Time Team S20-E01 The Forgotten Gunners of WWI

we're here at the Magnificent belton house in Lincolnshire but for once we're not looking for some lost wing or digging up the ornamental gardens about a century ago there was another community in residence here and they weren't the servants of the Brownlow family who owned the estate for years the army camped on the Brownlow's property just beyond that run of trees over there there were thousands of them and during the First World War they came here to learn how to operate something very modern and very lethal they get data this is real you are very very dead all right we'll be uncovering the history of an elite force the machine gun Corps who underwent intensive training here at Belton and their massive army camp the ones covered this landscape less than a hundred years ago that the whole town here and it's gone it's fairly impressive isn't it cool who bother heavy too we're gonna turn the clock back a hundred years and find out what happened when Belton went to war and we've got just three days to do it we're here at Belton to uncover the story of the machine gun core a little-known section of the British Army who played a vital role in World War one and to discover what's left of their training camp which was dismantled lock stock and barrel after the war Francis Pryor is in charge and he spotted what he thinks is one of the very few imprints of a building on the site where are we gonna dig first I think the first trench is going to be over there in those stinging nettles I think of something really juicy he's deploying time teams Phil Harding and landscape archaeologist Stewart Ainsworth to investigate Stewart yeah Francis reckons this is the right place to start do you buy that wait if we're looking for the YMCA that's for sure are you serious yeah really we know on this site there's a YMCA building yeah and it's marked on this plan of 1960 there you are YMCA that's a pretty good clue isn't it nobody wants to look for the YMCA well lay aside the fact it was the sort of social center of the camp more to the point we know there is a building here you can see earthworks and we're going to go down and look what the evidence looks like in the ground and that's what we don't know it this thing but what we do want to try and find is some evidence of the people that actually functioned in this building so the YMCA is then it is Tony and we better do it fast the Young Men's Christian Association had a presence on most military camps in World War one back then it would have been one of the few places where soldiers could go to get a break from the rigors of training that might be it there's a nail there's bits of glass I don't think we're going to need to take off much more than that to be quite honest we're looking for fines that will help us reveal the story of the hundred and seventy thousand elite soldiers who trained here to be machine gunners their stories partly lost because most of the machine gun cause records were destroyed in a fire and in the Blitz in World War two our dig could help to put the gunners back on the map Belton Park had been occupied by the army since the late 1890s with the men housed in rows of tents but in 1915 it underwent a transformation extensive infrastructure was put in including a sewage works and a railway station it even had electricity at the time when the majority of homes had none with such a complex sight we've brought in military archaeologists Martin brown to help us decide where to focus our efforts so how does this all fit with what we know about the military it will each of these pairs of rows here these are barrack blocks in the middle of them you've got the watchtowers give loosened blocks and their cook heresies there's officers quarters to go with them so that there's a very you know literally regimental struck regimented structure across the landscape but then of course there are the attendant features that support those there's a the Church of England room Roman Catholic and then up here the YMCA Hut and that's where you can go you get a cup of tea write a letter home slightly outside the military structure that's still within the camp so how long would people actually living this life in the camp I mean how long was their training when the machine-gun schools here it's six weeks intensive specialist training and you know that sounds like quite a long time but what you have to remember is they're taking people who've got very little experience of the specialist work they're doing and at the end of it they meant to leave here and be able to go to the Western Front and win a war I mean why don't we go out and GF is one of these blocks I'm glad you're saying one of these blocks because it's such an extensive complex and we can only sample part of that but if our survey takes in a variety of buildings then hopefully we may get a better understanding how they were constructed what they were used for John's GF is team sets to work they're targeting a selection of buildings including a barrack Hut a canteen a washing block and one of the camps roads to see if there are any solid remains in the ground so you've got the footprint of a building there yeah there and there John's results give us possible targets in two different types of building one in a kitchen block and another in a barrack hut enticing enough to open two more trenches Cassy Nuland is going to take on the Barrett trench and there's some extra help from Martin Brown he's unearthed photos from Belton House archive which shows some of the hearts under construction what's interesting is compare that to the photograph they were clad with modern materials of the day corrugated iron and asbestos sheeting it just speaks of what I'm emergency in throwing these camps up doesn't it with their you know that minimum minimum frame and cladding them in the asbestos yeah but when you stand him against the tent Oh massive yeah so for anyone sitting over here just out of shop waiting for their home to be built oh yeah I must have felt very cozy but what was it about the war which made building the hundreds of wooden huts at Belton so urgent the answer was in the killing fields of the Western Front where trench warfare was being transformed by the horrors of the machine gun it had been invented thirty years earlier but it was the Germans who'd realized its true potential they created special machine gun companies who deployed their guns in concentrated groups our forces weren't so well prepared each infantry battalion had two machine guns but these were spread out thinly across the entire front we were outgunned men being slaughtered so in October 1915 a year into the war the unprecedented decision was taken to form a new force the machine gun Corps was born it needed somewhere to Train and fast belton came into its own it was a vast site that the army was already using for training and was easily adapted for the new machine gun Corps back at the YMCA trench phil hasn't found any of the building structure so he's extended the trench now the ground contains more debris including loads of white pottery and one piece leaves us in no doubt we're in the right place but you got there trace well we're in a YMCA and then you YMCA get that this isn't gonna be your normal time team with lots of deep trenches the archaeology is so near the surface here that these are gonna be more like scrapings Martin when we scraped up so far well some really rather nice stuff um there's a whole range of fines here um but this this is really lovely look at that w Adams & Company 1915 date on it and the W in the Lawson's War Department contract perfect piece of dating material that isn't this is actually my favorite you got three little pieces of pottery what could that word possibly be what could that word be Horlicks it's cold it's wet it's miserable you've been out all day doing training actually if you go up to the YMCA Hut or the church army Hut that's probably a nice local lady who will serve your warming mug of her colleagues as a bit of comfort point a beer from the YMCA anybody you know I've seen these before another camp sites I've got a theory about these pink mugs the army try to keep the camp's relatively alcohol-free so what I suspect they using these clink mugs for in places like the YMCA is to serve pints of cocoa I don't know pink bug yes because if the soldiers pension and take them back to the barracks you can do an inspection and you can spot them straight away if you tried that you might not look so rough in the morning I'll buy you a pint of cocoa in the problem a kilometer from the YMCA at the barrack heart the photographs showing the construction of the site reveals chimney pipes on the exterior of each of the buildings these match where GF is picked up a solid structure just inside the wall of kasasbeh Ricardo where now something's coming up and you know what I think is you know fire claim when you're making connections between stones and fluid yeah so I think it's plot is for it's a fire yes join so I think what we do have is whatever's left of that stove just dropped through the floor it's fat directly on just a big pile of a smash toss really yeah stoves a valuable item that you can reuse somewhere else where it's a broken asbestos aim yeah do you want to just clean by the last of it and then we'll get in and sillas can the asbestos could be from the stove surround and while it's damp it's not a danger to the diggers but those who built the camp in 1915 would have had no idea it was dangerous across the road at the cookhouse trench they found a drain and a water pipe which is surprising because even the pipe work was supposed to have been removed in the cleanup which took place after the camp was decommissioned the thorough cleanup of the site and the fact we're dealing with buildings that don't seem to have solid foundations is proving frustrating from that there's no indication at all of any ground surface or any sir or any the level that the building would have been on so it's not looking good for finding the buildings I'm getting the strong impression that these buildings were all raised yeah if you look at the photographs very carefully you can see that they are actually raised on short wooden posts so I think archaeologically this is this is a nightmare frankly if all the buildings are wooden and built above ground it's questionable how much more geophys can do but john hasn't given up yet with a site that's a mile wide they still hope that some of the buildings may have solid foundations the archives of the machine gun core may have been lost but our presence here has already attracted people who've been turning up with photos and documents that are adding to our understanding of the camp this is rather nice lads hot off the press we've just been given this by a local resident Wow YMCA number two Hart Belton Park that is incredible on everybody how often do you actually see in a photograph and an image of a building you could be looking at in the ground some of those those objects in that photograph who knows they could be some of these objects in the tribe we know that these come from the YMCA building what is most incredible is this piece here this is absolutely unique I mean it is the reason we've come here look machine gun core it's even got crossed machine guns doesn't it like you would get cross sword so we've had a great first day the stuff that's been coming up has been fantastic here in our first trench we know where we are the YMCA and we know who were here the machine gun Corps who knows what we'll find tomorrow beginning of day two here at Belton Park in Lincolnshire and the good news is the sun shining but the bad news is that the World War one machine gunnery training camp that we've been looking for is proving surprisingly hard to find which is odd given that it's only about a hundred years old but the words the archaeologists were using yesterday was ephemeral in other words most of the buildings were made of wood but yesterday evening John came up with this geophys which seems to show something much more robust down here Francis what do you think that might be well we're actually over one of the kitchen blocks several buildings all about food preparation actually eating meals but what's fascinating is that the geophys shows a mass of blobs you know there's a lot of archaeology that so where do we put the trenching I'm going to put first trenching over there which will be on the corner of that building there and I'm putting quite a big trench about a five meter square one there were more than a dozen of these kitchen blocks across the site and each would have been making meals for a thousand men this was an industrial scale operation for machine gunners about to play a part in Europe's first industrial scale war right across the site fines have been coming from just below the surface and matt and rach chars new trench is no different unfortunately there's no where it's no design on it there's nothing on the base say no unfortunately not it's pretty clean that white glaze is all over the place well it's not bad for the first few spoons in the bucket is it no it's not bad at all and well spotted red sure this is the Vickers machine gun there's not been one here at Belton for 90 years since World War one it was much loved by the Gunners because it was reliable so good that there was some still in service in the 1960s we want to understand how this powerful weapon revolutionized the British Army's approach to the war to help us we've called in military historian Andy Robert Shaw this Kamerion this is the real thing this is a vicar's machine walking do is set up I'm actually on its tripod here that what bow assembly sits on that tripod i mrs. something they would have been doing here on a regular basis you know during the war as they learn to be machine gunners what's so special about the machine go what's special is that this really is a full machine gun rather than something that can get the Gatling gun you know you've got a crank a handle at the side here that depends upon you actually you're putting your arm and turning it around this thing what it does is it uses the energy from the bullet on the way out to reload itself how does it do that well if you can imagine you've got a belt of bullets going into it and then when you fire the weapon what then will happen is that the bullet will go towards the target you know up to about of three kilometers but then all the working parts are thrown back and as long as you're holding the safety captian trigger it will continue to cycle through it'll fire itself even though you're doing nothing as long as you're holding the safety actual trigger together this implies that we're actually going to fire it yes we really are we really are back at the trenches the archaeologists are determined to find something left behind after the 1922 cleanup operation when the camp was closed down first thing this morning rat char and Matt made a good start in the kitchen trench with an early find but there's been nothing on the finds front since in our first trench though the YMCA is continuing to produce find after find as one of the few non-military organizations on the camp the YMCA would have been a focal point for the young Gunners when off-duty and we're getting some really lovely sort of objects of the social side of the soldiers at the camp a rather suspect we've also got military objects here as well um how about that um well that that speaks of people training and firing this is a British round 303 it's been fired I think I mean is that the sort of cartridge would expect from a machine gun could be a machine gun could be a rifle then they are the same here so it's difficult to tell really but nonetheless it speaks of training and that is very very nice that's the end of a swagger stick so stick about about that long with little ferrule on one end and this end would have been shiny either copper or silver um and it's designed so that when a soldier is walking out going out into town he doesn't bring each hands in these pockets and basically you're encouraged to buy those fairly cheap you know piece of stick little ferrule on one end I used walk sit around in your hands the nearby town of Grantham would have been transformed by the presence of thousands of young soldiers some Wolfram's church is one of the only places where the men of the machine gun core are remembered with the loss of most of the records is up to the gunners descendants to keep alive the memory of the sacrifice they made in World War one one such soldier is Charles pashler who trained at Belton in March 1917 he was posted to France on the Western Front four months later near Arras he was killed by a shell his possessions were gathered up and returned to his widow in a bag which his grandson bill has brought in what was in the bag meant well several things we ik the first thing was just very personal whilst his pipe well chewed slightly battered around the bowl what must it have been like for his widow you know he would have had it with him when he left the house and he wasn't coming back but this had that's right possibly to my mind the most poignant of the lot was the diary that actually was on his body of course and inside the diary are the names of a lot of the men he trained with and even the Hut numbers in Felton Park the last entry yes 23rd of July went into line yes and that's it and that the reverse of the diary itself is something particularly poignant that there looks differently like bloodstains where there's a shell fragment or a fragment of metal it's penetrated the diary and it was a tiny fragment yes but the fact there's blood on it is the game one wonders what my grandmother thought when she received all these that and she would have perhaps flick through it and found that she would he had three little girls and she had to bring them up alone for seven years from 1915 the sound of machine guns reverberating around this park and to understand the role of belton camp you have to understand how battlefield tactics changed because of the machine gun and why such a huge effort was being made here to Train specialist soldiers really Andy hi so that's it you're actually gonna fire it that's the idea just such an amazing thing to actually see that I mean my grandfather went through the entire First World War I know he wasn't in the machine gun core but he would have heard that weapon and that hasn't been heard it ran here for a few years other will be firing blanks but don't want to spread panic among the golfers 2,000 meters away attention all Gophers be aware we are about to fire a machine gun thanks that's fine until Andy press that trigger this Vickers machine gun hadn't been fired for over 70 years and it was quite incredible it wasn't I mean let's say we've got those golfers down there I mean they would be they would be dead if we wanted to get them we could have gotten up roms at all I'm running wouldn't have helped just beggars belief doesn't it what would have been going through somebody's mind no and they had to clamber out of a trench walk across open country into literally what was well a hail of bullets a wall of death it's just a matter of luck you know whether you make it or not you know you just get questioned will you get to the other side by 1916 the British Army had made up for lost time and the machine gun crews who trained here at Belton were matching up to the German machine gunners at the barrack heart trench where yesterday Cassie discovered us bestest she's continuing to dice with danger with time team's newest recruit Rob hedge she's found another bullet which amazingly still has its explosive charge lovely partridge and lots and lots of yummy looking spaghetti I get the cordite is your nice explosive charge send the bullet out to kill people yes just something look can't see any stump on that no they claimed quite badly corroded but it is definitely unfired hence the quarter hence the cordite when the machine-gun training was at its most intense here they could easily have been firing a million rounds a week but we found just two bullets there must be a huge area we haven't found yet that's littered with them which means so far we've only got half the story what seems really important is to find out where people actually trained to fire the machine guns because it was these things which were the whole reason for the existence of Belton park camp we're here at Belton Park in Lincolnshire looking for an old World War One training camp where they used to teach the guys how to fire machine guns but the ark yards is really ephemeral raksha what have you got in this trench well we've drawn a blank again there is nothing in this stretch you see what I mean but all may not yet be lost because they didn't extension to the trench and can you see where those Rushing's going on it looks like we may have the beginnings of a wall meanwhile over on the rest of the site you can see how enormous it is the rest of the archaeologists looking for bullets and there should be millions of them but only if we can find where the machine guns were fired Francis has given that task to Stuart if you look at the map of the camp what it shows in this position here yeah he's a rifle range it's just this one thing here about 50 yards long but I mean it's ludicrously small is it I've it's absolutely tiny I mean I wouldn't have thought you'd be shooting off yeah peace shoot mmm ah so presumably the main machine gun range they've got to be away from the camp I think some there's no indication on any of these maps that's machine gun areas and I think you've got to be somewhere out in the countryside around this camp we're doing proper machine gun training while Stuart goes off searching for the training ground Francis is still hoping to find more evidence of the hundreds of buildings where the Gunners lived earlier in the day we opened a trench over what we believe is a kitchen block where it looks like there could be a structure below the ground rat char and Matt have made some finds that take us right back to the early days of World War one look at this this actually has the date on it 1914 yep so that's pretty bang on the money again you don't need a pottery specialist for that Mia no but something that's really really interesting that's come out of this pit is this pipe that's exact later backhoe pipe yes because whenever I think of the First World War soldiers now always think of you know cigarettes hand-rolled cigarettes you're right but you're also wrong because this is something called a catcher pipe and we know that because it's much thicker the stems thicker on the this ball would have been massive and very ostentatious leader decorated but these were still smoked during the First World War so it is possible that maybe an officer was smoking a very highly decorative night you can just imagine eternity our military historian Andy Robert Shaw has always fancied the role of officer in charge and now he has his chance he's conscripted a squad of local archaeologists and he's going to put them through some of the training of a world war one machine-gun boulder on that the machine gun core trainees with a cream of the Army's recruits they needed to be good at maths and had to be mechanically minded but tough enough to construct defences for the machine guns and their crew of six what's going on Andy how did know we're putting in another trench we're not doing another trench for exploration this is experimentation here the trying out the techniques that we used in 1915 to build a machine gun position we've actually got a drawing which was done by somebody in the camp this is what you're recreating that's the idea what we've got then is a plinth where we'll put the machine gun and one more that in there later on and one that allows us to do then is have it firing down the valley that way or if the Germans come from I sort of your right my left we can swing it round and fire down the valley as well so just being able to rig that up in the day and a half that we've got left we hope so but we do have some experts with us but John John kind of bore you this is John John's grandfather was actually here doing the same job he was trained in the camp wasn't it he was that sound photograph that's all it which one's either this gentleman sat here behind the Vickers and when was he here February 16 oh great this is a real family thing is it isn't it what you may do is you leave it all to John because he's obviously the exponent we see your runs in the farm so you know as long as you can get it done before the end of tomorrow well are we happy uh we hope so uh team lads no let's just the truck home we've got to keep going that's clear all right Stewart's piecing together clues from reports of the machine gun firing ranges there are a couple of place names on these documents that seem to be relevant alma woods and peas cliff we've got a few clues as to where they might be the names peace cliff is mentioned a lot whether Golf Club is over there and Alma wood over there is mentioned so we've got at least two clothes which have been gone have a look see anything so like how can you identify them from the air well what should be looking for is a is a great big Bank which is used to stop the bullets a bigger than Bank and good luck yeah thanks so much dense tree cover at alma woods rules out any observation there so Stuart heads over a railway line which disappears into a tunnel on the map it's marked as peace cliff tunnel it's the adjacent golf course where Stuart turns his attention this landscape is a challenge and amongst the man-made bunkers and greens he spots a much larger landfill obscured by trees only further investigations on the ground will confirm whether or not this is part of the lost piece cliff firing range back on the site and his squad of trench diggers are attempting to build a machine gun emplacement from where the gun can be fired this is exactly what John Barry's granddad would have been doing before he went off to the front John it was your granddad who was here wasn't it it was yeah yeah so he was doing this kind of job yes well we assumed he was but unfortunately he never told so absolutely never gave opinions on how to build the better trench position right you know all his experiences of it unfortunately sorry yeah never at all nope no one talked to anybody about any aspect at all with like so many of them yeah that's the way things were unfortunately so what their way of dealing with it and helping other people deal with it yeah they only have a day left to finish it ready for the firing of machine-gun while our archaeologists still have the small matter of the lost firing range and buildings to contend with but it's the end of day two and everyone's off to our makeshift machine gunners arms nearby Grantham may be famous for producing the first woman Prime Minister but there's another famous local woman who had to contend with the realities of thousands of soldiers here the most interesting strong woman in my opinion is Edith Smith and she was the head of the first women's branch of the police force set up in Grantham first one anywhere that were allowed to arrest people and her express job was to hang around outside belton camp picking up ladies of the night shall we say so they didn't come and interfere with machine gunners you know that we said that we thought one of the most important things to find would be the place where the guys practice firing their machine guns well Stuart's being up in the helicopter this afternoon and he thinks he's got the answer has he we'll find out tomorrow it's our last day at Belton Park and we've got just eight hours left to complete our investigation of the training camp where over 170,000 men were trained during World War one but when the camp was closed in 1922 the site was thoroughly cleared finding anything significant in the ground has been a big challenge for our diggers pad the barrack Hut trench we opened on day one we've uncovered the edge of the camp's main road in the ground we found the remains of a wooden structure our first thought was that this was a sill beam which is a beam set in the ground acting as a foundation for the barrack Hut but it turned out to be a wooden gutter now though Martin Brown believes the hut was set a metre further back from the road good yes I think we've got something structural for you go on what that looks like is a timber line gutter just at the side of the road what we've got in here is this dark stain there and that's the ghost of the sill beam it is all very tenuous though isn't it oh is this a sill beam now it's a drain is this a sill beam we don't know well not really Tony I mean if that was on an anglo-saxon site you'd be in no doubt that would be a sill beam is frustrating is it but isn't the great thing about this you know less than a hundred years ago there's a whole town here and it's gone yeah and that the road and just these very ephemeral traces that's all we've got left of it we're struggling to find any of the barrack huts but luckily we can still see one of them today after the war when the Belton camp was closed building materials were in short supply so many of the hats were recycled and some even taken down and reassembled Martin and Cassie have gone off site to the nearby village of Denton with the last 90 years one of Belton's hearts has been the village hall thank you although this is great it's not nice yeah that's perfect you can really sort see sort the layout of the whole finger I can't you because what it would be bunks down the edgy messes coming in the beds on either side mess tables centrally down the middle which they use for eating and actually we've got picture here that gives you a fair idea what one of these would look like that's amazing is it could actually just be this high it could yeah and the beds are clever because they slide back to create space in middle of a bit like a some modern futon you know you look at this you should imagine the smell of damp soldiers Woodbine's machine gun oil and yeah they're fantastic the machine gunners who lived here were part of an elite force vital to the war effort there's was such a high-risk job that unofficially they were known as the suicide Club on the Western Front the machine gun units were often called upon to hold off the enemy so that others could retreat to safety local heroes second lieutenant Graham Muhsin met his end doing just that at the Somme having stayed at his gun until the very last moment he was shot in the back as he tried to rejoin his comrades where he's buried no one knows Graham trained at Belton so his descendants have come here to share their story with Phil my grandfather was of Passchendaele too right that's one of those things that everybody knows somebody who was yes yes in the First World War on the Western Front I naturally it was we're quite lucky either his sister gave me this letter and it's obviously a treasured letter she'd catch so I felt quite honored to be given it this physically came from the front yeah this is what it's got France there on the top think of the happy times we have been privileged to have in the past so face the future with a courage based on the thoughts of these I always have believed that our destinies are mated out by God and wherever we are when our time comes we have to go so there is no greater peril for me here then elsewhere very sort of eloquent way of it is yes and a very philosophical approach to the dangers he was obviously facing yes it's a very cruel way to go no I mean if he would have been shot at his guns that's one thing but to be withdrawn it's uh it's not really fair is it Grahame stoical bravery and sacrifice won him no special medals like so many others he was just doing his duty yesterday by combining information from documents mattes and observations made from the air Stuart came up with some ideas as to the whereabouts of the firing ranges now Francis has deployed a crack team to the nearby golf course to settle once and for all the mystery of one of the lost firing ranges of the machine-gun cool seeing this staggered on a site from the air and I came I came straight down and had a look at this thing this morning and went into this thought magic this is what we've been looking and this magic staggering thing is a big Bank hidden in those woods the ditch in front of it and there's lots of things to say once we get round that corner over there somewhere always wary of things on golf balls this is the golf course I'm pretty sure this isn't some has it created round the other this is very the locals who've helped us with our investigation have come up trumps again with an astounding piece of evidence this pictures absolutely fantastic it's taken from somewhere just a little bit up from where we're standing i Ratan let out there is more or less where these guys are now and the sort of muddy ditch in front of us actually he's really quite a substantial deep excavation but you can be absolutely certain that this is our range and that is taken during the First World War definitely First World War Bell tense in the background what the people are wearing that all fits and the mechanism is absolutely right as well all this pulley arrangement looks a bit Heath Robinson but it will raise the targets up you fire at them you drop them back down again you can see how the guys are doing things getting excited by gadgets I get excited by these great big earthworks Phil and I know you get excited by fine so let's have a look hand it up John and Richard will get that place back on site and his recruits are getting a taste of what it would have been like to be a trainee guy don't fit yet down if this is real you are very very dead all right but it was the training officers job to push them into the limit under cover get low get low get low pass out and then get over there right same place a mission coming what they learned here would give them a fighting chance at the front right either of those drop pull them out the way and replace them in authority positions crickey and i feel scared oh well I suppose these get real as we can make it it really is you can just imagine shoosh yeah and it's fairly safe here low up on the surface where you want dangerous okay I'm off Francis makes a hasty retreat to the safety of the kitchen trench after two days of digging we're finally making sense of one of the very few structures we've uncovered here we've been thinking about this concrete thing here as being a drain have a wee little house but actually this concrete thing lines up pretty well with one of the Hutt wall so that concrete is the foundations and then there'd be blocks or bricks to form the the main part of the hut here so this is the first time and it's on the 59th minute of day three that we have got a surefire hot wall with cinders on the inside so that's showing that that's probably floor coming up to the wall and not going outside I mean I'm really excited about that this is a 100% genuine hot wall and I'm exhausted that's over my at laster building and on the golf course hidden in the trees is a ditch behind which there's a raised bank here Stuart's hunting party are in the rough looking for more evidence of the firing range interesting so is this where the targets would have been down in this hollow ear yeah cuz then you've got the guys who are working them are out of danger from yeah I mean fire the targets get usually get raised up fire that lowered down again to get your scores and the bullets are coming straight up here yeah just straight down from yeah but from about 600 yards away down there and that this is designed to stop them basically when you think about it millions of bullets must have hit this Bank over the course of the years training here so we've got a yeah wait you got one what God - look look you get one there one there and another one there Oh No having been embedded in the bank all those years ago erosion has finally exposed them up there so over here one here so what what caliber of these Martin well they look like point 303 which is the standard caliber for the for the Vickers Anthony Lee Enfield rifles I tell you what you sure about college and they heavy yeah and they everything oh yeah I mean that's not gonna do you a lot of good if I throw it at you let alone traveling at sort of the speed of sound the firing range was enormous wide enough for as many as 20 machineguns to be firing at once the sound of the guns would have been heard a mile away at the belt an army camp and for long range firing of over 600 meters they had to close the road so that the Gunners could fire over it our dig has revealed that of the hundreds of buildings few had foundations and all of them were built in a hurry in response to a crisis on the battlefield yet after the war just seven years after the machine-gun Corps was formed the elite force was disbanded the Belton camp was no longer needed and sent piece by piece it was dismantled there's another dimension to what we've achieved The Dig has brought together people from the locality and beyond each of them adding something to the history of the machine gun it's been quite a tough few days isn't it it has Tony it's been very challenging indeed I mean I think the finds that we've revealed in the excavations have bought the lives of the men who served here to life but I think our real legacy will be that we have actually put the machine gun core on the man I think it really is important that we should remember them because of the 170,000 men who trained here over 12,000 went to war and never came back again and it's in memory of them that fills now going to fire a final salute okay John ready when you are gun ready twenty-five percent Anna for news tonight but for unique insight on the day's big stories whenever you want sign up to snow mail at channel 4 comm / snow mail a funny movie next on four with an eco-friendly message so educational to boot Brendan Fraser stars inferring vengeance

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Views: 374,441

Keywords: Time, Team, Full, Episodes, Season, Timeteam, Archaeological, Sites, Serie, argeologie, archaeological

Id: 2iKufS4UfNg

Length: 46min 45sec (2805 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 07 2013