouble is is the calories were worked out for an average working man they're not worked out for a man who's going to be jumping out of an aircraft running around the countryside being shot at so there weren't enough calories whereas today's modern Soldier their ration packs have about 4 200 calories in there so at least you can stay fit whereas with these you're going to lose weight and lose energy although I have to say a lot of the things that are here match what I would like best which I know they used to have what's that lady cake we did have some it's all gone I've just came to the cheese well food food's drink and how to get it clearly occupied the minds of the men here Webster describes KP in the officer's mess at high town as a pleasure and a privilege as well as a source of loot for many a squad feast most of all we liked the easy access to Fresh butter fruit cocktail and sliced pineapples stored in the cool Stone cellar below the kitchen there was a fist-sized hole in the seller's window screen and when none of the cooks were watching we could slip a can or two through it into the long grass outside where it remained hidden until quitting time [Music] back in trench one and you never know quite what you're gonna find when you're looking for a Nissan Hut Richard ah what have you got there what do you think of that seems to have most of the now the indicative bits doesn't it it does look like it's been struck we can make this a lot earlier than our Band of Brothers I don't think they're using flintlocks or anything are they so it's got It's got all the bits we need but um well we'll have a look at that later but I think it's a bit of prehistory to go with the the second world war but I think we've got the edges of the Hut yes let's roll forward a few thousand years what have you got in this trench here what it's coming uh you've got the sort of yellow layer here and then there's a very very dark band which has got bits of iron can you see that there yeah there's little bits of what I think is going to be tar paper that black flecking there and then on this side we're back to the yellow right okay so what is this dark line then well it's a good question um this is where we're expecting to see the the Nissan edges but I'm wondering whether there's some sort of drainage Gully at the edges of it it sort of makes sense you know water running down this um semi-circle of corrugated iron it's going to be quite swampy at the edge so is there some sort of drainage system well I think the idea for me now is to clean it up to get the line coming back um and then once we've got the the extent of the hut exposed then maybe we can put a a slot across it and see if we have got a drainage Gully associated with the Hut I'll grab them excellent thank you Matt and give it to you there's one here it's believed that the hats were originally built by British soldiers stationed here before the U.S paratroopers arrived you found something yeah I just thought Richard I'm entirely sure the crown is is there a Training Club training call so I have no idea when they were founded but it's quite nice it's a Young Person's organization yes so we've got a regular British military here regular American and and maybe quite an early Young Person's military presence yeah yeah that's nice that's a good find so it's our first military badge let's find some more cheers nice one thank you Mark thank you [Music] the British had been at War for five years when the Americans arrived and they found a country that not only bought the scars but was also very different culturally and to avoid unnecessary friction the authorities came up with a cunning plan thank you this is instructions for American servicemen in Britain in 1942. if britons sit in trains or buses without striking up a conversation with you it doesn't mean they're being haughty and unfriendly probably they're paying you more attention than you think but they don't speak to you because they don't want to appear intrusive or rude another difference the British have phrases and colloquialisms of their own that may sound funny to you ominous isn't it with this thunder going so ominous things it isn't a good idea to say bloody in mixed company in Britain it's one of their very worst swear words to say I look like a bum is offensive to their ears because for the British this means that you look like your own backside that's a good tip isn't it the British don't know how to make a good cup of coffee that's very true and you don't know how to make a good cup of tea it's an even swap very very true yes fair enough yes we'll meet in the middle on that one well exactly yeah I think that kind of summarizes the British American relationship do you think this would have been any use to you when you came over for the first time you came to Britain yes it's a must read yeah you've seen the post pad see the postpart let's see by the afternoon of day three we finally got the first signs of the post pads debating it they've got the similar story there with the line oh right coming along but just there Davis you've got the the pushback how amazing so that is the that's the first one we wanted to find a few more but let's go is there any spiking or anything like that we haven't found the spike yet no no there are quite loose probably damaged when it was knocked down so oh well that's good great news it's the first structural evidence in the ground of the Nissan Hut which forest gath was pictured in front of 80 years ago we hadn't found any post pads on the other side but Richard has borrowed Matt's 10 pegs to Mark out where he's expecting them to run yeah cool yeah you can go straight that way we'll carry around that way brilliant let's do that then all right put the peg in here on the edges and typically it's not going yeah I'm bending I'm ruining your pegs can you hit it with a matter and see if we know and I'll put the peg in after that yeah have a have a fertile oh we're like this look this looks suspiciously concrete oh look is that is that a reinforcement oh yeah yeah yeah oh right well that what are the chances of that so that would be why it's not but it's not on our line isn't it uh no so that and that is it looks to me at the moment that that's in situ that's a nicely laid thing so maybe that does work quite well with your idea of it being a drainage Gully I see so the the corrugated sheet came down to here yeah and this was brought them inside yeah I think that's probably what we got right that's quite obvious isn't it so because we need to kind of get around there yes and I'll find a new place to put them [Music] at last we've got post pads on both sides of the Hut and those all important finds and coming up all over the place Place those two together what you have is you have a 3008 rifle cartridge by these I recognize these are the roof nail the roof nails that held the corrugated iron down what else is there you've got this these are called dogs they're used for joining Timbers together so that's our furnace and Hut as well yep yep definitely drain which we're looking at and these spam key spam Key Well Done [Music] day four starts with hild looking for one of the structures John identified on the geophys which wasn't visible on the aerial photographs and in the test pit where we think the Red Cross hat stood Ivan has spotted something of Interest what you got it looks it looks very much like a beer bottle oh wow I wasn't this the recreation Hut as well as the first aid Place beer and Recreation would be about wonderful wouldn't it be careful with it looking less like a beer bottle here we go there's liquid in it as well and the stopper's on the top so could it be some kind of medicine instead of liniment or something possible but the stopper's still in as well and I think it's probably best if we leave it that way give Richard a shout complete bottle though that's been in the group that's been in the ground for 70 nearly 80 years so this bottle may have held some medicine used to treat the soldiers in the Red Cross hat while the team continues Matt has been retracing the steps of perhaps the most famous member of Easy Company Captain dick Winters so John we're sitting on this bench here overlooking the churchyard in oldborn and it's a very special bench it is a special bench it's a special bench to the memory of Dick Winters Winters it was his favorite place in the village um he would often come here whenever he wanted quiet on the first morning when he came up The Path here from past the church he came across a couple who were attending a obviously new Grave the grave was that of their son Leonard who was an aircraftsman in the RAF and he had been killed in a raid they had buried him a few months before and they came every morning to tend his grave and to sit here and and remember him they got talking and talking more deeply and basically Within an hour or so that morning struck up a very deep friendship but Winters fitted in just perfectly he became a member of the family he became a real member of the family um almost to the extent of being a surrogate for for a Leonard there were other close relationships forged with the Villagers Lieutenant Ronald Spears married Margaret Griffiths and pictured him one of the wedding photos is Lieutenant Buck Compton whose name we found carved into a tree two brothers who lived here in 1943 have affectionate memories of the soldiers and the camp Colin yes David you were young boys about seven yeah when Easy Company came to this field tell us what it was like when they arrived I remember all their Maneuvers and everything going on I used to stand down the end of the drive just up the road in our house and watch them March up and down so the lane go off to the Maneuvers up in the woods and things and they'd come marching by and Chuck sticks are chewing gum to me and yes it was for a young you know loud of six and seven it was marvelous to see all the stuff going on it sounds like a really really busy time and the village must have really changed but then of course suddenly they all disappeared and my cousin of mine Peter was the same age as me used to come and stay and he we loved the scarring all around finding all these these things that have been discarded and on the day that they all left for D-Day we heard lots of goings on in the night eyes and we walk down in the morning walk down the road here came into the camp and everything was just left open it just said people just walked straight out everything was just left there you know and there was live ammunition left on the on one of the tables and the Hut was just up there do you think you actually went into any of these Huts then that we've been yes yeah yeah yeah definitely yeah so tell us a bit about switzy here this little monkey yes well as I said he was given to me in 36 as a jubilee present and he had to repair that proper it was a proper chimpanzee he didn't have clothes or anything it was probably all with lots of hair and everything but later on he got these clothes and whether that came at the same time or that was sewn on after he had the Jersey but so easy company gave gave mother that and the Airborne badge there sewn on and they've been there ever since [Music] Hill's test bit they're somewhat disappointingly only produced a few tent pegs and nothing structural beyond the tent bases visible on the aerial photos but despite multiple rain interruptions we've managed to get a clear idea of the structure of Easy's Nissan Hut well we've had a bit of rain today and by the look of it you've got the tar paper but that should be a waterproofing layer but the key thing is getting the building on the inside and by the looks of it you're getting that too yep we definitely got the pads going towards the back but unfortunately towards the front they've been machined out while they've been leveling the playing field so we've just got the faint sort of like trace of where they were so bits of the building are missing but are you getting any fines related to the building 100 we are yeah and obviously if you've got a Nissan Hut you need a door so we've got a bit of door hinge you've got to find a door that'd be really nice you've got two options the front door but that's been bulldozer away as you say chance on the back well you never know we'll be Excavating through there so you never know we might find some evidence of it and uh then the roof suits brilliant now that's that's a nail with a curved washer at the top because it's corrugated iron that corresponds to the curve and that's that you found any more of those was just that one loads of them loads of them obviously when they knocked it down they just ripped them out threw them on the ground yeah and they went into this ditch great so we can follow that wall get the rest of the pads same on the other side so we've got the full dimensions and then maybe the back yep hopefully the back and the one thing we're not sure what should we do with the center the geophysical survey had a really strong reading in the middle and the veterans talk about these Huts there were 16 people in these eight bunk beds and the way they get warm is a pot bellied stove wouldn't that be nice you've got a pot belly stove in the middle of that big yeah and some of the fines connect us directly to the smart young soldiers who made audible in their home well we've also continued the metal detecting grid across the sports pitches and the last grid of the day turned up a lot of elements of Americana and I think the key thing was this rather lovely button wow that is beautiful you can see the American eagle on it it's address button it's got the the writing of the manufacturers on the back and that symbol appears behind pretty much every presidential speech today and as such I think that's a really lovely find it shows our American soldiers in this field it'll clean up well and it'll be a lovely find for the local Museum yeah that's an absolute star finding some great results today I think we've earned a drink in the pub I think we totally have I think we should do that right now let's go the pubs in Old Ward proved popular destinations for the men the officers tried to reserve the blue ball for themselves but according to Webster neither the men and nor the landlord were happy with this arrangement it caused us to regard the imposition as a challenge and try to sneak in wherever we could via the back door when the premises was occupied or the front door when the coast was clear Mr dady always welcomed us heartily I believe he had been an enlisted man in the other war and always managed to save us a beer or a milk stout cheers [Music] the half basement of the Crown Pub was taken over as the company command post officially the liveliest spot in town but the day of the coronation of King Charles III it's a little bit raggled [Music] this room here was where dick winter stayed when he was billeted with the Barnes family along with his friend Harry Wells now while they were here all the soldiers loved the lardi cake which they made in the village but the best lardi cake came from here and I'm going to pop inside grab some take it back to site with some way to offset the chilly dampness of the English winter lordy cake is a heavy sticky coffee ring-like pastry that is very filling and far more appetizing than its name would imply I'd hide it under my field jacket and smuggle it into camp for future reference with the latte cake safely stowed for later Matt finds were continuing unabated well I thought that rain would stop play but I've clearly underestimated your team now these are these are Hardy military folk map these are these are reveling in it this is good training whether this is and um yeah they're really Keen to keep on and I think that's a good reflection of how actually exciting this trench is so what can you do when when it's raining like this I think you've got to keep movements to a minimum because you can make a real mess and also it's slippies it could be a bit dangerous I think what we're trying to do is just expose to the level of the post pads get the sections cleaned and then hopefully when it stops raining we'll be able to travel it back and get that nice flat clean layer right so it's all systems go in this train it really is yeah it really is I wanna I wanna resolve this as soon as possible and then we can start finding things inside that okay well I would offer to help but I think they need some help in the fines tents well done thank you oh that's iron yes things by no means an expert part of the structure of the building I suspect um but we'll give it a good clean and we'll find out but yeah nice very good find I'm US Army we have people here who's from the Navy in the Air Force being that this is easy company I mean me being history fan um me and Mike uh the other one who organized all this uh we just volunteered we wanted to be out we wanted to show face um and uh we can't just step past you know Band of Brothers kind of things um and I was telling people the other day I went to the cemetery right next to Cambridge and I actually found a really distant cousin of mine unfortunately on the wall of the Lost not in the graveyard itself but uh it was very nice to be able to commemorate especially a member of our family over here despite the mud and all the all the the rest of it I managed I've just dragged out literally five minutes ago what looks like a spanner and it probably is a spanner and maybe it was one of the spanners that was used to build the Huts that were now stood on so that's a nice little story and when we clean it up maybe we'll even find a maker's name on there last week I was in Normandy for a battle staff ride so I got to see all that side of D-Day and I got to go to all the battlefields and the bunkers and where all the beaches were so that was kind of cool so I'm getting a big loop of everything that has to do with the 101. so what do you think you've gained from your work over the last few days a whole lot of knowledge I think that's the biggest thing that I've found is is a methodology getting to work with Richard Osgood the team time team it's been great I've learned um basically how to handle yourself out here what to do what not to do how to Mark things down how to document everything it's been a tremendous learning experience I can't wait to do it again so I walked down the street the other day and I I was talking to someone about the project and they actually got to meet dick Winters and twice in the early 2000s and so we talked about that for a good half hour you're right Pat what have you got there it's the dug out all knife oh that's brilliant yeah definitely a pocket knife can you see the blades in there and the little hoop um tied off too yeah it looks like it might be a bone handle as well that's that's an absolutely brilliant phone yeah maybe there'll be a inscription or something on there somewhere yeah yeah we'll get that cleaned up and we'll have a good look at it some of the fines that we're getting are surprising the experts I don't think we expected to find as much ammunition as we have this example here is a standard American 0.386 round so it was used in the rifles and machine guns and as you can see it's unfired but in fact it's completely empty because it's just completely broken up that would have been fitted into something like this this is an eight round guarant clip for an M1 Garand rifle which was the standard rifle that the 506 parachute infantry guys would have used so we've also found some of the clips as well we found a number of these and as you can see that's actually a surprisingly good condition but very easy to see the two together there so they were obviously firing live ammunition practicing with live ammunition and we've also found quite a few of these blanks so blank ammunition is used to simulate gunfire so when you fired it makes a loud report but there's no bullet so you can use it for foreign maneuver and there's no risk in terms of shooting your fellow soldiers so that's what they would have used if they were training around the village and outside in the landscape that's right that's right and traditionally that's what you start training with before you go on to live ammunition someone surprisingly we found some bigger ammunition so heavy machine gun ammunition 0.50 Browning which is a bit of an enigma at the moment because they didn't use the 0.50 Browning because it's a massive machine gun and it wasn't possible to airdrop it and some of the more unusual stuff that we really didn't didn't expect to find is items such as this so as you can see this is very badly degraded but it's actually a German rifle round right one effort a German rifle round B in this Camp well they trained they were introduced to enemy weapons so they did they had weapons familiarization training so when they were when they landed in Europe they were able to use weapons should they need to right okay so that's come from the German side it's been captured or found and taken back here for training purposes that's right yeah um and another interesting item related to this so this piece of curl that rust here and it's actually a part of a German machine gun belt link which you could link together and they were following through General machine guns after a soggy start to the day the moment Matt's been waiting for from a lardi cake that is really good it's kind of crunchy on the outside super soft on the inside raisins and a good smear of lard on the bottom there so I think it really gives it you know the uh really pushes it over the line in the in in the world of cakes I highly recommend the local lardi cake and it seems to be going down pretty well with the team [Music] I get it work stops only briefly to watch the coronation of King Charles III wait does she have her crown yet or no no yeah okay to actually be here I mean that is something phenomenal and to see all of the ceremony that's involved that's something special because we don't have anything quite as ancient in our culture over in the United States okay [Music] popular myth holds that the Cockerel on the church was replaced because the old one was used as target practice in 1944. mark this is the Weather Vein that was on top of the church Tower in Auburn in the 1940s and there's a bit of a mystery behind it isn't there there's what appears to be a bullet hole well I think it's perfectly plausible if we take this standard rifle round if we look at it as a strike from the front it's slightly larger but if we take it as a potential strike from a slight angle I think it's perfectly plausible if you have a look at the back spin it around a bit there you go grab that and yeah and if we were looking at a penetrating bullied strike we can see here that in fact it looks very much like it because if this is the rear you can see where the paint has flaked off which is typical of what we'd expect on the reverse of Uh Uh something's been hit from the front and that's the back so this could have been hit by someone from Airborne 101 as they practice for D-Day I think they certainly could or somebody's making a bet yeah also I'm just having a bit of fun having a bit of fun it was a good shot it's coronation day 5th of May 2023 and what an amazing a main day we've had we're out on the Green in oldborn there must be 200 300 people out here the beacon is going behind me pretty much it's the Flames are going it's certainly smoking there's some live music starting what a perfect end to a fantastic day [Music] so together we brought time team back and now we're going to take time team to the next level help us achieve 10 000 ongoing members on patreon or ongoing membership enables us to develop more sites and more episodes join a thriving worldwide community of time team fans on patreon [Applause] [Music] day six is underway and thankfully the rain has stopped and work can continue as the team into the final two days of the Dig Dave it's 1106 a.m and I've just heard you've already bagged find of the day what have you got well this has been the find of my trip so far actually uh it's a knife it was right here and it says USA on the handle and I'm pretty sure that's bake a light so it would be from the period right yeah so that's yeah certainly almost certainly from the Army I would say so uh of course we're going to take it back to the tent and have them do some research on it clean it up a bit and see if they can make a match yeah so what do you think it might have been used for could have been used in the mess hall could have been used as a utility knife of some sort uh don't really know but we'll find out that's amazing that is the star find quite happy with it has joined the team to help out in the test pits let's see how is it going it's going well we've found this metal detecting because there's a big metal something under there okay so where are we can you orientate yeah okay so we're about here the Huts here run along behind us okay and those have been along that side so we're just on this what's path let's think around about there yeah it's not a great path is it really I mean considering how well made the base is I mean looking at it it doesn't look quite such formal path we know they're brought in rubble to beef up the paths maybe it's settled as well you know this this field has had a lot of people driving over it [Music] enjoy the team just to escape for evidence of where Easy Company conducted their training local landowner Ben Laughton wants to show him some more tree carvings he's found in the woods ah right so we've got c l s c u s a well I know what USA is likely to be what what about those well it'd be brilliant if that was Carwood Lipton from South Carolina in the USA wouldn't that be nice if we've got personalized like carving to this point in time to somebody in easy it would be brilliant wouldn't it Carl wood Lipton was the jump master of one of the c47 sky trains that flew the paratroopers into Normandy he was also one of the sergeants who turned in his stripes in support of winters in The Showdown with Sobel as well as tree carvings Ben thinks he's spotted the remains of foxholes in the woods to the untrained eye this might not look very much but this rectangular depression in the ground here this is a classic two-man Foxhole um originally dig down into it with a trenching tool depth I should save about five foot maybe six foot and two men could stand in here and almost being visible in the landscape you can see how the ground Rises up behind me this this is a material that's come out of here but it's not just dumped it's actually part the architecture of this practice work it's basically a defensive parapet and it that tells me that this was designed to face that way and if you look through the Hedge line there in Imagine attacking troops coming over there they wouldn't see you you're that you're down here in the ground behind this parapet but you've got a lovely Skyler and you could get down here it's like target practice is accelerated against the the crest over there Easy Company dug into foxholes through freezing winter days and nights in Bojack before they reoccupied the village of foi but during this short period they suffered many losses and among the dead was Private pencala played by actor Tim Matthews in the HBO series he was a mortar man so he's part of a three-man mortar Squad with skip muck and Donald Malarkey and made it as far as bastoin in the Battle of Foy and unfortunately it took some very heavy casualties there were some extremely heavy shelling of the forest that they were in and he took a director hit to his Foxhole and he and Skip muck died at the same time together but it sounds quite intense though I mean all of you were together for several months filming um how was the whole experience of that the training and the acting were very different I'd say the acting I think for all of us was heavily influenced by the training and the training involved going to boot camp for something like 10 or 11 days depends who you ask and that was very intense and very hard actually it was physically very hard mentally very hard it was only a very short period of time and our lives didn't depend on it but you know at moments it felt like the stakes were quite high so they really put us through it we're a mile and a half south of battleborn and to go wood why here right well this is part of the training landscape of the 506th in oldborn we know from the war diaries that they were training here and this is where we're standing out here in front or where there was a farmhouse on the lidar that would be exactly so what we've got is the documentary evidence saying that they use this as a live firing range they basically Blew Up The Farmhouse so you should be expected to find some evidence of those activities how are you going to do that what we're going to do is a metal detecting survey well if you're going to stay here and do that I'm going off on a bit of a wander because I saw some interesting things on the lidar in the woods I want to take a look at Stuart thinks he can see a line of foxholes running along the edge of the Woods this is is really really interesting this is a really well preserved example of a foxhole although they the pits behind whether the trench would have been dug is now in filled with leaves and rotting vegetation um the bank the protective bank that they throw up around it is extremely well preserved 40 meters further down from the Foxhole I've just found is another Foxhole set in exactly the same position on the inside of the the ditch line that is quite a sizeable parapet there so you get some idea that this pick was probably about four or five feet deep at least and again the preservation is very good the important thing is the these are the first two of the features I saw on the lidar and they both are genuine World War II slip trenches [Music] the metal detect interests are finding evidence of the military exercises below and above ground some lovely M1 carbon around [Music] I think we might have found a bit of a grenade yes indeed this is a Detonator group or a fuse from an American fragmentation grenade okay fantastic yeah yeah and we can tell that because of its shape and form uh they're very very particular and how they're set up so yeah absolutely easy to ID nice find yeah thank you so detected on the training ground today we've been looking to see if we've got evidence of what we knew the paratroopers were taken in with them that had these which are the pineapple type of hand grenade with just two days left the team are feeling pretty happy with the way the digs progressing and in the evening they gather around the campfire to discuss tactics for the final push [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] day seven and things are quite subdued here on the campsite I was up pretty early this morning but judging by the remnants of this fire pit I think there were a few late nights but that's fine this dig isn't just about shifting soil and finding artifacts it's about making friends it's about the camaraderie and it's about enjoying yourself well the rain is just about starting to set in now but our Valiant team have got their tools and I can see them moving over towards the trenches so I should probably get going [Music] of hearts and you've got that big metal drum out because it isn't there anymore all right well fantastic so it's a shame there's no label on it is that we can actually see what it might have had in it it's possible this might have been one of the braziers that provided a little warmth hopefully hopefully and then yeah that's yeah that's everyone's question iron set into mortar with a well the Curious shape cast into it we had two last year and we still don't know what they are one theory is that these strange objects might be rifle but mounts Richard I believe this is part of a beer bottle probably a bit too old to have come from last night's festivities but what can you tell us about it I think we were having cancer I think we're in the clear on this one the bottle itself is nothing nothing significant really to her but the stopper actually is got some really nice historical information on it and you can see it's got writing on it it says War grade War grade yeah so by the time that this bottle is put together with the beer in it rubber is a really strategic resource it's an important material they're using it for things that help the war effort so things like on airplane tires really important that's where you're directing all your resources and the Japanese have captured lots of the rubber plantations by this point in the war and so it's quite a scarce material so they've made it very clear that this this may not be the highest quality of bottle stopper but there's a reason behind it and the other element with this is there is an American link because that resource being so precious really did encourage the Americans to come up with a synthetic alternative to to rubber because it's a material that they all the war efforts across the globe will need right so we're on it's a meter this way but we also want to get 1.41 across the diagonal because that'll make it Square Karen's is putting a test pit into one of the back Gardens to look for some of the Huts that are visible on the aerial photos [Music] and we've got a curious five near the door of the Nissan Hut in trench one all right what do we got here then something coming up yeah we've got a glass yeah we've got a lovely glass bottle just underneath just put a brush on top just to stop any Stones hitting it on the way down it's a bit like an old school Orangina one I was just thinking yeah or a um right or something yeah well um right I'll let you do the honors thanks mate see if it moves first before you do it yeah there's mud so writing on it yeah there is CBC once you are it looks like the bottle isn't the only fine that's come out of the back of easy companies Nissan Hut you can see this bit of wood and that is actually more like this coming out we haven't found this before but we think it's part of maybe the window or the door frame something like that we also found this and this side is quite green but that's just because it was laying on the ground but that could have been part of a door frame or something like that some type of door fitting and then just recently a little bit further along we found this here oh wow it's that marmalade it is it's a marmalade top it's sad really isn't it that all those wonderful old buildings that were part of the history down there have been demolished long ago well it would be if that was true but it isn't quite because that is the original Red Cross building come and have a look Steve oh Tony an awful lot of this is obviously fairly new but some of it is the original isn't it yes the original iron framework the corrugated sheets that's that's original you really got a sense of it oh yeah definitely how come it was down there and then woof by Magic is here well the building from uh the local building from Lydia it's they were charged with the dismantling and demolishing of the camp well they saw this one being the biggest of the huts and thought we can use this for ourselves so in the 1950s when this all happened they moved dismantled it moved it up here and it became the base of operations for uh for their building firm the structure of this listen hat helps us understand what we're finding in the ground to recognize that these are the things that we've found on site that hold the exterior clubbing on and that's what they would have looked like originally but not all the hats were the same construction and Karen's the thing she's found evidence of something different in her test pit we started off with the one test pit we had no sign of anything there so we then decided we'd extend it into bigger area and as soon as we started widening that trench we found a post hole but a postal not like we're used to on archaeological sites where do you just go so this is a hole that has clearly had a Timber Post in it and then filled with concrete around so you can see the square outline of the Timber post and we've even got a bit of the timber in the bottom with a couple of nuts and bolts on it still which is fantastic so is this another Nissan Hut well it's not the same design so I'm suggesting it might be a tar paper Hut so that's where it's built of Timber essentially and you've just got that Tom act kind of you know black waxy oil stuff that you use through the flooring on the rest of it and you're just using that to do the walls the Americans put them up and they were quicker to put up and you could get more people in them it's another piece of the puzzle as we build up a picture of life in the camp [Music] but we're just one day left and rain forecast everyone's anxious to get some results [Music] well first find of the day and we've got a watch wow look at that we've popped in a protective case but as you can see I thought at first it might be a wrist compass but um on further inspection when it came out the hole the back came off and as you can see we've got a very nice delicate watch mechanism there it's a good thing because it allowed the the fines team to look at the back perhaps maybe find a date but one of the things I wanted you to to see is is just feel the weight of that well that's really got some weight to it hasn't it yeah it doesn't feel like a cheap Timex the other interesting thing you'll notice that lovely green yellow patination there on the face I think that might be a radiated paint and that would have made the face luminous yeah yeah something we need to consider when we hand it into the finest tent and the teams start to conserve it we're in pentico yesterday doing the survey and this came up can you um let us know what it what it could be the tail section of an anti-tank rocket this is an inert practice example but you can see this exactly the same for this one you've had some success already this morning yeah yeah first find out this morning and it's going to be a good morning is this cat badge oh wow that's amazing what so what badge is that then Royal Engineers it's got the cipher for Old King George in it so almost certainly wartime so uh Dan reckons he has heard that the Royal Engineers actually built the camp um so we might actually have the construction crew which is really nice someone must have got into trouble for losing their batch though I think so I think so it's even got the fastening plate on the back so how they managed to lose that I don't know there's a reason I work in there for two days and we can really see the outline of the Nissan Huts the engineers built now that they are cleaned up tell me about these things over here but you can note all these little concrete squares and they're really significant because those are the post pads onto which this Nissan Hut the accommodation box sat the semi-circles have corrugated on would have sat on each of these concrete pads they're missing in in some area because the football pitch went is graded away will have knocked them away but we've got the rest of them so we can say the exact shape of the structure and what's that little poking around here the poking around the little grovel here is in fact there is a darker stain running along here and that's the drainage channel so you've got a rudimentary way of keeping the water logging away from the building and rain was always a problem with these things they've cut a drainage Channel and it's now filled with this detritus which is the remnants of the building oh I see so actually this bit would have been outside exactly exactly so after all would have thought I wouldn't have assumed that the trench is actually the show that's right well so the yeah the building starts there there's the the Gully outside like you would have had in an Iron Age hat or a Saxon I'm calling it our Villa because it's a nice rectangular shape with fines in it yeah yeah yeah let's go around the corner oh there's another pad here the pads at the end oh these are beautiful they're really big the corner ones especially because that's the load bearing element this is the the final bit the end of the building and between these two is where the back door ran we're getting lots of fines connected with the the back of the building with window glass and roof nails and tar paper to make it waterproof so all the things you'd Hope from a construction layer and that represents basically the clearance of this heart in the 1950s after the after the soldiers and indeed the locals had moved out what about around the other side yeah it's replicating the same sort of thing another drainage Channel going along and you can see we've got more of the post pads here having a good time here boys it's brilliant cool look at that that looks interesting well this is the tar paper that would have hopefully made this a bit more habitable it's the waterproof membrane it's it's quite a thick old thing when you stick it you stick it um between the corrugated sheet so it's like a an under layer effectively to stop the the rain getting through and hopefully making this this place watertight um for the 16 soldiers that would have been in this and they would do complain about how cold this place was I've got a pot bellied stove to keep them warm but there's something they've got little mattresses that they fill with a local straw you can imagine the privations of sleeping in something like this it's like my tent Tony to be honest really cold well the officers are up in the Posh house and it's still there escaping it there was a hat under there wasn't it yeah there was a really significant heart under this and yeah we excavated this a few years ago and this was the structure that was used we think by the the sergeants and the non-commissioned officers of easy company oh so is this where the photo the famous photos of the car with Lipton that the guy involved with the the supposed Mutiny against Sobel lived just here underneath these terms so so he's outside here somewhere with his platoon and you can locate it precisely we've excavated it it's fairly Sim to that but a really important historic moment especially for easy company took place just here how many layers would have been camped around here probably around 600 I mean that's a huge number of people six six hundred in a really small field um yeah it must have been a very intense living here amongst so many men so you've got a a brick Foundation here and and these are basically replicating the concrete post pads that you saw over the other side any fines um there's been a few you've got a the roof nails from this thing but actually in past years we found two dog tags around here one of which was able company and one was easy company and I think that that basically reflects the fact that when they came back from Normandy they were so depleted in terms of numbers that they forgot about just keeping one company over there another company here it was all just mixed I think they've had to put it all together and just that reflects the fact that there were so many casualties on D-Day which is quite it's pointless isn't it it is quite a powerful thing now 3D Graphics team led by Danny who's also a veteran have been able to put together a reconstruction of how the fields might have looked 80 years ago and if the weather was anything like it is today it would have stood them in good stead for the conditions in Europe foreign a huge hail storm it's time to the men in the camp had no idea when they were going to be called on or what exactly their mission was to be but a spring turned to Summer it became obvious that their date with Destiny was on them cases and cases of artillery ammunition appeared as if by Magic in the woods and vacant Lots along the highways and on May 28th just as I was dressing for another pass to London the telephone jangled in the company headquarters non-coms rushed to the CPS and the News was out [Music] attention finds that we've Unearthed from the field this picked out a few that speak to her survived Wellness man where did you find it this was found in trench one all the boys found in Trench Run right near the um the knife and it's a piece of paracord from the parachutes that survived really really well and it goes nicely with the parachute we found in 2019 and the reserve pool from the parachute one more thing I'm not going to pick this one up I just touch that do we know what that is this is when there was a set of boots issued 43 44 for the Americans and this is the eyelets for the boot they had two buckles that went across the top there and this bucket went across like this way and this was the eyelets that attached to the Buckle so you could tighten it or loosen it depending on how fat your ankle was I guess so yeah and these actually made in Providence Rhode Island because they're nicely stamped on one of the sides here we've also found which is quite cool we found this Buckle we didn't quite know where it was from but when the helmets came to do a bit of show and tell on the inside here on the back rear identical it's um it's from the M1 helmet oh that's good yeah yeah it's great so it sort of shows up nicely and you can sort of fit everything in with context about where it's all from oh wow this is really heavy isn't it it is some some way but just imagine jumping out of an airplane holding something like that and all the rest of your weaponry and your equipment and then having to fight the Germans at the end of it all on May the 30th Webster and the men Drew their full quota and ammunition left these fields and moved on to up potteries in Devon to be dropped into battle Webster's description of the moment that they all left on their way to D-Day is really beautiful these were young men who didn't know whether they would ever come back here or whether they'd even survive there were many tears good luck and God bless you the people called as we drove through the dappled sunlight to keep a midnight rendezvous with the Germans in the Green Fields of Europe [Music] oh but 80 years on is our time in Old born also comes to an end the team gathers to pay tribute to the men who came before us and we leave with the words of Webster etched into our memories I think of oldborn in nostalgic moments I close my eyes and see the Village Green sloping away from the church a paratroopers ghost stands guard at the gate to the officer's mess is Overcoat is button to the chin the caller turned up against the cold he snaps to attention and gives a rifle salute to the officers killed in action who walk briskly by on Frost whitened cobblestones on their way home from a party at their mess the clock in the ancient Belfry winds up and begins to strike midnight and the sound of hurrying footsteps comes up the lane from the Hungerford Road the guard tingles it is the relief the clock strikes 12. the guard vanishes the officers are dead horses winning in the Box stalls where the soldiers slept oldborn sleeps the 506th a memory [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] join time team on patreon to access exclusive 3D models master classes and behind the scenes insights

Channel: Time Team Official

Views: 1,562,872

Keywords: Time team, Archaeology, History, Tim Taylor, Channel 4, Archaeological, Archaeological site, Digging, Digs, UK Archaeology, Archeology, archeology site, Phil Harding, Mick Aston, Tony Robinson, TimeTeam, Time Team Official

Id: f_RRt6B-dxY

Length: 96min 57sec (5817 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 30 2023