It's actually pretty amazing to think taking the same route as Joseph would
have been a hundred years ago exactly more or less we would have been
leaving the Belgium France border headed to the psalm which is where I'm I'm now
on the way to to prepare for battle he must have been absolutely terrified
Sheryl's meeting battlefield guide paul reed outside the village of chemo my
great-grandfather was on the boat in France border also I don't know what he
did when he left there and came here for battle and I have was hoping you could
help me with the rest sure well he would have marched down to the psalm
so when you see March though you don't mean like March yeah yeah then when they
march down from from from Belgium where you've come from
they literally marched they marched for an hour at a time I was living for days
yeah days it was taking days to get down here and when he got here the Battle of
the Somme was two months old so they've been fighting in that direction in the
beginning of the battle in July and over two months gradually that pushed the
Germans back to a point where the artillery had smashed this landscape to
pieces it was just a lunar landscape I mean when you look at photographs like
these that show you the utter devastation of this area that's this is
the village of Guillemot that we're standing close to now as you can see
there's just nothing left everything's destroyed by occupying Jima the Germans
were able to prevent the British and French frontlines from advancing
together the British had already launched three
failed attempts to take the village at a cost of thousands of lives
now Joseph battalion were ordered to prepare the ground for one final push
his battalion came from the edge of the ward over there towards here and they
were coming forward to dig advanced trenches here so there's a shorter
distance for the last move out across open ground so that meant for him he was
then exposed himself standing digging a trench in the open to enable others to
get cover so that's massive responsibility huge
job it is so on the 3rd of September 1916 his battalion was involved in an
attack across this ground from the edge of the ward across what is now these
wheat fields look very innocent today but of course in 1916 these were killing
grounds with the Germans dug in here with machine guns as his battalion
advanced Joseph had to march over ground littered with the dead from previous
battles and the resistance he faced when they
reached the German defenses was ferocious
after a bitter struggle the British captured chemo at a cost of almost 2,000
casualties but there was no rest for Joseph and the pioneers his job was to
assist in defending this village because once you captured it the Germans would
attack and try and take it back again Hey so you needed to put up defenses
barbed wire to stop them getting back in build machine gun positions shelters for
the infantry and the officers and so on so he's out there doing all that the
Pioneers stayed there for days and days doing the work there's a task really
that never ends here and they're exposed very exposed it's a brave man brave man
yeah so in the fighting he lost some of their leaders so your great-grandfather
were suddenly promoted given promotion to Lance Corporal that's one stripe on
these on his uniform he would have had to have proven himself and worked hard
to do so and and I find I find it really actually quite lovely under the
circumstances I'm really proud of him actually it was surreal to think that
we're stood here like 100 years later with the luxuries we now have because of
their sacrifice exactly exactly I mean the Great War is one of those things
that's it's about ordinary people like your great-grandfather in extraordinary
circumstances when we look at the you know battlefield like this 100 years
later I mean it looks to all intents and purposes as if it's recovered but the
reality is it's never really recovered human remains are still uncovered every
single year oh my god so I mean look in any direction now you're looking to a
place where there are still soldiers out there and it's one great big cemetery
really
back in them days nobody knew about to post-traumatic stress or really
understood or even cared really about the aftercare for soldiers that survived
so I'm really not surprised that he was drinking excessively probably needed
some form of escape and I'm sure that he would become quite an angry person after
you'd experienced other horrific things they did to you the war dragged on for
another two years of bloody fighting finally coming to an end in November
1918 it took months to bring the troops home and Joseph returned to the UK the
following summer having spent nearly four years on the Western Front he had
seen the war through from start to finish
Joseph went back to work at the co-op and had a further four children with his
wife Mary Ann before her death in 1930 two years later when Joseph was 50
Cheryl's great grandmother Edith Annie Burton gave birth to their twin
daughters Joseph and Edith Annie were never married Joseph died in 1951 eight
years before Cheryl's mother Joan was born Joan never knew anything about her
grandfather not even his name
before she leaves France Cheryl's visiting the nearby pasado memorial to
pay her respects to some of the soldiers of the Durham Light Infantry who never
came home it really makes sense now it all comes together as to why nobody
really spoke about Joseph and he was kind of a mystery in the family it may
have had a bit of a reputation afterwards of being a little bit
disturbed and he probably didn't want to talk about his war stories I think there
was a lot of men that didn't really talk about their experiences and therefore
nobody else did either and I would guess part of it was because my great-grandma
was and his housekeeper and and in those days and having children that a wedlock
was seriously frowned upon so it was always a mystery and our can put a man
to that mystery before I set off on this journey I always had a great sense of
the Northeast and I was at a great instinct that I was rooted ly from there
this whole experience has really told me that it's true when they say northern as
I made of tough stuff there's just a great sense of resilience and strength
there and the fact that I'm from the Northeast all that time ago on both
sides just as it is proved to me that what I thought what I felt was the truth
you