Fear, fatigue and cold daily life in a First World War trench is relived in this three-part series. Based on diaries kept by the 10th Battalion of the East Yorkshire regiment, the series re-creates the experience by placing volunteers in conditions faced in four years of warfare, while veterans recall the Great War. Narrated by Andrew Lincoln.

BBC History Magazine: £2.95. New issue on sale 19 March [web address removed] Return to the Western Front (plus book offer): page 38

[Photo caption] Twenty-four volunteers experience the harsh realities of life in a First World War trench in northern France

The Trench 9.00pm BBC2
Television enjoys re-creating historical eras and, in the main, viewers enjoy watching them -witness the success of Channel 4's 1900 House. The Trench is the latest documentary to put a group of volunteers firmly in the past, with all of the consequent privations and difficulties.
The Trench re-creates, as closely as possible, life in a First World War battlefield trench. The programme uses 24 volunteers from Hull to mirror the day-to-day lives of the men of the 10th Battalion of the East Yorkshire regiment (otherwise known as the Hull Pals).
The volunteers, after basic training at Catterick, are to spend two weeks in simulated conditions, eating, sleeping and living just like First World War soldiers. Much of the raw material is taken from the regimental war diary of the original battalion. The programme also features poignant testimony from former soldiers - men who are now more than 100 years old but whose memories of those appalling times are still astonishingly vivid. One old soldier recalls the singular horrors of a German gas attack: "It felt as if you'd got a corkscrew turning around in your throat."
The volunteers quickly form close friendships and alliances of a type very similar to those forged on the battlefield. They also face up to the loneliness, unpredictability and boredom of life in a trench.

Return to the Western Front: page 38