Skip to main content

tv   American History TV  CSPAN  December 23, 2014 8:30pm-9:23pm EST

8:30 pm
today will share their knowledge about archaeology in the great war. our oh first speaker is andrew robert shaw, a military historian, author and broadcaster. he was previously the head of education at the national army museum in london. after that, director of the royal logistics museum in cam berlee. he lectures for the norwegian army and is providing historical consultation for a series of events planned by the bbc entitled the first world war with at home. for over 25 years he's led several archaeological projects on the western front. many of which have been featured in television series like finding the fallen, the trench detectives and time team. he's the author of 15 books including digging the trenches, archaeology of the western front which came out in hard cover in 2008 and just released this year in paper back. he was given the prestigious honor of be ing named a fellow of the society of anti-qaries in london.
8:31 pm
he'll share his work on ark kolg in 1914 and 1915. please welcome andrew robbershaw. [ applause ] >> good morning, everybody. thank you very much for the invitation for the memorial. thank you very much for turning out today. i hope to make this interesting. i want to look at a number of oh oh things. i want to look at a new discipline out of battlefield archaeology of the first world war and justify why we do it and look at case studies. case studies relating the to individuals found on projects starting really in 2005, coming through at the last few years. before i start, because this is a serious subject, i just want to start with a joke. it's the british way.
8:32 pm
i was asked to give a talk to the society of genealogists. they take themselves terribly seriously. that's why i'm a member of family historians. pi daughter is adopted, you see. the story i told them was based on that given in the 1920s or 30s by a british comedian called max miller. max said when he was about 22 he went home, sought his father and said, i want your permission to marry miss green. i love miss green. his dad said, i'm sorry, you can't marry her. when i was your age i had a bicycle. i got around a bit. you can't marry her, she might be your sister. he said, i would like to marry miss smith. give me your permission. he said, i'm sorry. when i was your age before i met your mother i had a bicycle. i got around a bit. you can't marry her. might be your sister. another three months. a lovely girl.
8:33 pm
he came home and dad wasn't in. he had gone to the pub or something. he said, mum, i have talked to my dad about two girls i wanted to par marry. he said you can't because when i was your age, i had a bike, i got around and before i met your mother things happened. both girls could have been my sister so i couldn't marry them. what should i do? she said, don't worry. he's not your dad. the society of genealogists didn't cope well with that. i hope we'll do rather better this morning. this is what we are talking about. we are talking about battles, wars. one of the things i'm aware of is that almost 200 years ago there was a battle in belgium, the battle of waterloo. there were hon ohhered burials, memorials. the other ranks went into pits. that's es what happened. there was no individual markers.
8:34 pm
that wasn't going to change until the 20th century. when it did the monuments of the western front that we are familiar with, later taken by the imperial, now the commonwealth war graves commission. as we have seen from another another image, some of these guys weren't so fortunate. we have the missing. partly what i'm talking about today is the missing. those missing are recorded on a number of memorials. not the cemeteries we are familiar with, but the monuments which actually record those people who ended up buried in trenches, sometimes but rash rarely blown to pieces. people in shell holes, lost in no man's land, buried in collapsed dug outs. imagine the multitude ways you could end up missing. put it in perspective. this is the monument with 72,000 names of missing on it. if you were a british soldier your chance of being on this
8:35 pm
monument or the monument at yats or the canadians at vimy, take out a coin, throw it, get heads once, throw it to get heads twice, three times. in fact, if you did it seven times that's your chance of being on here. but 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 have the tomb of the unknown soldier and the cenotaph. that's partly what we're talking about now. i cut my teeth dealing with a large number of oh different sites. this is a set of oh british feet in british boots. actually this is all we found of this soldier. i have been asked a mub number of times how many sets of human remainses have they discovered. the amount is about 27. people look perplexed.
8:36 pm
what if it was traumatic amputation. he might have died in the '50s in a wheelchair. it doesn't mean he died on the spot. sometimes we are fortunate. this man, edward bergman, a soldier was plowed up by a farmer about ten years ago. the farmer got off the tracker to, found the set of remains, put them in a crate, handed them to us and said, what's this? we were able to take them to the commonwealth war graves chigs, contact the german vdk which is the equivalent but funded entirely by voluntary contribution and say, we have found these remains. in the middle of it is an i.d. tag. this is the zinc i.d. tag of edward bergman, a man killed in august of 1918. for most of the projects it's actually looking for sites of
8:37 pm
the great war with. we don't go looking for the dead per se . however, other people have. the project looking for australians, oxford archaeologist project produced 250 set of remains from cemeteries. they were dug up and reburied. a question we can come back to at the end about the morals of doing that. this set of remains or group belongs to french soldiers killed in the beginning of the great war. these are men killed close to verdan. one was a novelist and a poet. a man called fournier. he was famous before the war, famous because of his death. buried with his platoon in an improvised burial as we see here. about 20 years ago a group of french archaeologists said he's so famous we should find him.
8:38 pm
that's what they did. they went out to do what i would call prospecting for the dead. they knew roughly where he was. they found him and were able to identify virtually everybody by name because of the combination of identification that these men were actually carrying with them. this site is now open to the public. you can see where they were found. elsewhere human remains are found almost on a monthly basis. very often the head of development. in fact, these bodies here are men found close to arras by alan jack and his team is the archaeologist for the city. my role on these occasions, if called, is not to deal with the forensic side, not to deal with the anthropology but to deal with the question of dating of the deaths. how do i know that? i'm supposed to be an expert on equipment. these germans clearly died after september 1916 from the area
8:39 pm
they are found. how do i know? they have steel helmets. there were no steel helmets on german soldiers until september or october of 1916. obviously with them is their anti-gas equipment which helps me date them. we can look at this man on his back. this is a burial from 1914. because these soldiers go do away with this spiked helmet by that time. it gives them away. having established some of the credentials we might then consider this. this is one of the most famous sets of remains discovered. this is quite late in the war in 1917. these are members of the so-called grimesby chums. the journalists who is came to cover it decided -- and you can see i think fairly well that the
8:40 pm
bodies in fact have been linked by the fact that each man's elbow is over the man next to him. the journalists decided it was some sort of danse macabre showing solidarity in death. it's a pit that was too short so they put bodies this is and put each man over the next man. simple as that. one thing to be aware of is you cannot be too romantic about these things. in the same way as here this is an aerial view of the same site. if you look here you have some bodies laid out with the legs and arms and the skull in placement, no body. the journalists suggested what happened here was the bodies had been laid out by friends, anatomically correctly which is an interesting thought in the middle of a war as destructive as the great war that you would lay out bodieses when you have only found parts. in fact, it's a perfectly normal set of burials which have been hit by a shell which explains what we've got.
8:41 pm
you have to be careful. all the skills we used or see in csi is what we bring to this. that brings me to framel. you need permission from the french authorities. from the commonwealth war graveses commission. we were never able to use dna or isotope analysis. however when they set out to find the 500 bodies they found 2 at framel. it was all prefigured on the use and recovery of dna which explainses why they have identified over 120 of these men by name. in a previous project, run by the group of enthusiasts called the diggers in belgium, they recovered over a hundred bodies, identified one by name. which suggests that their methodology was poor.
8:42 pm
my methodology was born here. there are lots of projects with other groups. we started this the village of ocean villas. i will give you an idea of how early it was and how many experts there were this is a communication trench, not desperately exciting but it ises important. we went into the area having been aware that the owner was being metal detected on a regular basis. people staying in the guest house were getting up early, detecting before dawn, see ing what they could steal. simple as that. we agreed to help by checking her garden and seeing what was there. we found a communication trench system. utter nonsense. we knew it was there. it's on the aerial photographs and the trench maps. we knew it was behind the house. why bother? we didn't know what was in it. we found brick lines in it. the bottom of the trench was lined with a layer of bricks. the people that came to visit avril williams's house looked
8:43 pm
into the hole and said, oh, well, that was done by the french. why? after the war they had to live in the cellars because there were no houses left that's what they did. we didn't have the heart to tell them we had checked and the brick lining was put in in 1915 when the british took over the sector from the french. we knew who had done it and how long it took. the poem talks about the brick lined trenches opening onto accommodating cellars, exactly with a we found. then we discovered a layer of oh shattered tiles on top of the bricks. of course people said, well, these came from the stage in the war -- because people are experts -- when a roof was on the house. the shelling meant the tiles fell into the trench, tumbling in and were crushed by soldiers' marching feet. that would be logical had it not been for the fact that archaeology doesn't stand allen. we had checked the war diaries
8:44 pm
and found in the diary of the 87th field ambulance in the village they said the brick linings are a problem. why? when they get covered in mud they are slick and the stretcher bearers have their boots around their neck with the grip achieved by using stocking feet. this has got to stop, it says. what we then remembered is that layer of shattered slate on top of the brick. no war diary talks -- no history of the first world war talks about how you deal with slippy trencheses. now we know. if you're in a village and you have slippy trenches you get soldiers to go get broken slates and smash them up with mallets and put them in as a nonslip layer. health and safety. 1915-style. but of course that means we can now say why do we bother? there is always something to learn. in a very, very early project,
8:45 pm
having gone from the village of ocean villas we were approached by the bbc to do a project. the director of the project is catrine clay who's here. what a coincidence. it was for the series ancestors. we were looking for the dug out in which willford owen we sheltered and about which he wrote the poem blinded. or the sentry. we found and we knew. it describes how in the shelling the century is blinded by a shell. it's a very moving poem. the idea was that with money from the bbc we'd use a team of archaeologists and find the entrance to the dug out and talk about it. we failed. we found many things but not anything related to 1917 when owen was there. we found 1915 and 1916. one of the first things we did on morning one is found a set of human remains. remember, we weren't looking for them. this is something we knew might
8:46 pm
happen. when we did we had a headless body. don't worry. it was only the result of him being laid in a natural position in a shell hole with his head higher than the body. the body had been untouched by the plowing but the plowing had taken off the head. we had somebody come to site who was a journalist. never trust are the public on these occasions. she looked at the remains. we weren't going to stop her from doing it. we wanted people to pay respects. she looked and said, i suppose you will use dental record ares. which is interesting. not the least problem being finding nearly hundred-year-old dental records. we found around his neck an identity tag which was sent back to the uk to be worked on. we continued to work to find the dug out oh, to find owen's bio or something. we found another set of remains.
8:47 pm
a british soldier lying on his back on top of the trempbl system. he was on top of the trechbl trench system. the system was filled in by a mine blown on the first of july. this soldier is lying on top of that. he's a burial of the first of july or later in the war. the renl meant he was in, was only there for one day. they lost 110 dead attacking this position on the first of july 1916. the first day of the battle. we then continued to work and found this man on his side. pretty close to the first soldier and slightly behind the second. a german officer. lying on his side. with him, his watch, a mouth organ -- harmonica -- a neolithic flint scraper. this guy was known as the archaeologist.
8:48 pm
we took the whole thing seriously. the bodies were recovered. they were handed over to the war graves commissio the unknown british soldier is in the oak coffin. we asked permission for dna. we were told you couldn't do it. it's not policy. we approached the german vdk who said do what you like as long as it is ethical. we have no money. can you pay for it? yes, we have tv money. that's fine. the work was done. in fact, it was interesting. the reason the vdk have no money is they are entirely sponsored by the public. there are no state funding at all for the german war graves commission. they have still a million missing from the second world war on the eastern front which they regard as more pressing than this one. back at ucl university london the conservation where people got to work.
8:49 pm
we had already gone here. we had already gone to the monuments of the missing and we took it in turn to read the names of all members of the king's lancaster regiment. we knew we had read his name out. we didn't know who he was. he was then buried. he was buried. the dig was in october. he was buried the following spring with full military honors, honor guard, everything. military atache, chaplain, everybody from the youngest reute to the oldest nco, all there. they took it in turn to read his name out, a rather smaller list but 110 missing. it was nothing that we could do other than say we knew his height, his age. that was it. as soon as he was buried we were approached by two the sets of families who said we think it is our grand dad, our great uncle. can we provide dna? we said yes, but there is no point. no sample is allowed to be taken. every second of july when i go
8:50 pm
to the monument now, i will find there is actually on the grave a little rose tree left behind by the families. the red rose of because the south korean student turned on its back, and cleaned the back of it as well. on the back of it is written, and the scrimmage he came from. we got in touch with someone who was an expert. from fireville, new york, and
8:51 pm
ralph whitehead was able to give us help. you shouldn't make friends with those you meet on the internet, but ralph seems to be okay. it belonged to a man, could he give us information. ygs, he is number was reserve regiments, 125th, number seven company, bostal number 228. he was able to give us his height and able to give us his age. 36 years old. six children. he died on the 3rd of june, 1915. fighting the french. somehow, i found reassuring, i don't know what that was about. my grandfather was not serving at that point, it felt better knowing he had been killed by a brit.
8:52 pm
they live in the village, you know. within 24 hours, we had this picture. this picture shows, him, and behind him, his brother. he was going to die, leaving behind six children, one was born on christmas eve, 1914. he was alive when the body was oiched his grandfather, he said, dad, they found your dad in the battle field. he said, i always knew they would. he was going to die on the 15th of july, 1916, buried in the village. this photography was taken in the village, behind the german lines, exactly the same village we worked in previously.
8:53 pm
when we went to do the dig, we were unable to get the accompidation, the bbc booked us into a converted barn in the village of mir mar. we followed the route of these men to to their deaths, we had work to be done. we have the hormonica, and the watch, stopped 10 minutes past six. i don't know if it was morning or evening. bodies in the first, second world war are myluted. if you don't loot them, the enemy would. he had his content, money, watch, book, and a book, very decayed. it was sent back to ucl, they go to work on it what did they discover? it was a bank book.
8:54 pm
it came from a village called halberstat. this man, potheshlly was from northern germany. he was wearing the uniform of a -- is there any officer, who has any cop tact at all with northern germany, didn't mention the world halberstat. yes, one. killed on the sixth of jup, 125th n number seven company, painter and decorator, before the war, he moved to start a new business. he kept his bank account in northern germany. we checked the bank account. there wasn't any money in the
8:55 pm
account. we checked to see a bit of verification. we found, strangely, even if the young soldier survived, he was 26, he wouldn't have been able to use the bank after 1936, why, it it was jewish owned. what happened, walter wrap, his grandson, said, we had found a shouldier, anybody out there related related to albert tealicker? a woman came in for the english language theater company. she was running a play about the first world war, about a vc winner, who comes back to
8:56 pm
recruit, and has a crisis of conscious. and someone said, well, can you ask your husband carl, whether he might be related to this man might be related. >> she went home and said, carl, do you know, in your family, is there an albert tea licker? yes, he went missing, the family never knew what happened to him. i have a photograph of him. the the strange thing about this, allison and carl tealicker met while carl was studying english, he was writing a diser tagsz on his favorite war poet, wilfred owen. in this frarvegs he is marked, you can see on the right-hand side, you can see scorching, this is the ohm thing recovered from it house in halberstat when
8:57 pm
it was bombed in may of 1945. so, again, you go from one war to another. before carl died, that is allison and other members of the team, to see where the soldier had come from. the two germans were buried here. near mets. about 180 miles from where they were found. why? the german vdk couldn't afford to bury them in the local cemetery. at least they were buried with their comrades, and they decided to put up a monument, at the end of the field where the men were found. when it was unveiled, the director of the museum stood with me and said, this is the most uninitial monument, i said why, is it it the smallest? it links in death two germans
8:58 pm
and one british soldiers on the same monument. first one of that type. 100 years later, and reconciliation still takes time. it turned up on e-bay of all things, it is a post-card. not clear here, there is a wreath hung in the trench, down there it says, in memory of our faulty foreign comrades of number 7 company, 121st regime had it arrived before the arciology, we know this is dated june, 1915. those men that we found had been buried in scratch gravings 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 honored burial they deserved. the fort ups of war didn't allow
8:59 pm
that to happen. we missed the other 38. all recovered in mass graves as unknown german soldiers, all to at least have the great privilege of being buried. i have to show you now, the american expert on the recovery of of human remain, if you fail to oipgz people, deliberate or accidentally, you effectively killed them twice. they died once in war, and once because you failed to give them identification. this now becomes explicable. until they did the arciology, it would have made no sense at all. you need the archiology. this is the the battle, we were raided by -- they came in the dark, came in with torches, and
9:00 pm
this was a massive human remains when we got back there. we decided to leave a security guard on until we finished. protect these men. we were never going to work out who that man was. probably british, and buried as unknown soldier. i managed to find a german soldier. probably one. only academies ever to be able to say i have broken the jaw of a german sold kwler with a shovel. he was 19, he had been dead for some time. he was part of a mass burial. we have a number of bodies, one on top of the other. because of the conditions, we had an incredibly high level of survival. we had leather, paper, we had cloth, in fact, we had virtually everything. the other problem we had, we almost poisoned ourselves. what we didn't realize, the
9:01 pm
reason the middle of the bodies were missing, they were given lime to upon had them decompose. plastic tents in the dark, in six hour shifts, we didn't realize, we disturbed the lime. and had to open the tentings up, not get problems with hands, skin and eyes. what we found, all ger maps, the rest, bavarrians, the bavarrian archives in munich were useful. survived the second world war in tact. we were able to reconstruct how the bodies were in the grave, and this is the back of a german soldiers' tunic. the rest of the german records were destroyed by allied bombing
9:02 pm
at the end of the second world war. this guy had a complete uniform, and the ribbon of the armed cross, second class. i don't know what he thought was it, he pinned it in uniform, it was in place. on his shoulders, he had number 16, for 16 bavafian regiment. what we were able to do is recover this. a postcard. on that postcard gives us his name. his name is lepold rafmel. number 9 company, 16th reserve regiment, killed on the 13th of october, 1915, joint fighting. the battle of lose. in munich it said his place of
9:03 pm
burial was not known. it is now. this is the remains of a song book from the beginning of the war, from 1914. what do we know from lepold? >> exempt from military service, he had done the two years training, age 22, he was not expected to fight? why, he was a concert violinist. sadly, his brother was killed in the battle of the volunteers, and he volunteered. went off to war. what do you think his chances are of being any good? corporal within two months, armed cross within three months, doing well. there is, according to the history of the regiments an outbreak of musicality in the regiments when they form a band and arc stra. it has to be lepold. it is not often that you can do a link from the first world war
9:04 pm
to elvis presley, but i will do it. this song book includes the words and music to a song that elvis presley brought back from his service in germany when he served in the military. the song is "wooden heart." it is a german marching song. so, we identified our soldier. we knew about his brother, seen the memorials, we wanted to try to find the family. get the photography. why wouldn't it work? we went to find where the family lives, we knew the address. his father, a electrician, it was a memorial park. the plaque was, it said it was a memorial for bombing in 1943, that wiped out an entire city block, that is why there it was no family.
9:05 pm
one final twist to the story. lepold was about 23, annartist, a real artist, a corporal, we knew that from his color dogs, he was a recipient of the iron cross second half in the list regiment, the escapeth reserve regiment. in the same year that lepold died, fighting it dpaens the lester regiment. we know how he died. there it was another soldier. not german, but austrian. that man, was adolph hitler. if tulook at this war, you immediately see another. we are in a situation where we are continuing to do work. we have never yet gone prospecting for the dead.
9:06 pm
we have been approached to do just that by a large number of people. swee have a burial of at least one man, and probably his comrades in the village. i have spoken to the mayor and said, we would like to mark the plot, we know where he is. the mayor said, i wouldn't bother. why not? the way it works in french law, if a family doesn't claim building plot, we can sell it, the community gets the money, and we will build on it. if you are going to do work, you got about a year. we have another site, where the bodies, probably 54 of them, we know where they are buried, the man who had them buried was a german officer, who roughly a hundred years ago, wrote to the family of the young officer, i
9:07 pm
buri buried, and left a map. we think that sight needs protection. we are trying to do, to say to all of you, this story is in some ways depressing. somebody once said, sorry, somebody once said that a death in a war is like throwing a stone into a pond. the ripples go out and come back. as i proved, with the son of yak ponus. it still matters, it is a hundred years ago. >> dealing with french, belgian, german, occasionally, british, we will do whatever we can to make sure these men get the best treatment, to make sure they are not buried by an unknown
9:08 pm
soldier, by their ridgeiments, if we are lucky, by their name. because the australianings paid, the rules have change, they can't prevent us from taking the dna in the future. we can build up a database. frankly, for britain, there are too many of them. one muhan remains are found, i will do everything that i can with my small team to ensure every means are available to steeb who they r we don't want to see the men killed twice. thank you for listening. >> we will take questions from the audience.
9:09 pm
if you raise your hand, we will come find you. speak into you mike, that would be great. any questions. >> so, given the concerns about looters, getting there before you have a chances to work, and the massive scale of potential sites along the front, i am bornding if your team or other teams are working on efforts to proactively survey the western front, using 189, all the things we use for survey in archiology, if there is a building over it, work on the sitings still accessible? >> very good question. >> we are looking at one area in particular. we have been offered the chance to use a technique you are talking about.
9:10 pm
unfortunately, we don't have 30,000 pounds. that is what it would take to do that survey. we are however, trying to ensure that wherever there are reports of human remains, do oo we do something about it. the point of the raiding, if if you dig a hole anywhere in europe, basically, looters regard it as being an invitation to come have a look. now, whenever we do a dig we have 24-hour security, and back fill. i was asked by somebody to go to their house, they said, what is this, i opened up the big bag, a garbage bag with human rains, it came from the field, someone dug this poor guy up, and put him on the side of the hole.
9:11 pm
all insigia are gone. i decided to take him to the house where i was staying, couldn't find my wife. found my daughter, and said, she said, well, mommy has gone shopping in your car. that wouldn't have been too bad. that was the car with the garbage bag in the back. there is a big surprise, don't open it. there can be dark humor in this. >> are they doing the type of archiology that you are doing, on the eastern front as well? >> i was asked to have a look at a site in near berlip. dave schiller, israel special forces man, who advises the german army. when he picked me up from the airport, i was surprised to see, when he reached up to open up
9:12 pm
the visor on the car, he had a 9 millimeter. i said, why do you have a 9 millimet millimeter? he said, you have an automatic as well in the glove compartment. i don't normally get this, what is the problem here, the problem is, that pocket is being strip mined basically, by metal detecting groups who are sponsored by the ukranian and russian mafia, they will defend their pitchings, and defended by the neo-nazi far right, who regard it as a sacred site. we both have weapons. >> i didn't do the project. i know what shallow burials look like. i didn't want to be one of them. yes, there, dry weather if you
9:13 pm
buy one you ensure that that german soldier will remain missing. the purchase of nazi memorabilia is fueling that particularly grizzly business. >> here in the united states, we try to protect those sites, regard them as sacred sites, all over belgium, and everything is there. are there preservation efforts going on within particularly france and belgium, and those areas, to try to protect the
9:14 pm
areas it appears the rel coners are getting out of control. they are not following it. >> if you are caught with a metal detector in france, there are no penalties, other than the fact you lose your finds, your car and go to prison. >> they are strict. we have to go through the authorities to use that equipment. they are rabid about it. the extent of the battle field. i know they are big, we are talking about massive. if private landowners give permission for a back hander, prying eyes will never see them. i was down there recently, and someplace said to me, who was with me, an american, said, do you have gophers?
9:15 pm
i said no, that is a metal detectorists. fresh work. they are taking away the evidence. if it is information that you can use. of course, if it is associated with human remains, we all know what that means. one of am themes i picked up is the considerable loss of data as a result of the second world war. you talk about the german side, and the destruction of the record office. expand on that and talk about some of the other roadblocks you have run into. give the audience perspective on that. >> because of german bombing in 1940, 60% of service records are
9:16 pm
destroyed. my grandfather, we have a metal index card that said he was eligible for two metals, that's it. he was in three regiments included in the photographs, and clearly, once you have a photographer, a death is sad, somehow, it makes it all the more poignant, once you have the images, doing that retrofitting, getting people to say, give us the information, we can put it in the public domain.
9:17 pm
during world war one, medical helps hospitals were moved close to battle fields, obviously, death in the medical field hospital, they knew who they were dealing with. i always wondered, because of the accounts i have read where so many people had to be buried, i always wondered if they were in fact, reburied and i was worrying if tucame across sights clearly tied to medical field hospitals? >> we are not looking at formal burials. hasty battle field burials we don't know. if you look at any list of cemeteries, it it will say things like, all hallows, or ads. clearly, a cemetery, associated with the dressing station, where people succumbed to their
9:18 pm
wounds. the most famous british doctors, dies of an abdomenal injury. in a casualty clearing station, places like the big training camp, and the big field hospital, where we have one of the biggest cemeteries, these are guys who die of disease or wounds and women as well. it is interesting, the only place where they actually do anything to indicate rank in every other cement cemetery. you get the same burial, they put a semicircle of officers n then, didn't disperse it with dead nurses, which is creepy. i am sure the other ranks would have been cross about how they did it. they laid them out of being brits in the middle, empire troops, and german prisoners,
9:19 pm
indians and chinese. segregated cemetery, not the way it was done at the time. very unique. >> wree due for a break. we will come back at 11:00. for our second speaker, thank you.
9:20 pm
here's a look at some of the programs you'll find christmas day on the c-span networks. holiday festivities start at 10 being a following with the lighting of the national christmas tree and the lightle of the capitol christmas tree. celebrity activists then talk about their causes. at 8:00, supreme court justice samu samuel alito and former florida gopher jeb bush on the bill of rights and the founding fathers.
9:21 pm
at 7:00 p.m., author pamela paul and others talk about their reading habits. on american history tv on c-span3 at 8:00 a.m. eastern, the fall of the berlin wall with speeches from president john kennedy and ronald reagan. at noon, fashion experts on first ladies' fashion choices and how they represented the styles of the times in which they lived. then at 10:00, former nbc news anchor tom brokaw on his more than 50 years of reporting on world events. for our complete schedule go to c-span.org. american history tv visited the macarthur memorial in norfolk, virginia, which was hosting a symposium marking the world war i centennial. coming up next, maritime archaeologist joseph hoight
9:22 pm
describes confrontations between american u-boats and vessels off the virginia and north carolina coasts. his talk is about 55 minutes. >> thank you very much. i'm glad to be here in my backyard. i just want to say one thing before i start with mr. robert shaw's presentation. for those of you that have never tried to identify a set of human remains, this is incredibly difficult work and very important stuff. my primary job is for the "uss monitor" when we recovered the turret in 2002, we found the remains of two u.s. sailors inside the turret and over the course of about ten years, we worked really closely with the joint pacific account and command of hawaii to try and identify those remains. full dna analysis. we did facial reconstruction through louisiana state university. we knew there were 16 sailors lost so we knew generally out of a pool

96 Views

info Stream Only

Uploaded by TV Archive on