"Finding The Fallen"

[ianw]

This was an excellent series of programmes presented en masse on Discovery Channel yesterday.

I thought the best show was the 1915 Loos programme which majored on the ID of the young musician from Munich. Very Moving. On a negative note , some of the Loos excavations were grave robbed overnight by some low-life scumbags.

The team then let their enthusiasm completely run away with them when they found the name "England" on a watch strap and tracked down a young officer casualty of that name. They finally showed the watch to the great nephew of the man concerned. However, at the end of the show, a watch expert deflated the whole thing when he confirmed that straps often had "Made in England " stamped on them. Good to see experts fooled just as easily as the rest of us amateurs.

Much good stuff in these shows though.

[Max Poilu]

Ian, you might find this topic interesting - from when it was first aired:

'Finding the Fallen', Oh dear....

[steve fuller]

I remember those! Just goes to show how easy it is to run with an assumption in completely the wrong direction, even when you're an expert doesnt it?

As for the grave robbers, I hope they choked on the beer they bought with the measely few quid they squeezed from the trinkets. Any further comment is likely to be censored (probably rightly so too!) so Ill leave it there ...

All in all, a pretty good series which gladly goes some way to raising the profile of WW1 soldiers & how important it is to remember them.

[Guest KevinEndon]

These so called professionals were in many occasions dreadful, wrecking archaeology many times. They dug away with a digger removing pieces of human remains, they burst iodine capsules that were intact and it was only by luck that there were a lot there and some were intact as the presenter said it was his dream to find one of these full. Maybe they should send in the “Time Team”.

However wouldn’t it have been nice if the grave robbers were blown to bits with the shell that they left behind, as said before they are total scum bags.

A brilliant look into the past and a small glimpse of what life was like for all sides in what can only be described as hell on earth.