[sound of movie projector] >> american history tv recently visited the macarthur memorial in norfolk, virginia, a symposium for the world war i centennial. coming up next, we will hear from the co-author of "digging the trenches: the archaeology of the western front." he talks about efforts to identify the remains of previously unidentified soldiers, and what archaeology reveals about life in the trenches. later, world war i label -- confrontations, primarily

between u-boats and american vessels, off the north carolina and virginia coasts. >> good morning. our first panel of speakers today can share their knowledge about archaeology and the great work. our first speakers andrew robertshaw. was previously the head of education at the national art museum in london and then after that, the director of the museum and camberley -- in camberley. he lectures for their norwegian army and provides historical events.tion for the he has led several archaeological projects on the western front. books,e author of 15 including digging the trenches,

which came out in hardcover in 2008. he was recently given the prestigious honor of being named a fellow -- he will be sharing onh us today his work archaeology. welcome andrew robertshaw. [applause] >> good morning come everybody. thank you very much for the invitation. thank you very much for coming out today. i hope to make this interesting. i want to look at a number of things. a new discipline of archaeological -- i will field archaeological -- battlefield archaeology. individuals on

found in 2005. i want to start with a joke. doing british way of things. i was asked to give a talk to a society of genealogists. they take themselves terribly seriously. the's why i'm a member of society of family historians. the story i told them was based on the 1920's. the british comedian named max miller. when he was about 22, he went and saidsaw his father i want to marry miss green. his dad said you can marry her. i had a bicycle and i got around a bit. she might be your sister. went back and said i've been going out with announcement. i want to marry is smith.

got aroundcycle and a a bit. you can't marry her. she might be your sister. he give it another three months and he came home. he said i've been talking to my dad twice about two girls i wanted to marry. on both occasions, he said you can't marry them because when i was your age i had a bike and got around a bit and before i met your mother, things happened , both girls cadet and my sister. what should i do? she said, don't worry, he's not your dad. genealogistsf didn't take very well to that. i'm hoping it will do rather better this morning. this is what we are talking about. we are talking about battles and wars. almost 200 years ago, there was

a battle in belgium. buried.l officers were the other ranks when into bits. .- into pits that did not change until the 20th century. the monuments of the western front that we are familiar with, later taken over by the employer will -- imperial war graves commission. some of these guys were not so fortunate. we have the missing. partly of what i'm talking about is the missing. they are recorded on a number of memorials. monuments which actually recorded those people who ended up buried in trenches. people buried in shell holes. buried in collapsed dugouts. will of waysne the

you might have ended up missing. with 72,000memorial names of missing on it. if you were a british soldier, were required to take out of your pocket a coin to throw it to get has once, throat and get heads twice and then three times . if you did it seven times, that's your chance of being on here. because they are missing, they exercise an immense amount of interest on behalf of the families who have nowhere to grieve. which is why we end up with the tomb of the unknown soldier. teeth dealing with a number of different sites. feet and set of british boots.

this is all we found of this soldier. how many sets of human remains have your team discovered? the answer is about 27. what about 27? what if this was traumatic and b amputation? he might have ended up in a wiltshire. he might not have died on the spot. -- ended up in a wheelchair. the farmer got up his tractor and found the sets of remains, put them in a crate and handed them over to us and said, what is this? take them over to the commonwealth contact the german equivalent of the war funded bymission voluntary contribution and say we have found these remains. in the middle of it is an id tag.

this is a man killed almost at the end of the war. killed in august of 1918. for most of our projects, it's actually being looking for sites. we don't go looking for the dead per se. other people have. the project looking for australians in the last couple of years produced 250 sets of from cemeteries. they were dug up and remarried. you can question the morals of doing that. belongedp of remains to a group of friends alters killed in the very beginning of the great war. novelist andas a poet. fournier was famous before the war. famous because of his death. buried with his platoon in an

improvised burial, as we see here. 20 years ago, a group of french archaeologists said we ought to go find him and that's what they did. wouldent out to do what i call prospecting for the dead. they knew where he was and they found him. the identified virtually everyone by name. this site is now open to the public. you can go see where they were found. elsewhere, human remains are found almost on a monthly basis. very often, the head of development -- these bodies are men found by jack and his team. the archaeologist for the city. my role on these occasions if i'm called is not to deal with the forensic side or anthropology, but to deal with the question of dating of these debts. how do i know that?

i'm supposed to be an expert on equipment. these germans here clearly died after september 1916 from the area they are found. helmets. steel with them is there equipment that helps mediate them. we can look at this man here lying on his back wearing a -- a burial from 1914. they did away with a spiked helmet very rapidly in combat because it gives them away. having established those credentials, what we might consider then is this. this is one of the most famous sets of remains discovered. this is quite late in the war. 1917. these are members of the rims -- grims.

the journalist decided -- these bodies here have been linked by the fact that each man's elbow is over the man next to him. the germans decided this was some sort of dance but cobb -- macabre.t one thing you have to be aware of is you cannot be too romantic about these things. this is a burial view of the same site -- aerial view of the same site. if you look over here, you've got somebody's laying with legs and arms in place but nobody. the bodies had been laid out by their friends.

interesting that you would lay out bodies when you've found body parts. a set of burials that have been hit by a shell. you have to be very careful. all the skills we actually used csi are what we have to bring to this. humanles that governed remains in the western front, you need the machines from the french authorities and permission from the commission. we were never able to use dna analysis. however, when they set out to , it was 500 bodies committ prefigured on the use and recovery of dna. which is why they have identified over 120 of these men by name. in a previous project run by the thep of enthusiasts called

diggers in belgium, they were covered over 100 bodies. identified one by name. their methodology was very poor. my methodology was born here. there are lots of projects. we started in the village of ocean villas. to give you an idea of how early it wasn't how many experts there were -- this is a communication trench behind british lines. it is not desperately exciting. in terms of methodology, greatly important. we went into this area haven't been aware that the owner was -- area wasdetector being metal detected on a regular basis. we agreed to help her by taking her garden and seeing what is there. we knew it was there because it shows up on the aerial photographs and the trench maps and we knew it was right behind her house. we did not know what was in it.

what we found was brick lining. the bottom of the trench would be lined with a layer of bricks. they looked into the hole and said that was all done by the french. had --he war when they that's what they did. we do not have the heart to tell checked. we we knew who had done it and how long it took. about the brick line trenches of ocean villas. that's exactly what we found. then we discovered a layer of shattered titles on top of the bricks. people said this had come from the stage in the war when the roof was on the house, the shelling meant the roof fell into the trench.

all of that would have been logical had it not been for the fact that archaeology does not stand alone. we checked the war diaries. we found in the diary of the 87 in the village of the brick linings are a problem. and theome slick stretcher bearers are coming in with boots around their nexcks. this has got to stop, it says. no war diary ever talks about how you deal with slippery trenches. if you are in a village and you have slippery trenches, you get soldiers to go get the broken slates and titles and smash them up with sledgehammers and mallets and put them in as a nonslip layer. health and safety. 1915 style.

that means we can now say that that's why did we bother? there is always something to learn. in the early project, having gone from ocean villa, we were asked by the bbc to do a project. the director of the project is here. what a coincidence. dugoutslooking for the in which wilfred owen shows us in the poem "blinded for the century." the century is blinded by a shell. a very moving poem. with money from the bbc, we would use a team of archaeologists and find the entrance and talk about it. we felt. we found many things. .- we failed

we found 1915 and 1916. we found a set of human remains on day one. we were not looking for them. this is something we knew might happen. we actually had a headless body. the body had been untouched by the plowing but the plowing had taken up the head. we had somebody come onto site who turned out to be a journalist. she came along and looked at and looked remains at him and said i suppose you will use dental records. [laughter] which is interesting. we found around his neck and

identity tag. we continued to work on the project to find the dugout and wilford owen. he found another set of remains. a british soldier lying on his back on top of the trench system. he was on top of the trench system. the other was behind. oa mine.lled in by the regiment he was in was only there for one day. they lost 110 attacking this position. we then continued to work and found this man lying on his side bearing close to the first soldier and slightly behind the second. officer lying on his side. he had his watch, a mouth organ,

harmonica and a flint scraper. the sky became known as the archaeologists. -- this guy became known as the archaeologist. and the youngs british soldier. we asked permission to do dna and we were told you could not do it. we approached the germans and said do what you like as long -- can you pay for? we have tv money. that's fine. [laughter] the work was done. it was very interesting. no money ishey had because they are actually entirely sponsored by the public. they have still one million missing from the second world

war on the eastern fronts. back at the university of london , people got to work. we have already gone here. we had already gone to the monuments of the missing. took it in turns to read out the names of those members. we knew we had read his name out. what we did not know was who he was. he was then buried in october. with full military honors. they took it in terms to read his name out. a rather smaller list. 110 missing. it was nothing we could do other than to say we knew his height and age. that was it. as soon as he was buried, we were approached by two sets of families who said we think it's our granddad were great uncle.

can we provide dna? yes, but no sample is allowed to be taken. every second of july when i go to the monument now, i will find there is on the grave a little rose tree left behind by the families. red rose of lancaster. back in the laboratory, the identity tag was cleaned. it was extremely unclear what it meant. it said reserve regiment and had number seven company. there was nothing we could do. at that point, i would have given up. luckily, i was not there. the south korean student working on this one turned it on with back and cleaned the back as well. honess and of it is the name of the village she came from. we then got in touch with

somebody who's next bird in the german army in this area. he is actually from new york. ralph whitehead was able to give us some help. -- somebody who's an expert in army in thisea in thi area. he said his number was reserve regiment 121st, number seven company, number 228. he was able to give us his height and age. 36 years old with six children. he died on the third of june 1915 fighting the french. which i found somehow reassuring. my grandfather was not serving at that point. it felt better knowing that he had not been killed by a brick. -- by a brit.

alfred said would you like to meet the family and we said yes. they still live in the village. within 24 hours, we have his picture. honess ande shows his brother. children,hind a six one of whom was born on christmas eve 1914. he was still alive -- his grandson went to see him and said they have found your dad on the battlefield. the gentleman said i always knew they would. i always knew they would. die onan was going to 1916 fightingly us the british.

it is behind the german lines. exactly the same as the ocean villa. when we did the archaeological dig her, we were unable to get our accommodation. thebbc book us into village. we followed the route of these men to their deaths every time we went to site. there was more work to be done. we had to work on the officer. and thethe harmonica watch. past six. 10 minutes -- of the things that have if you don't loot them, the enemy will. we found this complete pocket watch. he had his tobacco and money and watch. and he had a book. the book was very decayed.

it wasn't sent back to ucl and they got to work on it what did they discover? it was a bank book. incame from a village northern germany. we got in touch with ralph white and said is there any officer in the german 121st reserve regiment who has any contact at all with northern germany? is one. yes, there he's an officer killed on the sixth of june, 1915. number seven company. he was the decorator. he kept his bank account in northern germany.

we checked the bank out. there was not any money in the counts. that's in the accounts. [laughter] we found, strangely, even if the young soldier had survived, he would not have been able to use the bank. it was jewish owned. we touched one more and then covered quite a bit of another one. his grandson put an advert in the newspaper. he said we found the young soldier. is there anybody out there in southern germany related to albert? intoan called allison came the university for the english-language theater company. she was running a play about the

first world war, and irish vc who comes back to the island. someone said, can you ask your husband, crawl, whether he might carl, whether he might be related. he said he is my great-uncle. he went missing in the first world war in june of 1915. the family never knew what happened to him. guess what, i have a photograph of him. this isnge thing about -- where carl was studying english. he was writing a dissertation on his favorite war poet who was wilfred owen. this photograph is marked by burns.

you can see scorching. this is the only thing recovered from the house when it was bombed in may of 1945. you go from one more to another. -- one war to another. that is allison and other members of the team. we went to see where this soldier had come from. the two germans were buried here. about 118 miles from where they were found. the germans cannot afford to bury them in a local cemetery. at least they were buried with their comrades. they decided to put up a monument erected at the edge of the field where the men were found. when it was unveiled, the stoodor of the museum with me and said this is the

most unusual monument. is it the smallest? no, it's not the smallest. ath two germans and a british soldier on one monument. 100 years later, a reconciliation still takes time. this turned up on ebay of all things. there is a wreath hung in a trench. down there, it says in memory of comrades.allen had that arrived before the archaeology, it would have been inexplicable. except that we know this was dated june, 1915. those men we found had been buried in shell holes or scratch graves on the back of the trench with the intention that after the war the german soldiers would come back, recover their

comrades and give them the honor burial they deserved. the fortunes of war did not allow that to happen. i want to at least have the great privilege of being buried. expert on the recovery of human remains is saying if you fail to identify people, whether deliberate or accidentally, you have effectively kill them twice. this now becomes explicit until we get the archaeology. this would have made no sense at all. you need to understand the evidence we've got here. i'm going a bit further to justify what were doing. this is the site of the battle by them inre rated

the dark. this was a massive human remains. leave aed we would permanent security guard. he was probably british and he was buried as an unknown soldier of the great war. one afternoon in my clumsy attempts to help come i managed to find a german soldier. one of the only academics ever have able to say that they broken the jaw of a german soldier with a shovel. [laughter] he was 19, but he had been dead for some time. he was part of a mass burial. because of the conditions, we -- we hadredibly leather and paper and cloth.

we had virtually everything. the other problem we had was we almost poisoned ourselves. the reason the middle of these bodies were missing is because they had been given a layer of lime to help them to compose. they're working in the dark and six-hour shifts. hadid not realize we disturbed the chloride of lime. what we found were very well preserved sets of human remains. all german. two were prussians. the rest were bavarians. the bavarian archives in munich is incredible useful. they survived the second world war intact. we were able to reconstruct how the bodies were late in the grave and then do this. this is the back of a german soldier. he is a bavarian. whether it's bavarian -- their

records and survived intact. you don't stand much chance -- this guy here in the middle of -- pile ofodies bodies had a complete in the form. the ribbon of second-class. i don't know what he thought of wasbut he pinned it on to uniform end up on his shoulders -- and up on his soldier had number 16. what we were able to do is recover this, a postcard. that postcard gives us his name. rothermel. leopold october, the 13th of 1915. munich in the records in

that his place of burial is not known. it is now because i was there when he was buried. more portly, we found this. the remains from the beginning of the war. -- more importantly, we found this. he was exempt from military service. he did his two years training but was not expected to fight because he was exempt from service. his brother is killed in the battle of frontiers. leopold volunteered. he went off to war. what do you think his chances are of being in a good? he's doing very well. according to the history of the regiment, there is an outbreak of musicality in the regiment.

they form a band and orchestra. it is not very often that you can do a link from the first -- this songbook includes the words and music esley on that elvis prost la brought back. the song is "wooden heart." a german marching song. we have in the fight our soldier and knew about his brother -- identified our soldier and his brother. we went to find where the family had lived. we knew the address. his father was an electrician and his mother a tobacconist when we got to the house, there was nothing there at all. it was a memorial park. we went over to where the plaque was. it said it was a memorial for

the bombing in 1943. it wiped out the entire city block. it was one final twist of the story. i mentioned leopold was about 23. an artist. he was a corporal. we knew that from his collar. he was a recipient of the arm class -- iron cross second class. guess what? in the same year that leopold died in battle, we know who killed them, we know how he died, there was another soldier, not german but austrian, a volunteer in the number three company. slightly older than leopold. an artist of sorts with the iron cross second class. that man was adolf hitler. if you look at this war, you immediately see another.

we are now in a situation where we are continuing to do work. we have never yet gone prospecting for the debt. we have been approached to do just that by a large number of people. i have spoken to the mayor and said we would like to mark where he is. the mayor said i wouldn't bother. why not? the way it works in french law, if a family don't claim the plot 400 years, we can sell it -- for 100 years, we can sell it and build on it. you have about one year. we have another site. 54 bodies, we know where they are buried because the men who buried them was a german officer who wrote to the family of the young officer he had found and send i buried your son and his

comrades and he gives a map reference. it is under a large industrial area. we think that site needs protection. there will be others. we're not going to set off for to look for the dead, but we will get ready. this story is in some ways depressing. a death once said that in a war is like throwing out the stone into a pond. the ripples go out and then come back. on, itroved with the s still matters. it doesn't matter to me and my team whether we are dealing with german orlgian, british. we will do everything we can to make sure these men get the best treatment possible to which were

they are buried not just as an unknown soldier, but identify them by their regimen or name. because the australians paid for ll, the of dna for ame rules have now changed. they cannot prevent us from taking the dna in the future. we will be able to start building up a database. there are too many prospectors for the debt. when human remains are found, i will do everything i can with my small teams when sure that every means available are used to establish who they are. we do not want to see these men killed twice. thank you for listening. [applause] >> we would like to take some

questions from the audience. raise your hand and i will come find you and give you the mic. any questions? given the concern you raised about looters getting there before you have a chance to work and the massive scale of the front come on wondering if your team or other teams are working on efforts to proactively survey the western front. all the things we used to survey all over the world in archaeology to try to identify where these sites might be. if there is already building over it, move on. but work on the site that are still accessible. right now ision that we are looking at one particular area, the area around the village. famous for the memorial to the

newfoundland regiments. we have been offered the chance r. usea lighta unfortunately, we do not have 30,000 pounds. that is what it would take to do that survey. we are trying to which were that wherever there are reports of human remains, we do something about it. the point about the raid was if you dig a hole anywhere in europe, looters regarded as being in invitation to come have a look. work, we have any 24 hour security. sadly, that does not mean it does not happen. i was asked by somebody to go to their house and they said what is this and there was a set of human remains with no insignia. the city came from the field.

somebody came end of this poor guy out and put him at the side of the hole. all metal and insignia gone. williams and went to find my wife, could not find my wife, found my daughter and mommy and she said mommy has gone shopping in your car. that was the car with the garbage bag in the back. i had to phone her and say there is a big surprise in the boot. do not open it. there can be some dark humor in this. are they doing the type of archaeology you are doing on the eastern part as well? >> i was asked to go with look at the site near berlin. my guide was a guy called dave schiller. x israel he special forces man.

when he picked me up from the airport, i was surprised to see when he reached to open up the visor on the car that he had a nine millimeter. why have you got a nine millimeter? don't worry, you have an automatic as well in the glove compartment. i don't normally get this. the problem is, the pocket has been strip mined by members of metal detecting groups who were sponsored by the russian mafia. they will defend their pitches. it's also being defended by the neo-nazi far right who is regarding it as a sacred site. we both have weapons in case anything kicks off. i did not do the project. burial'sat shallow like. i did not want to be one of

them. there are big problems with the eastern front. it's probably getting worse. a lot of websites are drying out. if you want to go on ebay and german id tags, they are available. one, you ensure that german soldier will remain missing. it's the purchase of not to memorabilia. memorabilia. it's fueling that business. you are part of the civil war preservation trust. we regarded those as sacred sites. visit --ne the whole everything is there. are there preservation efforts

going on within france and belgium to try to protect these areas because it appears the relic hunters have gotten out of control. there is a place for those things, but they are not following that. >> if you are caught with a metal detector in france, there are no penalties other than the fact that you lose your equipment and you go to prison. [laughter] they are quite strict. we have to ask for permission from the french authorities to use any kind of equipment. they are absolutely rabid about it. i know battles like antietam are big, but we are talking about massive. ,f landowners give permission prying eyes will never see them. you've got signs everywhere. i was down there and someone

said to me the you would have gophers in france? no, that is called a metal detectorist. we holes all over the site ere fresh work. they're taking away the evidence. it's information you can use. >> one of the themes i picked up is the considerable loss of data as the result of the second world war. the destruction of public record 1940. during the blitz in i'm wondering if you can talk about the other roadblocks. inbecause of german bonding

1940, 60% of british service records were destroyed. they can never be reconstructed. my grandfather, we have a metal index card that says he was eligible for two metals and he was into regiments. that is it. he was in three regiments. germansive for the means their medieval archives all go. there is nothing at all. , they are bavarian untouched because they were not there. that state system is very beautiful. going onan initiative in the u k run by the imperial war museum asking people to add information to what is already in the public domain. photographs. once you have a photograph, it makes it all more poignant once you have those images.

they are retrofitting comic in people to say give us the information or we can use public domain. i know during world war i that medical hospitals were moved close to battlefields. obviously, when the medical field hospital -- they knew who they were dealing with. i've always wondered because of the accounts i've read where so many people had to be buried, i've always wondered if they were reburied. i was wondering if you came across any sites that were clearly tied to the medical field hospitals. ware are not looking at burials p we are looking at hasty battlefield burials. it will say things like all hallows or a ds.

that is a cemetery associated with the station. british doctor ar dies at theork it site. the big field hospital and big training camps are where they have the biggest cemetery's. it's the only place where they actually do anything to indicate rank. in every other cemetery, you get the same burial. what they have done, they have put a semicircle of officers. and then in dispersed it with others, which is a bit creepy. i'm sure the other wrecks would

have been a bit cross about how they did it. ranks would have been a bit cross about how they did it. it's a segregated cemetery, which is very unusual. not the way it was done at the time. >> thank you. we are due for a break. we will come back at 11:00 for our second speaker. thank you. [applause] please welcome mr. joseph hoyt. [applause] >> thank you. i am really glad to be here. of ore i start, for those to who have never try identify human remains this is very hard.