Digging Band of Brothers: Time Team Special with Tony Robinson (2023)

Transcript
0:06 · This is the beautiful and very quiet little village of Aldbourne in Wiltshire, which 80
0:12 · years ago became home to a battalion of U.S. paratroopers who were preparing to take
0:17 · part in the D -Day landings. One of these men, David Kenyon Webster, recorded his memories in a recently discovered manuscript.
0:28 · One day, Aldbourne was asleep with her cows and her memories, the next, she was tingling with six companies of wild young Yankees
0:35 · giving a jump in from airplanes in flight. This was the famous Easy Company, otherwise known as the Band of Brothers.
0:45 · They took up residence in Nissen huts, in tar and paper huts, in camps in the villages,
0:50 · as well as in stable blocks, private houses... And lovely pubs like that one.
0:58 · Our good friend Richard Osgood, the chief archaeologist at the Ministry of Defence, has been working at this site since 2019.
1:04 · And this year, Time Team is really pleased to join him and his team for the full eight
1:09 · days, as we try and unravel and understand how this sleepy Wiltshire village became a training ground for those brave soldiers for D -Day.
1:26 · The men arrived at Aldbourne after undergoing rigorous training in Camp Toccoa at the base
1:32 · of Mount Currahee, which inspired their famous Currahee battle cry.
1:38 · A scrapbook gives us insight into the experience of these young volunteers as they prepare
1:44 · to be dropped into the battlefields of Europe, not knowing who would make it home.
1:49 · It describes gruesome conditions on the crossing from New York to Liverpool, their first glimpses
1:55 · of England on the train to Hungerford, and their arrival at the camp by torchlight.
2:02 · Webster picks up the story. We arrived in Aldbourne in a blacked out convoy one frosty September night in 1943.
2:13 · When we awoke the next morning, we saw the England of nursery rhyme and children's story.
2:19 · Fairytale cottages with thatched roofs and rose vines on trellises stood all around us.
2:26 · 80 years later, our team of archaeologists and veterans are anxious to uncover the next
2:35 · chapter of their story. We're looking for Nissen huts and we're looking for maybe different styles of huts.
2:50 · This is the hub. This is what makes Easy Company. This is the origins of Easy Company before they go and do all their fighting in Europe.
2:56 · They've done no fighting before they start living here. So they're eating in the mess houses. They are sleeping there about 16 people in one of these huts.
3:05 · So quite cramped and I think it must have been pretty cold. They're doing everything that makes them soldiers.
3:12 · But they were only here from September 1943 to May 1944 so it's less than a year in total.
3:18 · What can we hope that they might have left behind for us? What I'd really like to find out is what keeps them human.
3:24 · They're doing all this training for horrific world events that were completely essential
3:29 · bits of training. But what about the downtime that they had working and living with the locals trying
3:35 · to make the best of the rations that they're getting. So, I'd really like to find out the personal stories and if we could find any traces of
3:43 · an individual. I mean the great thing about this is that we do have a lot of photographs as well of the particular individuals that are here.
3:50 · It was a nice one there. The chap sitting on the bike seat is called Forrest Guth and he's a Pennsylvanian and
4:00 · a lot of easy company did come from that eastern state of America, big industrial estate.
4:06 · So even people like Dick Winters, the commanding officer in the end, he's from that state. And you can see he's sat on the bike but he's in front of one of the sort of things we are
4:13 · looking for. We are looking for these Nissen huts, these prefabricated buildings and hopefully we'll find traces of the hut just behind Forrest Guth.
4:21 · Yep. And you have a plan of the area? Yeah, now this is an intriguing one because this was done by memory from one of the veterans
4:29 · of Easy Company. And you'll notice they've got the kind of queues here and that's Quonset and that's
4:35 · the American term for Nissen huts. So you've got all of these and the person reckons that this is where Easy Company was,
4:41 · so more or less where we're looking at the moment and then F company, Fox company is where our second trench is and then what they call a drill field.
4:48 · So this is done from memory and as you know that can be quite a fickle thing. So let's go with the real archaeology as well to augment this and you can see all the huts.
4:57 · Right. And this is really what we're after. So that is where that sketched Fox company was, that's where Easy Company was and you
5:04 · can see the huts. So that's our really good starting point. So this is the modern photograph and what we've done is we superimposed the plan of
5:11 · the Nissen huts on top of it and that'll geolocate exactly where each of these huts was and hopefully
5:16 · our excavation will pick those up and I thought that would be a useful tool for the team to be able to see where they're situated.
5:22 · Nissen huts came in kit form and were designed to be put up by six men in four hours.
5:31 · We believe that some of the ones here were erected by the British Army who were stationed here in the early war years before the US paratroopers arrived.
5:43 · The huts were secured with metal fixings set into concrete post pads which we hope to locate
5:49 · using metal detectors. We're looking at this row here, possibly going off at an angle and where that
6:02 · flag is to your left, that could be the back pad.
6:07 · John's hoping that we'll be able to identify some of the other features of the camp using magnetometry.
6:13 · So John, what's the plan of action? Well this field's been surveyed, well most of it has, but we don't know what's happening
6:26 · to the south behind us, so we're extending the magnetics, you can see now we're collecting the data over there.
6:34 · We've got a whole range of possible targets, maybe a rubbish dump, more nissen huts and
6:40 · there were sort of tents here, I think they'd be a bit more difficult for us to actually map, but we're just going to see what we get.
6:49 · And when do you think we'll get some results? We've only just started!
6:55 · 600 men were put in huts and barracks on a meadow that could well have supported at least
7:02 · two cows. The village soccer field became a combination gridiron-ball,
7:08 · diamond-parade ground. Drunks fell in the cowpond and VD movies were shown in the memorial
7:15 · hall. Roger, I've got the aerial photograph here, we had Easy Company here, we had Fox Company
7:22 · here, but what I really want to know is how did they fit into this whole US military structure? Okay, well I think I need to start right at the very top.
7:29 · They were part of the 101st Airborne Division, that division arrived in England in September
7:34 · of 1943, moved south by train through the industrial midlands to southern England, to
7:41 · the Kennet Valley, which is where we are now, and the division headquarters was at Greenham Lodge just on the 8th skirts of Newbury, regimental headquarters was established at
7:51 · Littlecote House which is a Tudor Manor House about five or six miles from where we are
7:57 · now, and then the regiment was made up of three battalions,
8:03 · first, second and third, and those battalions that were then split into companies. The men from Easy Fox and Dog Companies were part of the 2nd Battalion of the 506th Regiment
8:15 · commanded by Colonel Sink. They belonged to the famous 101st Airborne Division, known as the Screaming Eagles, commanded
8:24 · by General Maxwell Taylor.
8:30 · An impressive array of finds, discovered over the last two years, have pride of place in the Heritage Centre.
8:38 · Relics of their training include all kinds of ordnance, a parachute pull and even parachute
8:44 · silk. This cricket would have been used on landing in France to help identify friend from foe.
8:52 · That is quite loud, isn't it? It is. And there are personal effects, like a pair of nylons and an ATS badge, presumably
9:01 · left by visiting women after a night out. But one find that really stands out is an identification tag belonging to one of the
9:10 · men. So last year our star find was this dog tag, which says Carl F. Fenstermaker, and he's
9:18 · Easy Company. Carl is a fantastic guy. He's done all of the most famous jumps.
9:24 · He wasn't just a paratrooper, he was also a path finder, and so they were the ones who went ahead of paratroopers, laid down signals and then the paratroopers could land at those
9:33 · spots. On this dog tag it says Carl F. Fenstermaker. He's not Carl F. Fenstermaker. When we did our research he's actually Carl L. Fenstermaker, and he's got his number,
9:43 · he's got his blood type and things like that listed on this. But there's a bit of a misprint there as well, and this is, as you can see, folded in half.
9:51 · So do you think he chucked it because it was incorrect? Yes. Yeah, I would have just discarded it.
9:56 · Otherwise, if you lost one of these that's a big problem in the military. You could not do that.
10:01 · Massive offence to do it. He jumped at D -Day in Battle of the Bulge in Bastogne.
10:07 · In Belgium was one of 20 guys to jump and make, basically, save everyone in Battle of the Bulge by getting those resupply in.
10:15 · Then went to Dachau. As a German speaker they needed him, and so he was somebody who helped with getting all
10:22 · of the rest of the people out and kind of communicating what did goal of,
11:18 · you know, recovering this heritage and helping out on site.
12:06 · I think that bond is kind of re -established. What got you into it? How did you start? Basically, I had a mental breakdown in the military and
12:14 · I was stuck on the rear party when everybody deployed to Afghanistan.
12:19 · And one of the guys said, I've been tasked with getting a few guys together for an archaeological dig.
12:24 · Do you want to come along? It's Operation Nightingale. I said, I love the chance, yeah. If it helps me out, I was still serving when I did the first dig, the second dig.
12:33 · I was in the process of doing re -settlement, of moving away from the military into commercial
12:39 · archaeology, where I started working for Wessex and then I moved around and now I work for
12:44 · West Yorkshire Archaeology. And now I'm nearing 200, 200 digs.
12:52 · The team have marked out a grid to metal detector section of the field and straight away they're in the money.
12:59 · 1916, George V. You know the nails used for the corrugated?
13:10 · Yeah, yeah. By the end of day one, we've got finds relating not only to the huts, but also life in the
13:18 · camp. The guys have also found some ammunition, which is, I was joking earlier, we're mad about, it's not like doing prehistory because it's all
13:26 · date stamped. So when in prehistory or whatever other periods you're talking, I don't know, 3000 plus or
13:32 · minus 200 years or something, even with some good scientific dating, this one says 42 on it.
13:38 · Made in 1942, which is quite fun. So it's a nice tie down. It's a 50-cal round.
13:43 · That's really nice. So that's a heavy caliber piece of ammunition. It has been fired, so it's completely inert and safe.
13:50 · That's an American used piece of kit, which is great. And then the last thing, oh, another thing. Oh, it's a little plate.
13:56 · You find loads today. That's a plate. I think it might be from a harmonica.
14:01 · And that's, we were talking earlier about the human story about the guys being here. They're here for pretty much nine months.
14:08 · There's a lot of training. There's a lot of becoming military people, but there's a lot of boredom as well.
14:13 · And there's all sorts of things that the guys got up to here in their downtime. We'll find evidence for some of it, hopefully not all of it.
14:19 · But one of the things, passing time, time maybe you can imagine them sitting around a campfire playing a mouth organ something like that just appear but
14:26 · it's not just the finds from the fields that can tell us how the paratroopers spent their time in England. Webster's memoirs are incredibly descriptive and were discovered totally by
14:37 · chance in an attic it was completely random and we live in an old house in Aldbourne and
14:46 · it was just searching through hundreds of years of old papers and paintings and photograph albums and this manuscript just dropped out of the one of the boxes and
14:57 · I had a little look at it and it had this vivid description of life in Aldbourne and
15:03 · written by what it seemed to be a soldier so I started researching it more read through the the document and discovered that it was David Kenyon Webster.
15:13 · Webster appears to relish painting an extremely colorful picture of life in Aldbourne.
15:20 · The non jumping cooks astonished nearby civilians with their festivities. These not only included
15:27 · great sex orgies but also drinking bouts financed by the black market sale of the or rather
15:34 · our steak and butter. The shrieks, titters, foul mouthed drunken oaths, creaking
15:42 · beds and coarse panting that echoed from their bedrooms and hayloft caused many a cackle
15:48 · among the village hens. Mark Lawrence starred in the HBO series Band of Brothers and has brought an original copy
15:58 · of his script for John to display in the Heritage Centre.
16:03 · You don't want to trade it for one of the things you found last year do you?
16:16 · I'll take a clicker. I think Richard might have something to say about that.
16:22 · Yeah, I know. Maybe I can, like, finagle it in my pocket on the way out. Acting in the series had clearly been much more than just a job to him.
16:31 · The guy I played with was a guy called William Dukeman, and he was originally from Colorado, and he got killed on October the 5th, 1944 in Holland.
16:40 · So he never came back, but luckily I got to know his family since then, and I lived in Colorado, which is where he was originally from, and there's all these
16:50 · similarities. During the war, my grandmother, she lived in Swindon, which is about 10 miles from here. So during the war, her and her mother, my great-grandmother, they used to drive buses
16:58 · up to Aldbourne to take the U.S. soldiers into Swindon so they could get their drink on, on a Friday night.
17:04 · So there's all these crazy similarities, you know? No, it's been the role of a lifetime, you know?
17:11 · It really was. I'm sort of a local boy, because I grew up in Swindon.
17:16 · So to know that this was on my doorstep, and I never really knew about it until I got this job.
17:21 · So you walk into an audition 20 years ago, and you're still talking about it today. So it's a very special thing, it is a very special thing.
17:28 · It's a very heartfelt thing. Day two dawns, and Richard has Matt working in trench one, where he's exposing a line
17:39 · of postpads belonging to an Easy Company, Nissen hut. You'll see these orange spikes, Matt, these we think are potentially where there's a wall
17:48 · of one of the Nissen huts. I think we're probably looking at maybe a bit less where you are,
17:55 · as we're down the slope, but that's definitely it, so there's the beginning to the surface. It's a coin, but it's been snipped.
18:06 · This is the most relaxing way to spend a week.
18:15 · Ivan, Penny and Kenny are test-pitting in some of the gardens
20:03 · While the men were freezing to death in their Nissen huts with rotten mattresses and terrible toilets, this is where the officers were staying.
20:12 · Littlecote House, magnificent Tudor mansion. I know where I'd rather be, don't you?
20:20 · During the 17th century, a Roman villa, complete with Orpheus mosaic,
20:26 · was discovered in the 1970s, and according to Webster,
20:33 · it was believed to have been destroyed. In the woods surrounding the house, the men of Easy Company practiced manoeuvres, often
20:42 · over several days and nights, and they left their mark, quite literally, in the trees.
20:49 · What's lovely about beach trees such as this is the bark is slow growing, and whilst any lettering or pictures might warp, you tend to be able to see what the writing
20:59 · is, even with some significant age. I'd suggest this has got some age to it. You've got some slight warping going on.
21:06 · It's not as fresh as it would have been if it had been carved, and we've got the word, I don't know if you can make it out down here, but we've got a
21:12 · Ohio written down, which would make sense, if we've got American soldiers stationed nearby.
21:17 · Wow, this is more like it. It's staggering, isn't it?
21:23 · There's just so much going on. It stands out like a sore thumb. It does. That's got to be stars and stripes.
21:29 · Yep, US flag. We've got the US connection again, like with Ohio. It almost seems like there's multiple panels leading into each other, telling a bit of
21:36 · a story as well. Yeah, there's stylised writing here, and two notable names from anyone that's seen the
21:44 · series or read the books, Buck and Butch. They are leading prominent members of the division and USA there, just to confirm it.
21:55 · The men who left these carvings were learning skills that might mean the difference between life and death.
22:06 · They were about to be scattered across northern France and needed to be able to read and use
22:11 · the landscape both to outmaneuver the enemy and to survive. And they needed to be able to identify friend from foe.
22:21 · Right, crickets at the ready.
22:27 · Right, Bruce and I are slowly advancing to where
22:40 · we think Derek is. It's hard not to make a lot of noise in the woods.
23:03 · Much of the men's physical stamina was put down to the often cruel training regime of
23:08 · Captain Herbert Sobel. But on the exercises around Aldbourne, his tactical weakness was exposed.
23:16 · Colonel Sink was forced to make a decision that would change the fate of Easy Company
23:22 · when a long running feud between Sobel and Lieutenant Dick Winters came to a head.
23:29 · Sobel had tricked Winters into failing to inspect the latrines.
23:34 · Winters refused to accept the minor punishment and demanded a court martial. Eight of the company handed in their stripes in support of Winters and Sink was faced with
23:45 · what was effectively a mutiny on his hands. It is a staggeringly nice room, isn't it?
23:50 · Isn't it beautiful, what a view. So Sink's sitting here probably in this very seat.
23:57 · I think this is the one I'd have chosen to watch the men. And he's got this massive decision to make, hasn't he?
24:04 · Either he sides with the men, but if he does that, he's undermining the principle that you've got to obey your officers.
24:10 · Or he stays with his officer and if he does, then the men are just going to walk out on
24:16 · him. And then you've got the added complication that you've got this Lieutenant Winters who
24:23 · Sobel wanted to punish and Winters is going, no, I will go for a court martial. He took his chances.
24:28 · Which is going to be much more public. Absolutely. It's a nightmare if I was seen kind of walk straight out of that room. It was an incredible command decision and I think he must have thought really heavily
24:37 · about this. And to make that decision to somehow not remove Sobel, because he did acknowledge that Sobel
24:48 · created Easy Company at the end of the day. So he said to Sobel, you're a good guy, you've trained these men up.
24:55 · This is all going to be brilliant. Absolutely. And Sobel's chest is all puffing up thinking he's done a fabulous job.
25:01 · And they said, oh, by the way, I'm going to get you out of here. I want you instead to do a very important job.
25:06 · I want you to train vicars how to jump out of planes, basically. That's exactly what he did. I mean, you know, Chilton Foliat is a jump school a
25:13 · couple of miles up the road from here. I want it to feel like this is going to be a good thing for Sobel, that he's been given
25:19 · command of a complete jump school unit rather than just of a company. But it allowed him then to gently move Sobel out of the way and move Dick Winters up.
25:29 · Chilton Foliat wasn't far from Aldbourne, a new recruits and replacement under when they're
25:35 · training there. The course lasted about two weeks.
25:40 · So they spent the first week learning how to pack parachutes and how to jump out of
25:46 · mock fuselages. And I've got actually got a picture here of a couple of fuselages.
25:53 · One of them has been made of sort of corrugated tin. And in the background, you can see the rear of what was a B17 fuselage.
26:00 · This is the door they're jumping. That's the door they're jumping on. This of course is quite a short jump. Whereas that one is much higher.
26:06 · Yeah, yeah. Yeah. As D -Day drew nearer, the skies were frequently filled with thousands of parachutes of different
26:14 · colors, practicing dropping personnel and supplies. And the villagers would race to collect the silk to make underwear.
26:24 · Once they'd done their training, they needed to make five jumps from a C-47 to get their
26:32 · wings. And they would come from Chilton Foliat. They'd be brought up here by a truck.
26:37 · They'd get in a C-47, C-47 to take off, drop them in a field behind the house at Chilton Foliat.
26:44 · They'd land, dash back to the parachute sheds, grab another parachute, jump on the truck, come back up here to Ramsbury, get in another C-47, and
26:53 · they'd tried, if they could, to get their five jumps in in one day. And as their training came to an end, Winston Churchill and General Eisenhower were treated
27:03 · to an impressive display of Airborne's potential.
27:09 · Back on site, and John and Adam have completed their surveys.
27:17 · In this area, we're getting these really clear, very strong responses.
27:23 · Now, those are either foundations of brick structures or maybe iron pads on the floor.
27:31 · They look quite modern. They're not sort of archaeological as such.
27:36 · So these could easily relate to something, you know, to do with the encampment.
27:42 · But when you look at your plan, there's nothing in that area. That's the limit of the Nissen huts, isn't it, in red.
27:50 · And this is the area where these responses are showing.
27:56 · So that's the first point of interest. The second point is, coming back into the field we're standing in now, that's the limit
28:05 · of the tents. Yeah, there's a tent bases, concrete tent bases. Well, there's the limit.
28:12 · We've clearly got similar strong responses this side of the goalpost,
28:19 · suggesting two or three structures there as well. So they're not marked on the plan, and that's not marked.
28:26 · What do you make of that then Richard? That's intriguing isn't it? With the air photographs from where we've taken these huts in 1946 does that mean there
28:36 · are earliest structures pre-1946 that aren't on that photograph that correspond with your elements or is it something later?
28:42 · I think we'll have to have a look at that. As far as accommodation was concerned you had the gloriousness of the Tudor mansion
28:49 · and the grimness of the Nissen huts, but halfway between were these.
28:56 · There were a lot of stables which had originally housed racehorses which were around the back
29:01 · of the officers mess. This one's been moved here now just to preserve it and these were David Webster's favourite
29:09 · place on the whole site. You can understand why can't you? There's a real haven compared with the madness of what was going on everywhere else.
29:20 · I lived in many places in the army but none were quite as enjoyable as those box stalls
29:27 · in Aldbourne. Perhaps this was because I had a craving for privacy that they alone satisfied or perhaps
29:35 · it was Freudian, the love of a small warm dark place in which I could curl up and hide.
29:41 · I don't know. Whatever the subconscious reason, if any, there were many more tangible things to recommend
29:49 · the stables to soldiers. Where else may I ask could one share in the rich spoils of the officer's mess with a small select company
29:58 · of three instead of a greedy barracks of sixty?
30:04 · The stables were dismantled piece by piece and moved from their original location partly
30:10 · to Littlecote Manor and partly to the Currahee Military Museum in Toccoa. Following on from the TV series, there was massive interest in the guys of
30:20 · Easy Company and tours were set up to follow in their footsteps. They turned up here, found out that the stables were gonna be demolished.
30:30 · So, a hasty plan of action was formulated. My father, myself, our two friends, Sam and Tim, we carefully dismantled them.
30:38 · They were shipped up to Brize Norton, flown over to Toccoa. And yeah, we followed on, the four of us.
30:45 · We carefully put it all back together again and it now forms the major exhibit in the Currahee Military Museum in Toccoa, Georgia.
30:53 · For the vast majority of the men of Second Battalion, the Nissen huts we're excavating
30:59 · were home as they waited with mounting impatience to find out where and when they were going
31:06 · to be deployed. The latrines were second only to the Red Cross Hut as a social centre where gossip was exchanged.
31:13 · Rumors sprang fully grown from the honey buckets. An F company rifleman might come in with a copy of the Daily Mail,
31:21 · read it, use pages one and two, and pass the remainder to his neighbour, a mortarman from
31:27 · Headquarters Company, along with a rumour that the outfit was going to Italy.
31:34 · By the end of day two, we're just beginning to see the Nissen huts emerging as we try to build up a picture of life in the camp for the American servicemen.
31:43 · Six days left to see what else the band of brothers left behind for us to find.
31:57 · If you want us to investigate more sites, you can make it happen. So help us reach 10 ,000 members on Patreon.
32:17 · Day three is underway, and there are now tangible signs of Easy company's Nissen hut in trench one, as well as what now appears to be a motorbike wheel.
32:28 · Now, it may look to you as though we've kept this
32:37 · whole field really nice and respectable, lovely, wide -eyed school children looking at it,
32:42 · but over here, it's just like a dodgy music festival, isn't it? You've got all these tents and vans, that's the tent belonging to our cameraman, Steve.
32:53 · Hello, mate. There's the shower tent. This one belongs to Kerry.
33:00 · And over here, this is the office, hi, Karen, and sort of kitchen thing there, but this
33:07 · is the big deal. Matt actually owns this. He must be making a fortune, mustn't he?
33:12 · It's also where we do the sound recording. Hi, Matt, you in here? Tony!
33:18 · Lovely motor. Thank you, you made it, how are you? All right.
33:24 · Richard. Hello, Matt. Good morning.
33:30 · Trench one is looking great. What's the plan for today, then? Well, I suppose the bottom line is to find our hut, but where Pat's working here,
33:37 · he's got the tar paper with the waterproofing layer at the bottom of the huts that we're looking for, the Nissen hut, and it's also with the motorbike wheel.
33:46 · The idea is really to clean this up, get it photographed and then join them together, if we can, and make sure that the tar paper continues along, and then we've really got
33:53 · the outline of our hut in this trench. Right. And you've had some great finds out of here, haven't you? Yeah, we have.
33:59 · We've had really, really quite exciting things that link us to exactly what we're looking for, really.
34:05 · So we start off with this sort of prosaic thing, it's an ointment tube, but remember these guys aren't fighting all the time or training all the time.
34:12 · that they have their kind of medical conditions That, you know, everyone would have you put 16 people in a hut, there's chance of this sort of thing spreading so one of those. And
34:20 · then we're getting into the into the soldiers themselves, which is obviously what we want to be finding and you remember in there and the first day I was talking about little horseshoes
34:28 · at the bottom of boots, that people do bring bring them in as muleshoes or something, but they are their military issue boots. And that's the the heel
34:36 · plate of a military boot. So one of those there probably will be more of these actually I'd expect to find more
34:42 · So that's great, but what we really want is to find the Americans And I think this is probably our our first really good glimpse of the Americans good
34:51 · a leather strap and a buckle. Oh, yeah, look at that. And there's writing on there. What does it say? They're down the bottom there.
34:57 · It's a Prov. RO, all right. All right, and at the top RAUF. CO. Yeah, so that's the company name and Prov.
35:05 · R. I providence Rhode Island. Ah, so that's definitely American. 100% American, this is a definite trace of Americans and
35:11 · add to two of these on each boot. So all sorts of bits and pieces actually isn't another thing that the parts just just found it's going from your holding it. But you know
35:20 · what that is it did Richard So this is the equivalent to the modern-day cleaning rod. Attach a string on one end and you put your patch To run through the barrel you pull
35:30 · it through and it cleans out the the barrel and I believe it's from the M1 Garand it's
35:36 · an American cleaning kid is a rifle brilliant So that connects us to our our paratroopers really well. Nice find, this find gives us a nice link to Forrest Guth pictured outside
35:47 · this very hut, Guth became the armorer for his comrades and could adapt an M1 rifle to
35:53 · become fully automatic. Guth adapted his uniform to carry all the equipment
35:59 · he needed by sewing on extra pockets. On the other side of the field the teams revealed
36:06 · more of the Nissen hut that Fox company occupied. Here we've got as you can see we've got brick
36:14 · foundations. Coming that we're actually at the back of the hut unless there you can see the here there's one of the back entrance here.
36:21 · We're running along the wall here and running along the wall here. And have you got any evidence for the floor in here yet?
36:27 · At the moment, no. We've come down onto sort of like this gravelly clinker. We think it's like a sub-base at the moment, which is in here.
36:35 · At the moment, we're digging down onto that as the first stage. So why is this base made of brick and the other one concrete?
36:43 · So the only reason we can think about and the moment about why there is the difference
36:49 · is that it was done in two phases of construction. Potentially, this was done in one, and then the second phase over on the other side.
36:57 · It could be that this was done, first of all, and that the reason that there isn't the same build is two things.
37:03 · One, lack of material, and two, time. And, as if by magic, the first signs of a floor surface appear.
37:11 · Oh, yeah, found a bit of concrete as well, of the floor in.
37:16 · So that's quite interesting. In trench one, it's time to lift the wheel carefully to try
37:22 · to identify it. Wow. Look at that.
37:28 · Well, this is why I love archaeology.
37:36 · Come to Aldbourne, looking for the Nissen huts.
37:41 · We've got the concrete floors, we've got the geophysics, we've got the aerial photographs, day three, and we found a motorbike wheel.
37:52 · The wheel looks very like the ones you find on M1 machine gun carts. And to add to this, a sign was donated to the Heritage Centre made from a box that's
38:03 · stored, you've guessed it, M1 machine gun carts. And underneath the wheel is something that takes me back to the dodgy sandwiches from
38:13 · my childhood. Shipham's. Shipham's, which could well be for fish or meat paste.
38:22 · Sounds like it, doesn't it? So what we've got for dinner then? Well, what I thought I'd introduce you to is the K -Ration,
38:29 · which is what the American soldiers doing the Second World War would have got either in the field or on exercise.
38:36 · It may be used as a waterproof container for matches, cigarettes and other items. Wouldn't say that nowadays, would it?
38:42 · No, it wouldn't. For security, hide the empty can and wrappers so they can't be seen. Well, that would be if you go and leave your rubbish all over the place, the enemy's going
38:50 · to know where you've been and where you are. Yeah, it does make sense, doesn't it? Right, let's have a look and see what's inside.
38:56 · Yummy, yummy, yummy. What's that? Box of tissues. Oh, I don't know what it is.
39:02 · Kerry's filled the box with modern equivalents of the K-Rations the men would have had to survive on.
39:08 · Oh, a couple of nice fags. Cool, I haven't had a fag for a while. Well, every ration pack has a packet of cigarettes
39:17 · in it. This is what, this is sugar, is it? Sugar, yep.
39:22 · And this one is instant coffee, very nice, yep.
39:27 · Oh, what are these? Okay, I'll open for you.
39:33 · There you go. Lovely. Chewing gum.
39:40 · Chewing gum, yep, because you wouldn't have a toothbrush unnecessarily, you can clean
39:50 · your teeth with a gum. Little bit of cheese, very nice.
39:55 · A bit more cheese and that's my main course, That's hot or cold but that's a ham and egg
40:04 · or spam in there. Well I like a bit of spam. I think tonight I'll just go for the cheese option.
40:14 · How many calories do you reckon there are in this little lot?
40:20 · There's about 2 ,800 calories in all three meals for the day. So you get three of these? You get three of these, one for breakfast, one for dinner and one for supper.
40:28 · The trouble is the calories were worked out for an average working man. They're not worked out for a man who's going to be jumping out of an aircraft running around
40:36 · the countryside being shot at. So there weren't enough calories. Whereas today's modern soldier, their ration packs have about 4 ,200 calories in there.
40:45 · So at least you can stay fit whereas with these you're going to lose weight and lose
40:51 · energy. Although I have to say that none of the things that are here match what I would like best
41:00 · which I know they used to have. What's that? Lardy cake. We did have some, it's all gone.
41:06 · I'll just stick to the cheese. Food, drink and how to get it clearly occupied the minds of the men here.
41:14 · Webster describes KP in the officer's mess at Hightown as a pleasure and a privilege
41:20 · as well as a source of loot for many a squad feast. Most of all we liked the easy access to fresh butter,
41:27 · fruit cocktail and sliced pineapples stored in the cool stone cellar below the kitchen.
41:33 · There was a fist sized hole in the cellar's window screen and when none of the cooks were watching we could slip a can or two through it into the long grass outside where it remained
41:44 · hidden until quitting time. Back in trench one and you never know quite what you're going to find when you're looking
41:54 · for a Nissen hut. Matt, Richard, what have you got there? What do you think of that?
41:59 · It seems to have most of the vindicative bits doesn't it? It does look like it's been struck which can make this a lot earlier than our band of brothers.
42:07 · I don't think they're using flintlocks or anything are they? So it's got all the bits we need but we'll have a look at that later but I think it's
42:13 · a bit of prehistory to go with the second world war but I think we've got the edges of the hut. Let's roll forward a few thousand years.
42:19 · What have you got in this trench here? It's coming, you've got this sort of yellow layer here and then there's a very very dark
42:27 · band which has got bits of iron. Can you see that there? There's a little bit of what I think is going to be tar paper, that black flecking there
42:35 · and then on this side we're back to the yellow. Right, OK, so what is this dark line then?
42:40 · Well, it's a good question. This is where we're expecting to see the Nissen hut edges but I'm wondering whether there's
42:47 · some sort of drainage gully at the edges of it. It sort of makes sense, you know, water running down this semi -circle
42:54 · of corrugated iron it's going to be quite swampy at the edge. So is there some sort of drainage system? Well, I think the idea for me now is to clean it up to get the line coming back and then
43:05 · once we've got the extent of the hut exposed then maybe we can put a slot across it and
43:11 · see if we have got a drainage gully associated with the hut. I'll grab a mattock. Excellent, thank you Matt. And give it to you.
43:18 · There's one here. It's believed that the huts were originally built by British soldiers stationed here before
43:25 · the US paratroopers arrived. You found something, Mark? Yeah, just like that, Richard.
43:30 · Not entirely sure. The crown is their training corps. So I have no idea when they were founded but it's quite nice.
43:37 · It's a young person's organisation. Yes, absolutely. So I've got regular British military here, regular American and maybe quite an early
43:44 · young person's military presence. Yeah, that's nice. That's a good find.
43:50 · Well, it's our first military badge. Let's find some more. Cheers.
43:56 · Nice one. Thank you, Mark. Thank you. The British had been at war for five years when the Americans arrived and they found
44:04 · a country that not only bore the scars but was also very different culturally.
44:10 · And to avoid unnecessary friction, the authorities came up with their coming plan.
44:18 · This is instructions for American servicemen in Britain in 1942. 1942.
44:24 · If Britons sit in trains or buses without striking up a conversation with you, it doesn't
44:30 · mean they're being haughty and unfriendly. Probably they're paying you more attention than you think, but they don't speak to you because they don't want to appear intrusive or rude.
44:41 · Another difference. The British have phrases and colloquialisms of their own that may sound funny to you.
44:49 · Ominous, isn't it, with this thunder going? So, ominous things.
44:54 · It isn't a good idea to say bloody in mixed company in Britain. It's one of their very worst swear words.
45:03 · To say I look like a bum is offensive to their ears because for the British, this means that
45:12 · you look like your own backside. That's a good tip, isn't it?
45:19 · The British don't know how to make a good cup of coffee. That's very true and you don't know how to make a good cup of tea.
45:26 · It's an even swap. Fair enough. Yes, fair enough. We'll meet in the middle on that one. Well, exactly, yeah.
45:32 · I think that kind of summarises the British -American relationship there, doesn't it, in the war.
45:38 · Do you think this would have been any use to you when you came over for the first time you came to Britain?
45:43 · Yes, it's a must read. You've seen the post pad? You've seen the post pad? Let's see.
45:49 · By the afternoon of day three we've finally got the first signs of the post pads.
45:54 · Debating it. They've got the similar story there with the line coming along, but just there, you've
46:00 · got the post pad. That's the first one we wanted to find a few more,
46:06 · but that's good. Is there any spiking or anything like that? No, we haven't had a spike yet. No, no. There are quick news probably damaged when it was knocked down.
46:17 · Great news. It's the first structural evidence in the ground of the Nissen hut, which Forrest Guth
46:23 · was pictured in front of 80 years ago. We haven't found any post pads on the other side,
46:28 · but Richard has borrowed Matt's tent pegs to mark out where he's expecting them to run.
46:33 · Yeah, cool. Yeah, you can go straight that way. We'll carry on that way. Brilliant.
46:39 · Let's do that then. Right, I'll put the peg in here. On the edges up.
46:44 · And typically, it's not going to be that easy. I'm bending it.
46:51 · I'm ruining your pegs. Can you hit it with a mattock? I'll put the peg in after that.
47:00 · Yeah, just a bit of stuff off and hit it with a mattock. Oh. Oh. All right.
47:06 · You've got the trowel. That will be why it's not going anywhere. Have a furtle, see what I'm saying. Oh, right.
47:11 · This looks suspiciously concretey. Oh, look, is that a reinforcement?
47:16 · Oh, yeah. Oh, right. Well, what are the chances of that? So that would be why it's not on our line, isn't it?
47:25 · No. And that is, it looks to me at the moment, that that's in situ. That's a nicely laid thing.
47:31 · So maybe that does work quite well with your idea of it being a drainage gully. I see.
47:37 · So the corrugated sheet came down to here. Yeah. And this was the bottom inside. Yeah. I think that's probably what we got.
47:44 · Right. That's quite clear, isn't it? So we need to kind of get round there. Yes, and I'll find a new place to put them. I'll have those back after you before you bend them all.
47:50 · Thanks. There it is. At last, we've got post pads on both sides of the hut.
48:00 · And those all -important finds are coming up all over the place.
48:06 · Trying to find this one. Place those two together.
48:18 · What you have is you have a .308 rifle cartridge. These I recognise, these are the roof nails.
48:28 · The roof goes up and it helps the corrigan iron down. What else is there? You've got this, these are called dogs.
48:34 · They're used for joining timbers together. So that's our furnace and hut as well? Yep, yep, definitely.
48:39 · Drain, which we're looking at. And these, we'll have a go.
48:45 · Spam key. Spam key.
48:57 · Day four starts with Hilde looking for one of the structures John identified on the geophys,
49:03 · which wasn't visible on the aerial photographs. And in the test pit where we think the Red Cross hut stood,
49:13 · Ivan has spotted something of interest. What you got? It looks, it looks very much like a beer bottle.
49:21 · So look. Oh wow, wasn't this the recreation hut as well as the first aid place?
49:26 · Beer and recreation? It would be a bit wonderful wouldn't it? Be careful with it.
49:35 · Looking less like a beer bottle.
49:45 · Here we go. There's liquid in it as well.
49:52 · And the stopper's on the top. So could it be some kind of medicine instead of liniment or something?
49:59 · That's a liniment. But the stopper's still in as well. And I think it's probably best if we leave it that way.
50:05 · Give Richard a shout. A complete bottle though that's been in the ground for 70,
50:11 · nearly 80 years. So this bottle may have held some medicine used to treat the soldiers in the Red Cross
50:19 · hut. While the team continues, Matt has been retracing the steps of perhaps
50:25 · the most famous member of the easy company, Captain Dick Winters.
50:30 · So John, we're sitting on this bench here overlooking the churchyard in Aldbourne.
50:35 · And it's a very special bench. It is a special bench. It's a special bench to the memory of Dick Winters, Lieutenant Winters.
50:44 · It was his favourite place in the village. He would often come here whenever he wanted quiet.
50:55 · On the first morning when he came up the path here from past the church, he came across a couple who were attending an obviously new grave.
51:06 · The grave was that of their son, Leonard, who was an aircraftsman in the RAF.
51:12 · And he had been killed in a raid. They had buried him a few months before.
51:17 · And they came every morning to tend his grave and to sit here and remember him.
51:25 · They got talking and talking more deeply. And basically within an hour or so, that morning struck up a very deep friendship.
51:36 · But Winters fitted in just perfectly. He became a member of the family.
51:42 · He became a real member of the family. Almost to the extent of being a surrogate for Leonard.
51:50 · There were other close relationships forged with the villagers. Lieutenant Ronald Spears married Margaret Griffiths.
51:58 · And pictured in one of the wedding photos is Lieutenant Buck Compton, whose name we found carved into a tree.
52:08 · Two brothers who lived here in 1943 have affectionate memories of the soldiers and the camp.
52:15 · Colin, David, you were young boys. about seven when Easy Company came to this field.
52:21 · Tell us what it was like when they arrived. I remember all their manoeuvres and everything going on.
52:27 · I used to stand down at the end of the drive just up the road in our house and watch them
52:32 · march up and down in the southern land, go off to the manoeuvres up in the woods and things.
52:37 · And they'd come marching by and chuck sticks a chewing gum to me. And yes, for a young lad of six and seven, it was marvellous to see all the stuff going
52:48 · on. It sounds like a really, really busy time. The village must have really changed. But then, of course, suddenly they all disappeared.
52:55 · And my cousin of mine, Peter, who was the same age as me, used to come and stay.
53:01 · And we loved scouring all the round, finding all these things that had been discarded.
53:08 · And on the day that they all left for D-Day, we heard lots of goings on in the night.
53:16 · And we walked down in the morning, walked down the road here, came into the camp and
53:22 · everything was just left open. It just said people just walked straight out. Everything was just left there, you know, and there was live ammunition left
53:31 · on one of the tables and the hut was just up there. Do you think you actually went into any of these huts, then, that we've been helping
53:37 · Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah. So tell us a bit about Switzy here, this little monkey.
53:42 · Yes, well, as I said, he was given to me in 36 as a Jubilee present.
53:48 · And he had a, he was a proper chimpanzee. He didn't have clothes or anything.
53:55 · It was probably all with lots of hair and everything. But later on, he got these clothes.
54:03 · And whether that came at the same time, or that was sewn on after he had the jersey,
54:09 · but so Easy Company gave, gave that and the Airborne badge there,
54:17 · sewn on and they've been there ever since.
54:25 · Hilde's test pit, the somewhat disappointingly only produced a few tent pegs and nothing
54:31 · structural beyond the tent bases visible on the aerial photos.
54:36 · But despite multiple rain interruptions, we've managed to get a clear idea of the structure
54:43 · of Easy's Nissen hut. Well we've had a bit of rain this afternoon so. And by the look of it you've got the tar paper, that should be waterproofing there, but the
54:51 · key thing is getting the building on the inside and by the looks of it you're getting that too. Yep, we've definitely got the pads going towards the back but unfortunately towards the front
55:00 · they've been machined out while they've been levelling the playing field. So we've just got the faint sort of trace of where they were.
55:07 · So bits of the building are missing but are you getting any finds related to the building? 100% we are and obviously if you've got a Nissen hut you need a door,
55:15 · so we've got a bit of door hinge. Now you've got to find a door, that'd be really nice, you've got two options, the front door but that's been pulled over the way as you say, you can't sort the back?
55:24 · Well you never know, we'll be excavating through there so you never know, we might find some evidence of it.
55:29 · Brilliant. And then the roof sheets, nails. That's a nail with a curved washer at the top because it's corrugated iron and that
55:38 · corresponds to the curve. And you found any more of those or was it just that one? Loads of them, loads of them. Obviously when they knocked it down they just ripped them out, threw them on the ground
55:45 · and they went into this ditch. Great, so we can follow that wall, get the rest of the pads, same on the other side so we've got the four dimensions and then maybe the back.
55:52 · Yep, hopefully the back and the one thing we're not sure, what should we do with the centre? The Geophysical Survey had a really strong reading in the middle and the veterans talk
56:01 · about these huts, there were 16 people in these eight bunk beds and the way they kept warm was a pot-bellied stove, now wouldn't that be nice if you had
56:08 · a pot-bellied stove in the middle of that? It will be. Big button reading. And some of the finds connect us directly to the smart young soldiers who made Aldbourne
56:17 · their home. Well we've also continued the metal detecting grid across the sports pitches and the last
56:23 · grid of the day turned up a lot of elements of Americana, and I think the key thing was
56:28 · this rather lovely button. Wow, that is beautiful You can see the American Eagle on it.
56:34 · It's a dress button It's got the the writing of the manufacturers on the back and that symbol appears behind pretty much every presidential speech today And that's such a thing.
56:42 · That's a really lovely find it shows our American soldiers in this field It'll clean up well, and it'll be a lovely find for the local museum.
56:49 · Yeah, that's an absolute star find It's some great results today. I think we've earned a drink in the pub I think we totally have it.
56:56 · I think we should do that right now. Let's go. The pubs in Aldbourne proved popular destinations for the men the officers tried
57:03 · to reserve the blue boar for themselves But according to Webster, neither the men nor the landlord were happy with this arrangement caused us to regard
57:13 · the imposition as a challenge and try to sneak in Wherever we could via the back door when
57:19 · the premises was occupied or the front door when the coast was clear Mr. Dady always welcomed us heartily.
57:26 · I believe he had been an enlisted man in the other one and always managed to save us a
57:32 · beer or a milk stout. Cheers. The half basement of the Crown pub was taken over as the company
57:55 · command post. Officially the liveliest spot in town. But the day of the Coronation of King
58:01 · Charles III It's a little bedraggled.
58:09 · This room here was where Dick Winter stayed when he was billeted with the Barnes family along with his friend Harry Wells.
58:15 · Now while they were here, all the soldiers loved the lardy cake, which they made in the village. But the best lardy cake came from here, and I'm going to pop inside, grab some, take it
58:26 · back to site. The lardy cake went some way to offset the chilly dampness of the English winter.
58:36 · Lardy cake is a heavy, sticky, coffee ring-like pastry that is very filling and far
58:42 · more appetizing than its name would imply. I'd hide it under my field jacket and smuggle it into camp for future reference.
58:52 · With the lardy cake safely stowed for later, Match Finds were continuing unabated.
58:57 · I thought that rain would stop play, but I've clearly underestimated your team.
59:03 · These are hardy military folk, these are revelling in it. This is good training whether this is, and they're really keen to keep on, and I think
59:10 · that's a good reflection of how actually exciting this trench is. So what can you do when it's raining like this? I think you've got to keep movements to a minimum because you can make a real mess,
59:19 · and also it's slippy, so it could be a bit dangerous. I think what we're trying to do is just expose to the level of the postpads,
59:25 · get the sections cleaned, and then hopefully when it stops raining, we'll be able to trowel it back and get that nice, flat, clean layer.
59:32 · Right, so is all systems going this trench, really? It really is, yeah, it really is. I want to resolve this as soon as possible, and then we can start finding things inside
59:39 · the hut. OK, well, I would offer to help, but I think we need some help in the finds tent, so I really better make my way. Very, very, very Webster of you.
59:45 · Well done. Thank you. That's iron. Are we in? Yeah, it's iron. All right.
59:51 · Being by no means an expert, part of the structure of the building, I suspect, but we'll give
59:56 · it a good clean, and we'll find out, but yeah, nice, really good find. I'm US Army.
1:00:02 · We have people here who's from the Navy and the Air Force. Being that this is easy company, I mean, me being a history fan,
1:00:09 · me and Mike, the other one who organized all of this, we just volunteered.
1:00:15 · We wanted to be out. out, we wanted to show face, and we can't just step past,
1:00:20 · you know, Band of Brothers kind of things. And I was telling people the other day, I went to the cemetery right next to Cambridge,
1:00:28 · and I actually found a really distant cousin of mine, unfortunately on the wall, the lost, not in the graveyard itself, but it was very nice
1:00:38 · to be able to commemorate, especially a member of our family over here. Despite the mud and all the rest of it, I just dragged out, literally five minutes
1:00:47 · ago, what looks like a spanner, and it probably is a spanner, and maybe it was one of the
1:00:53 · spanners that was used to build the huts that we now stood on. So, that's a nice little story, and when we clean it up, maybe we'll even find a maker's
1:01:00 · name on there. Last week I was in Normandy for a battle staff ride, so I got to see all that side of D -Day,
1:01:07 · and I got to go to all the battlefields and the bunkers and where all the beaches were,
1:01:13 · so that was kind of cool, so I'm getting a big loop of everything that has to do with the 101.
1:01:18 · So what do you think you've gained from your work here over the last few days? A whole lot of knowledge. I think that's the biggest thing that I've found is a methodology, getting to work with
1:01:28 · Richard Osgood, the team, Time Team, it's been great. I've learned basically how to handle yourself out here, what to do, what not to do, how
1:01:40 · to mark things down, how to document everything. It's been a tremendous learning experience. I can't wait to do it again.
1:01:46 · So I walked down the street the other day and I was talking to someone about the project and they actually got to meet Dick Winters twice in the early 2000s,
1:01:56 · and so we talked about that for a good half hour. You alright, Pat? What have you got there?
1:02:01 · Just dug up an old pocketknife. Oh, that's brilliant. Yeah, definitely a pocketknife. Can you see the blades in there and the little hoop?
1:02:08 · Tie it off too. Yeah, it looks like it might be a bone handle as well. That's an absolute brilliant find.
1:02:13 · Yeah, maybe there'll be an inscription or something on there somewhere. Possibly, yeah, yeah. We'll get that cleaned up and we'll have a good look at it.
1:02:20 · Some of the finds that we're getting are surprising the experts. I don't think we expected to find as much ammunition as we have.
1:02:28 · This example here is a standard American .30 .06 round.
1:02:33 · So it was used in the rifles and machine guns. As you can see, it's un -fired, but in fact, it's completely empty because it's just completely
1:02:41 · broken up. That would have been fitted into something like this. This is an eight-round Garand clip for an M1 Garand rifle,
1:02:49 · which was the standard rifle that the 506 Parachute Infantry guys would have used.
1:02:55 · So we've also found some of the clips as well. We found a number of these. And as you can see, that's actually in surprisingly good condition,
1:03:02 · but very easy to see the two together there. So they were obviously firing live ammunition, practicing with live ammunition.
1:03:09 · And we've also found quite a few of these blanks. So blank ammunition is used to simulate gunfire.
1:03:15 · So when you fire it, it makes a loud report, but there's no bullet. So you can use it for fire and manoeuvre and there's no risk in terms of shooting your
1:03:24 · fellow soldiers. So that's what they would have used if they were training around the village and outside in the landscape.
1:03:30 · That's right, that's right. And traditionally, that's what you start training with before you go on to live ammunition. Somewhat surprisingly, we found some bigger ammunition.
1:03:38 · So heavy machine gun ammunition, 0 .50 Browning, which is a bit of an enigma at the moment
1:03:44 · because they didn't use the 0 .50 Browning because it's a massive machine gun and it wasn't possible to airdrop it.
1:03:50 · And some of the more unusual stuff that we really didn't expect to find is items such
1:03:55 · as this. So as you can see, this is very badly degraded, but it's actually a German rifle round.
1:04:01 · Right. Why on earth would a German rifle round be in this camp? Well, they trained, they were introduced to enemy weapons.
1:04:08 · So they had weapons familiarization training. So when they landed in Europe, they were able to use weapons should they need to.
1:04:17 · Right, OK, so that's come from the German side. It's been captured or found and taken back here for training purposes.
1:04:23 · That's right, yeah. And another interesting item related to this. So this piece of curled up rust here, and it's actually a part of a German machine gun
1:04:32 · belt link, which you could link together. And they were firing through German machine guns. After a soggy start to the day, the moment Matt's been waiting for, lardy cake.
1:04:47 · That is really good. It's kind of crunchy on the outside, super soft on the inside, raisins, and a good smear
1:04:57 · of lard on the bottom there. I think it really gives it, you know, the, really pushes it over the line in the world
1:05:06 · of cakes. I highly recommend the local lardy cake. And it seems to be going down pretty well with the team.
1:05:16 · Okay, I can see the hype.
1:05:22 · All right, I get it.
1:05:29 · Work stops only briefly to watch the Coronation of King Charles III. Wait, does she have her crown yet or not?
1:05:38 · No, yeah. To actually be here, I mean, that is something phenomenal. And to see all of the ceremony that's involved, that's something special because we don't
1:05:48 · have anything quite as ancient in our culture over in the United States.
1:06:03 · Popular myth holds that the cockerel on the church was replaced because the old one was
1:06:08 · used as target practice in 1944. Mark, this is the weather vane that was on top of the church tower in Aldbourne in the
1:06:17 · 1940s. And there's a bit of a mystery behind it, isn't there? There's what appears to be a bullet hole.
1:06:23 · Well, I think it's perfectly plausible. If we take this standard rifle round, if we look at it as a stripe from the front, it's
1:06:29 · slightly larger. But if we take it as a potential strike from a slight angle,
1:06:34 · I think it's perfectly plausible. If you have a look at the back, spin it round a bit. There you go, grab that.
1:06:42 · Yeah, and if we were looking at a penetrating bullet strike, we can see here that in fact it looks very much like it, because if this is the rear,
1:06:50 · you can see where the paint has flaked off, which is typical of what we'd expect on the
1:06:55 · reverse of something that's been hit from the front, and that's the back. So this could have been hit by someone from Airborne 101 as they practiced for D -Day?
1:07:06 · I think they certainly could, or somebody making a bet. Yeah, or someone just having a bit of fun. Having a bit of fun, and if it was a good shot, they'd hit it.
1:07:15 · It's coronation day, 5th of May 2023, and what an amazing day we've had.
1:07:21 · We're out on the green in Aldbourne. There must be 200, 300 people out here.
1:07:28 · The beacon is going behind me, pretty much. The flames are going, it's certainly smoking, there's some live
1:07:34 · music starting. What a perfect end to a fantastic day.
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1:10:00 · Stewart has also joined the team to scour the landscape for evidence of where Easy Company
1:10:06 · conducted their training. Local landowner, Ben Lawton, wants to show him some more tree carvings he's found in the
1:10:13 · woods. Right, so we've got CL SC USA. I know what USA is likely to be, what about those?
1:10:25 · Well, it'd be brilliant if that was Carwood Lipton from South Carolina in the USA.
1:10:33 · Wouldn't that be nice if we could personalise that carving to this point in time to somebody
1:10:39 · in Easy Company? It would be brilliant, wouldn't it? Carwood Lipton was the jumpmaster of one of the C-47 Sky Trains that flew the paratroopers
1:10:47 · into Normandy. He was also one of the sergeants who turned in his stripes in support of Winters in the
1:10:53 · showdown with Sobel. As well as tree carvings, Ben thinks he's spotted the remains of foxholes in the woods.
1:11:02 · To the untrained eye, this might not look very much, but this rectangular depression
1:11:08 · in the ground here. It is a classic two-man foxhole, originally dig down into it with a trenching tool.
1:11:18 · Depth, I should say, of about five foot, maybe six foot. And two men could stand in here and almost be invisible in the landscape.
1:11:28 · You can see how the ground rises up behind me. This is the material that's come out of here, but it's not just dumped.
1:11:35 · It's actually part the architecture of this practice work. It's basically a defensive parapet, and it tells me that this was designed to
1:11:47 · face that way. And if you look through the hedge line there, can imagine attacking troops coming over there.
1:11:55 · They wouldn't see you. You're down here in the ground behind this parapet, but you've got a lovely skyline.
1:12:21 · But on
1:12:56 · the lidar, that would be that group of structures there,
1:13:26 · seen in
1:13:49 · the earthworks, can't we there?
1:13:56 · Yeah, OK, got that.
1:14:07 · Exactly. So what we've got is the documentary evidence saying that the users are a live firing range.
1:14:15 · They basically blew up the farmhouse. So you should be expected to find some evidence of those activities. How are you going to do that?
1:14:20 · What we're going to do is a metal detecting survey. Well, if you're going to stay here and do that,
1:14:26 · I'm going off on a bit of a wander because I saw some interesting things on the lidar in the woods I want to take a look at.
1:14:34 · Stewart thinks he can see a line of foxholes running along the edge of the woods.
1:14:42 · This is really, really interesting. This is a really well preserved example of a foxhole.
1:14:49 · Although the pit behind where the trench would have been dug is now in filled with leaves
1:14:56 · and rotting vegetation, the protective bank that they throw up around
1:15:01 · it is extremely well preserved.
1:15:07 · About 40 meters further down from the foxhole I've just found is another foxhole,
1:15:13 · setting exactly the same position on the inside of the ditch line. That is quite a sizable parapet there.
1:15:19 · So you get some idea that this pit was probably about four or five feet deep at least.
1:15:25 · And again, the preservation is very good. The important thing is that these are the first two of the features I saw on the lidar.
1:15:35 · And they both are genuine World War II slip trenches.
1:15:43 · The metal detectorists are finding evidence of the military exercises below and above
1:15:49 · ground. It's a lovely M1 carbine.
1:15:55 · I think we might have found a bit of a grenade. This is a detonator group or a fuse from an American fragmentation grenade, okay Fantastic,
1:16:05 · yeah, yeah, and we can tell that because of its shape and form. They're very particular
1:16:10 · in how they're set up. So yeah, absolutely easy to ID, nice find.
1:16:18 · Yeah, thank you. So detecting on the training ground today, we've been looking to see if
1:16:24 · we've got evidence of what we knew the paratroopers were taken in with them. They had these which
1:16:30 · are the pineapple type of hand grenade with just two days left the team are feeling pretty
1:16:39 · happy with the way the digs progressing and in the evening, they gather around the campfire to discuss tactics for the final push. Aldbourne day seven
1:17:04 · and things are quite subdued here on the campsite I was up pretty early this morning,
1:17:09 · but judging by the remnants of this fire pit I think there were a few late nights, but that's fine.
1:17:14 · This dig isn't just about shifting soil and finding artifacts. It's about making friends.
1:17:20 · It's about the camaraderie and it's about enjoying yourself. Well, the rain is just about
1:17:26 · starting to set in now. But our valiant team have got their tools and I can see them moving
1:17:31 · over towards the trenches, so I should probably get going. Cassie is finishing up in her test
1:17:39 · pit on the path between the rows of huts. And you've got that big metal drum out because
1:17:50 · it isn't there anymore. Oh, right now. Fantastic, So it's a shame
1:17:58 · there's no label on it, is there, that we can actually see what it might have had in it. It's possible
1:18:03 · this might have been one of the braziers that provided a little warmth to the camp. Hopefully
1:18:08 · hopefully Yeah, that's yeah, that's everyone's question iron set into mortar with a rather
1:18:18 · curious shape cast into it. We had two last year and we still don't know what they are.
1:18:26 · One theory is that these strange objects might be rifle butt mounts.
1:18:32 · Richard I believe this is part of a beer bottle probably a bit too old to have come from last
1:18:37 · night's festivities but what can you tell us about it? I think we were having cans, I think we're in the clear on this one. The bottle itself is nothing significant really to it but the stopper actually has got some
1:18:47 · really nice historical information on it and you can see it's got writing on it and it says 'war grade'.
1:18:53 · War grade. Yeah, so by the time that this bottle is put together with the beer in it rubber
1:18:58 · is a really strategic resource it's an important material they're using it for things that help the war effort so things like aeroplane tyres really important that's where you're
1:19:07 · directing all your resources and the Japanese have captured lots of the rubber plantations by this point in the war and so it's quite a scarce material so
1:19:16 · they made it very clear that this may not be the highest quality of bottle stopper but there's a reason behind it and the other element with this is there isn't an American link
1:19:24 · because that resource being so precious really did encourage the Americans to come up with a synthetic alternative to to rubber because it's a material that they're all the war efforts
1:19:33 · across the global need. Right so we want it's a meter this way but we also want to get 1 .41 across the diagonal
1:19:39 · because that'll make it square. Carenza's is putting a test pit into one of the back gardens to look for some of the huts
1:19:45 · that are visible on the aerial photos. And we've got a curious find near the door of the Niseen hut in trench one.
1:19:58 · Right what have we got here then something coming up? Yeah we've got a glass bottle. Yeah we've got a lovely glass bottle just underneath there but just put a brush on the
1:20:07 · top just to stop any stones hitting it on the way down. Looks a bit like an old-school Orangina one.
1:20:13 · I was just thinking, yeah. Or a Pepsi bottle. A Sprite or something.
1:20:19 · Yeah, well, erm... Right, I'll let you do the honours, Jack. Thanks, mate.
1:20:27 · See if it moves first before you do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
1:20:32 · Are we taking it? Yeah. Ah! Hey! How's that top? Does it have some cracks there?
1:20:38 · The top looks amazing. No, that's... Oh, no, it's just... That's just roots. Roots. Oh, God.
1:20:44 · Is it... Is it corked? What's on the top? No, it's mud. There's mud. Is there writing on it?
1:20:50 · Yeah, there is. CBC. Once you are, it looks like.
1:20:56 · The bottle isn't the only find that's come out of the back of Easy Company's Nissen hut.
1:21:01 · You can see this bit of wood, and that is actually more like this coming out.
1:21:07 · We haven't found this before, but we think it's part of maybe the window or the doorframe,
1:21:13 · something like that. We also found this. This side is quite green, but that's just because it was laying on the ground.
1:21:19 · But that could have been part of a doorframe or something like that, some type of door fitting. And then, just recently, a little bit further along, we found this here.
1:21:29 · Oh, wow. Is that marmalade? It is. It's a marmalade top. It's sad, really, isn't it, that all those wonderful
1:21:36 · old buildings that were part of the history down there have been demolished long ago.
1:21:42 · Well, it would be if that was true, but it isn't quite because that is the original Red
1:21:48 · Cross building. Come and have a look. Steve. Oh, Tony.
1:21:53 · An awful lot of this is obviously fairly new, but some of it is the original, isn't it? Yes.
1:21:58 · The original iron framework, the corrugated sheets, that's original.
1:22:03 · You really get a sense of it, don't you? Oh, yeah, definitely. How come it was down there and then woofed by magic is here?
1:22:09 · Well, the building from, the local building from Lydia, they were charged with the dismantling and demolishing of the camp.
1:22:16 · Well, they saw this one being the biggest of the huts and thought, we can use this for ourselves.
1:22:21 · So in the 1950s when this all happened they dismantled it, moved it up here and it became their base of operations for for their building firm.
1:22:31 · The structure of this listen hut helps us understand what we're finding in the ground.
1:22:37 · Do you recognise that? These are the things that we've found on site that hold the exterior cladding on.
1:22:45 · That's what they would have looked like originally. But not all the huts were the same construction and Carenza thinks she's found evidence of
1:22:56 · something different in her test pit. We started off with the one test pit, we had no sign of anything there so we then
1:23:06 · decided we'd extend it into bigger area and as soon as we started widening that trench we found a post hole.
1:23:13 · But a post hole, not like we're used to on archaeological sites when you just get there. So this is a hole that has clearly had a timber post in it and then filled with concrete around
1:23:22 · so you can see the square outline of the timber post and we've even got a bit of the timber
1:23:27 · in the bottom with a couple of nuts and bolts on it still which is fantastic. So is this another Nissen hut?
1:23:33 · Well it's not the same design, some suggestion it might be a tar paper hut so that's where
1:23:38 · it's built of timber essentially and you've just got that tarmacked kind of you know black
1:23:44 · waxy oil stuff that you use through the flooring on the rest of it and you're just using that to do the walls. The Americans put them up and they were quicker to put up and you could get more people in
1:23:53 · them. It's another piece of the puzzle as we build up a picture of life in the camp but with
1:24:03 · just one day left and rain forecast everyone's anxious to get some results.
1:24:15 · Well first find of the day and we've got a watch. Wow look at that. We've popped it in a protective case but as you can see I thought at first it might might
1:24:24 · be a wrist compass, but on further inspection when it came out of the hole the back came off and as you can see we've got a very nice delicate watch mechanism
1:24:32 · there. It's a good thing because it allowed the the fines team to look at the back, perhaps maybe find a date, but one of the things I wanted you to see is just feel the
1:24:41 · weight of that. Well that's really got some weight to it hasn't it? Yeah, it doesn't feel like a cheap Timex.
1:24:46 · The other interesting thing, you'll notice that lovely green yellow patination there on the face.
1:24:51 · I think that might be a radiated paint. And that would have made the face luminous. Yeah, yeah, something we need to consider when we hand it into the finds tent and the
1:24:58 · team start to conserve it. We were in Penteco yesterday doing the survey and this came up.
1:25:04 · Can you let us know what it could be? It's the tail section of an anti-tank rocket.
1:25:11 · This is an inert practice example, but you can see this exactly the same for this one.
1:25:17 · Cassie, I hear you've had some success already this morning? Yeah, yeah, first find out this morning and it's going
1:25:23 · to be a good morning is this cap badge. Oh wow, that's amazing.
1:25:30 · So what badge is that then? Royal Engineers. It's got the cipher for Old King George in it, so almost certainly wartime.
1:25:39 · So Dan reckons he has heard that the Royal Engineers actually built the camp.
1:25:46 · So we might actually have the construction crew, which is really nice.
1:25:51 · Someone must have gotten into trouble for losing their badge though. I think so. I think so. It's even got the fastening plate on the back.
1:26:01 · So how have they managed to lose that? I don't know. There's a reason I worked on that for two days.
1:26:10 · And we can really see the outline of the Nissen huts the engineers built now that they're
1:26:18 · cleaned up. Tell me about these things over here. here. Well you can note all these little concrete squares and they're really significant because
1:26:25 · those are the postpads onto which this Nissen hut, the accommodation blocks sat. The semi-circles of corrugated iron would have sat on each of these concrete pads.
1:26:33 · They're missing in some area because the football pitch when it's graded away will have knocked them away. But we've got the rest of them so we can say the exact shape of the structure.
1:26:41 · And what's that little poking around here? The poking around, the little grovel here is in fact there is a darker stain running
1:26:48 · along here and that's the drainage channel. So you've got a rudimentary way of keeping the water logging away from the building and
1:26:54 · rain was always a problem with these things. They've cut a drainage channel and it's now filled with this detritus which is the remnants
1:27:00 · of the building. Oh I see, so actually this bit would have been outside of the building.
1:27:05 · Exactly, exactly that. So after all these years doing archeology you would have thought I wouldn't have assumed that the trench is actually the shape of the building.
1:27:12 · That's right, that's right. So the building starts there, there's the gully outside like you would have had in an
1:27:17 · Iron Age hut or a Saxon. I'm calling it our villa because it's a nice rectangular shape with fines in it.
1:27:23 · Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's go around the corner, shall we? There's another pad here. The pads at the end are really big.
1:27:30 · The corner ones especially because that's the load bearing element. This is the final bit, the end of the building and between these
1:27:37 · two is where the back door ran. We're getting lots of fines connected with the back of the building with window glass
1:27:43 · and roof nails and tar paper to make it waterproof. So all the things you'd hope from a construction layer and that represents basically the clearance
1:27:51 · in the 1950s after the soldiers and indeed the locals had moved out. What about around the other side?
1:27:57 · Yeah, it's replicating the same sort of thing. Another drainage channel going along and you can see we've got more of the postpads here.
1:28:03 · Having a good time here, boys? It's brilliant. Cor, look at that, that looks interesting.
1:28:09 · Well this is the tar paper that would have hopefully made this a bit more habitable. It's the waterproof membrane.
1:28:14 · You see, it's quite a thick old thing. Where'd you stick it? You stick it between the corrugated sheets, so it's like an underlayer, effectively, to
1:28:22 · stop the rain getting through, and hopefully making this place watertight for the 16 soldiers
1:28:28 · that would have been in this. And they do complain about how cold this place was. They had a pot-bellied stove to keep them warm, but they've got little mattresses that
1:28:34 · they fill with local straw. You can imagine the privations of sleeping in something like this. It's like my tent, Tony, to be honest.
1:28:40 · Really cold. Well, the officers are up in the posh house, like I am. While you're in the tent!
1:28:46 · See, that's rank, Tony, that's rank. And it's still there, isn't it? They're no escaping it. There was a hut under there, wasn't there?
1:28:52 · Yeah, there was a really significant hut under this. We excavated this a few years ago, and this was the structure that was used, we think,
1:29:00 · by the sergeants and the non-commissioned officers of Easy Company. Oh, so is this where the photo, the famous photo was taken?
1:29:06 · That's the photo with Carwood Lipton, that the guy involved with the supposed mutiny against Sobel, lived just here, underneath these turfs, Tony.
1:29:13 · So he's outside here somewhere, isn't he? Outside with his platoon. And you can locate it precisely.
1:29:18 · We've excavated it. It's fairly similar to that, but a really important historic moment, especially for Easy Company, took place just here.
1:29:24 · How many lads would have been camped around here? Probably around 600, I mean, that's a huge number of people.
1:29:30 · 600? 600 in a really small field. Yeah, it must have been a very intense living here amongst so many men.
1:29:36 · So you've got a brick foundation here, and these are basically replicating the concrete
1:29:42 · postpads that you saw over the other side. Any finds? There's been a few. You've got the roof nails from this thing, but actually, in past years, we found two
1:29:50 · dog tags around here, one of which was Able Company, and one was Easy Company. And I think that basically reflects the fact that when they came back from Normandy, they
1:29:59 · were so depleted in terms of numbers that... They forgot about just keeping one company over there and another company here.
1:30:05 · It was all just mixed because there were far less people. I think that's it. I think they've had to put it all together and just that reflects the fact that there
1:30:10 · were so many casualties on D -Day. Which is quite... It's pointless, isn't it? It is quite a powerful thing.
1:30:17 · Our 3D graphics team, led by Danny, who's also a veteran, have been able to put together
1:30:23 · a reconstruction of how the field might have looked 80 years ago and if the weather was
1:30:29 · anything like it is today it would have stood them in good stead for the conditions in Europe
1:30:36 · we've had to stop filming because it's a hail storm a huge hail storm it's time to...
1:30:46 · The men in the camp had no idea when they were going to be called on or what exactly
1:30:53 · their mission was to be but a spring turn to summer it became obvious that their date
1:30:59 · with destiny was on. Cases and cases of artillery ammunition appeared as if by magic
1:31:06 · in the woods and vacant lots along the highways, and on May 28th just as I was dressing for
1:31:12 · another pass to London the telephone jangled in the company headquarters. Non-coms rushed to the CPs and the news was out.
1:31:23 · Janine has been sorting through the extraordinary collection of finds that we've unearthed from
1:31:29 · the field and has picked out a few that speak to her.
1:31:35 · This has survived well hasn't it? Where did you find it? This was found in trench one or the boys found it, in trench one right near the knife and
1:31:43 · it's a piece of paracord from the parachute so it survived really really well and it goes
1:31:48 · nicely with the parachute we found in 2019 and the reserve pull from the parachute.
1:31:53 · One more thing I'm not going to pick this one up I just touched that. Do we know what that is? This is when there was a set of boots issued 43 -44 for the Americans and this is the eyelets
1:32:05 · for the boot they had two buckles that went across the top there and this buckle went across like this way and this was the eyelets that attached to the buckle so you could tighten
1:32:14 · it or loosen it depending on how fat your ankle was I guess so yeah and these actually
1:32:19 · made in Providence, Rhode Island because they're nicely stamped on one of the sides here. We've also found, which is quite cool, we found this buckle and we didn't quite know
1:32:28 · where it was from. But when the helmets came, I'll do a bit of show and tell, on the inside here, on the
1:32:36 · back rear... Identical. It's from the M1 helmet. Oh, that's good, isn't it?
1:32:42 · Yeah, it's great. So it sort of shows up nicely. And you can sort of fit everything in with context about where it's all from.
1:32:49 · Oh, wow. This is really heavy, isn't it? It is some weight, but just imagine jumping out of an airplane, holding something like
1:32:56 · that and all the rest of your weaponry and your equipment and then having to fight the Germans at the end of it all.
1:33:02 · On May the 30th, Webster and the men drew their full quota
1:33:07 · of ammunition, left these fields and moved on to Uppotteries in Devon to be dropped
1:33:13 · into battle. Webster's description of the moment that they all left on their way to D -Day is really
1:33:22 · beautiful. These were young men who didn't know whether they would ever come back here or whether
1:33:27 · they'd even survive. There were many tears.
1:33:33 · Good luck and God bless you. The people called as we drove through the dappled sunlight to keep a midnight rendezvous
1:33:40 · with the Germans in the green fields of Europe.
1:33:57 · And 80 years on, as our time in Aldbourne also comes to an end,
1:34:03 · the team gathers to pay tribute to the men who came before us, and we leave with the
1:34:10 · words of Webster etched into our memories. I think of Aldbourne in nostalgic moments.
1:34:17 · I close my eyes and see the village green sloping away from the church.
1:34:22 · A paratrooper's ghost stands guard at the gate to the officer's mess.
1:34:28 · His overcoat is buttoned to the chin. The caller turned up against the cold.
1:34:33 · He snaps to attention and gives a rifle salute to the officers killed in action,
1:34:39 · who walk briskly by on frost -white and cobblestones on their way home from a party at their mess.
1:34:46 · The clock in the ancient belfry winds up and begins to strike midnight, and the sound of hurrying footsteps comes up the lane from the Hungerford road.
1:34:57 · The guard tingles. Here's the relief.
1:35:03 · The clock strikers 12, the guard vanishes. The officers are dead.
1:35:08 · Horses whiny in the box stalls, where the soldiers slept.
1:35:14 · Aldbourne sleeps. The 506th, a memory.

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