Albert – The Allied Garrison Town on the Somme

In this episode we travel to the small town on Albert that became so familiar to the Allied soldiers of the Great War. A location just behind the 1916 Somme battlefields, we find out why it was so important to them and what happened there. We hear from a soldier who saw his first dead body on the way up to the line from Albert, and how the famous Basilica was destroyed by shell fire, and then rebuilt again. And we then move the clock forward to discover what the veterans discovered when they returned to Albert after the war, and how war came again to Albert in 1940. We also discover the strange story of the ghostly wagon and horses, still travelling up the Bapaume road years after it was destroyed by a shell.