Original version

BBC World Service Online

The Documentary

Documentaries

Factual

The Documentary Podcast

Investigating global developments, issues and affairs.

BBC World Service

BBC World Service Europe and the Middle East

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa Schedule

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa

BBC World Service West and Central Africa Schedule

BBC World Service West and Central Africa

BBC World Service East Asia

BBC World Service South Asia

BBC World Service Australasia

BBC World Service schedule for American satellite radio and the Caribbean

BBC World Service Americas and the Caribbean

The Documentary: The Ghostly Voices of World War One

Indian Soldiers of WW1

09/11/2014 GMT

The Ghostly Voices of World War One

BBC World Service - The Documentary, The Ghostly Voices of World War One

Resurrecting the voices of ordinary soldiers from the British Empire who fought in WW1

Resurrecting the voices of ordinary soldiers from the British Empire who fought in World War One.

Hidden away in the backrooms at Humbolt University and the Ethnological Museum in Berlin are some of the most remarkable sound recordings ever made. They date back to World War One and capture the voices of some of the ordinary men who fought in ‘the war to end all wars’. They were recorded by German academics who realised they didn’t have to go abroad to research the world’s many different languages. Instead, they were able to focus on captured soldiers from the furthest reaches of the British Empire, who were being held at prisoner of war camps all over Germany. Among them were a group of Hindus, Sikhs and Indian soldiers imprisoned at camps on the outskirts of Berlin. They performed poems, songs and stories which were recorded using Thomas Eddison’s latest invention. 

How these men lived out the rest of their lives has been cloaked in obscurity. On a quest to discover what happened to them and how they died, and armed with the recordings, Priyath Liyanage travels from Germany across the world to some of the villages in northern India where these men lived. It proves to be an emotional journey, resurrecting memories which had long been forgotten. These old soldiers may be long gone but their voices live on.

(Photo: Digital composite of injured Indian soldiers of the British Army at the Brighton Pavilion, converted into a military hospital around 1915. Credit: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

Accessibility links

Programme Index

The Documentary

The Ghostly Voices of World War One

Genres

Brand

BBC World Service Online

About BBC World Service