Machines | Time Team S20-E01 The Forgotten Gunners of WWI
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Golfers at a popular East Midlands golf club now know that a huge wooded bank beside their fairway is a rather special area of 'rough'. Time Team's experts discovered, that 90 years ago it was a machine gun firing range - and buried in the bank are tens of thousands of spent bullets. Belton House near Grantham may be one of Britain's finest stately homes but during World War I, the grounds were home to thousands of men training for frontline duties. It was where the Machine Gun Corps was created and its troops were trained. The Corps was set up as a response to German superiority in using these deadly weapons and became vital to the war effort. Most of the Machine Gun Corps' records were destroyed, first in a fire and then in the Blitz in World War II. Today almost nothing is visible above ground. Tony Robinson and the Team have quite a task to locate the hundreds of barrack blocks, kitchen blocks, roads, social centres and shooting ranges. To the Team's relief, the dig is rich in finds, revealing glimpses of the men's lives in wartime; whether from the site of the YMCA, where a cup of cocoa could be had for a few pence, or from the hastily erected huts where they lived for their six weeks of intensive training. They uncover stories of young men who went so bravely to their deaths. Of the 170,000 who trained here more than 12,000 were killed and another 50,000 injured. The Corps' nickname was 'the Suicide Club'. The sound of a Vickers gun reverberating around the park for the first time in 90 years provides a shocking but fitting tribute.
Comments
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Watch a few tt episodes focused on recent history and it sounds like germans did everything better :-/ tanks, submarines, machine guns, fighter planes and whatever else. Hmmmm....
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This is an interesting and fun way of learning about history. I always had trouble reading history because the history books were written in a style that was dry. Information didn't stick well either. :-(
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My great grandfather SGT C.P Price served this corps. They later became the Tank Corps and later the RTR. They fought hard. Lest we forget.
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Golf Course: wanton waste of a perfectly good gun range! Joking aside, wonderful to See Stewart Ainsworth return!
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Ironic that so much training went into target practice. In reality, it came down to sweeping the field in specific arcs. My Grandad served as a Tommy in World War I. He was invalided out with "confusional insanity", an interesting term for shell-shock.
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Thank you so much for sharing. Everyone has put in such hard work. It shows. History with compassion. Well done
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With so many records having been lost in these episodes dealing with the Great War, it proves that the Brits could have used some German organization and discipline. The Hun was a great record keeper. :)
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Why always 3 days?
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They are so passionate, love it!
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The main camp site where the initial trenches were put in is here on Google Earth:
52°56'13.2"N 0°36'09.5"W
The firing range is here:
52°56'30.4"N 0°38'20.4"W
The final report with many vintage photos and a thorough analysis, is here:
http://www.wessexarch.co.uk/system/files/85203_Time%20Team%20-%20Belton%20House.pdf -
shouldn't have told the golfers they were shooting a machine gun,would have love to see them bolting for cover,ha,ha!
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While WW1 saw the MG executing wholesale slaughter, the British used Maxim guns on African tribes like the Zulus at least 20 years prior. As a snippet of poem went, as those men marched against thousands of Zulu warriors... "Remember, whatever happens, we have got --- the Maxim Gun, and they have not." A real killing machine for sure.
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Most interesting thing to EVER happen on a golf course.
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These are head and shoulders above Americas offerings as far as "educational" programming goes. Thanks for the uploads. Signed, A colonist. :)
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Thrilled to find Time Team on YouTube. I'm Alberta Canada, and we don't get the show. Got hooked on it visiting family in the UK. Keep up the awesome work. Would love to see ore digs in Orkney. There is so much history there
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Any reason as to why this was blocked in the UK?
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Love the Time Watch series. But who's the poor dodger that has to clean up after the cameras stop rolling?
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Thanks for posting these. We don't have access to them in the US and it is one of my favorite series.
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When they were looking at the possessions of the machine gunner killed at the front,i noticed a trench watch;its a shame they didn't take a closer look at it.Really good series.
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Even soldiers in the 2nd WW didn't talk about their experiences much. In Canada we hardly ever heard about what my uncles did. My husbands family didn't talk about it either.
A neighbour brought home a war bride from England and their children knew little about what a war bride was. It seems a shame that Canadians did so much during the wars but we know virtually nothing about what they really did.