Happy Reading

Hello Readers

As Christmas is coming and you're no doubt stumped for gift ideas why not consider a copy of "Digging Up Plugstreet" by Martin Brown & Richard Osgood. It's a cracking read.

On the subject of great reads, you could also have a look at the "Chroniques de l'Archaeologie Wallone" 26, 2009. It's published by the Province of Wallonia and includes short reports on work undertaken in the region in 2007, including Plugstreet.

Food & Drink

Without the assistance of Claude and Nelly at the Auberge in Ploegsteert we wouldn't have the succesful, nor as well fed project that we do.

For amazing moules or the best carbonade of beef, you should visit the Auberge, just opposite the Ploegsteert memorial to the missing. Claude will also do amazing vegetarian food!

http://www.auberge-ploegsteert.be/welcome_on_the_auberge_website.htm

Thanks again, from the whole team!

Updates

The dates for the August season at Ploegsteert have been announced and the likely team members alerted. It's nice to be looking forward to another week in the field.

Meanwhile our friends from GWAG and our own Rod have been busy looking for the traces of WW2 anti-invasion defences and WW1 anti-aircraft defences at Shooters Hill, near Woolwich in London. You can see what they've been up to here:

http://diggingdadsarmy.blogspot.com/

And finally...
Richard and Martin hosted a Bristol University Masters group for a week of excavation on part of the Bustard practice trench system. While one area opened gave inconclusive results, apart from as a rubbish dump, the other revelealed a beautifully dug, deep trench cut into the chalk.

The Day Thou Gavest

Well we survived the conference.

Thank you to all the wonderful speakers for their excellent contributions and for sticking to their allotted timeslots. Also a big thank you to tha audience for a stimulating set of questions and discussions points,as well as for being generally nice people who wantedto talk and even buy us beer!

It was good to see a few of the Plugstreet regulars in the audience,as well as our friend Eric,who will be joining us: Welcome Back from "Over There" mate!

Meanwhile we're planning a short foray to record a concrete shelter on the British line before the potato crop goes in. More breaking news soon!

An Announcement

Ladies and Gentlemen it is with some pride that I am able to now make this announcement...


No Longer Missing in Action:

No-Man’s-Land Archaeology recovers the body of an Australian soldier of the Great War

On 6th August 2008, No-Man’s-Land Archaeology, a multi-national archaeology group who specialise in the First World War, found the body of an Australian soldier of the Great War whilst excavating German trenches near St Yves in Wallonia, Belgium. The soldier was in full battle order with all his well-preserved equipment, medical kit, weaponry and parts of his uniform. His shoulder and collar titles identified him as an Australian. The area was attacked by the Australian 3rd Division on the morning of 7th June 1917 as part of the Battle of Messines, a prelude to the better known battle of 3rd Ypres (Passchendaele). Unlike recent discoveries at Fromelles, this was a battlefield casualty in full kit buried where he fell rather than a burial in a grave behind the lines.

The work is part of a wider landscape project to examine the effectiveness of the training of the Australian 3rd Division on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire with the actuality of battle through archaeological excavation of trench systems, historical studies, aerial photography, map work, geophysical survey and other techniques. The project has run for four years so far, with this being the second season of fieldwork in Belgium and the first time that significant human remains were recovered. The work has been accomplished by a multinational team in collaboration with a number of academic departments and local partners.

The remains of the soldier tell a significant story of one man’s involvement in a major piece of world history through his personal kit and effects including the evidence for the taking of trophies in the form of a German pickelhaube. The body was recovered with scientific techniques; geophysical survey, forensic archaeology (techniques familiar to viewers of CSI), and on-site conservation from our mobile lab.

The group is very proud to have recovered a previously missing soldier with the highest scientific skill and appropriate levels of respect; this was a man who endured unimaginable hardship and met a violent end.

Over the years, there has been strong Australian involvement in the project with assistance from the Australian War Memorial, fieldworkers from Australia, and the presence of the Australian Army at commemorative events.

All of the artefacts, along with the remains of the soldier have been taken by the Belgian Army to be given to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission prior to attempts to identify the man.

Contacts: Richard Osgood and Martin Brown Co-Directors, the Plugstreet Project.

Artwork and Landscape at Ploegsteert, Messines, Wytschaete

Photo: copyright Peter Chasseaud 2008

Landscape and phenomenology

After a week on site (there or thereabouts) with the No Man's Land group at Plugstreet, I've started to post some drawings, photographs and writing on my blog: http://peterchasseaud.blogspot.com/.

Some of my work is a continuation of my Willows project, which resulted in an exhibition in Lewes, Sussex, last year, and also in a book: Willow/Wilg/Weide/Saule (Ypres Willows), which I produced under the imprint Altazimuth Press, which I use for my artist's books and poetic photobooks.

There's also a link from my main blog to one I've set up for landscape, maps and air photos, and this will include some images and interpreatation of the St Yvon (Factory Farm/Reebrouck/Ultra Trench, and also Ultimo Trench/Ultimo Crater.

Peter Chasseaud (The Wanderer).

Plugstreet 2008

Well 'The Colonel' has been deployed. Bar takings last night totalled 66 euros but only 6 team members were present!. We are expecting to drink the bar dry yet again!. The Colonel this year is going to concentrate on surveying around the Ultimo Crater in order to locate the other lewis gun emplacements and Company Headquarters.

The advance party is now esconced in the Peace Village at Messines. Last evening we hooked up with the excellent Claude at the Auberge and said hello before going off to eat in Ploegsteert. Sadly Claude had just come back from holidays so his kitchen wasn't open so no moules yet!

And now it's time to hit the landscape and get out, meet some of our other key players like the farmer and the Historical Society ready to start laying out trenches tomorrow and digging on Monday. Meanwhile there are tools to collect, geophysical surveys to do and a supermarket run to chase.

Meanwhile... we say CONGRATULATIONS to Louise from the Peace Village who is a new mum to Dylan, two weeks old!

We also wish Caroline the PV Manager a good weekend at the Dranouter Folk Festival! Top Brit folk acts Billy Bragg and the Men They Couldn't Hang are on. Enjoy!

Zero Minus 3

Three weeks that is!

We have agreed the trench locations with the farmer and are set to launch our next season of excavation and survey at Plugstreet.

Once againa crack team of archaeologists and fellow-travellers is set to embark. This year the team includes some new faces, including two more American friends and our first representative from the Republic of Ireland. Kat has a missing relative so joins the members of the team with that particular attachment to the battlefields. We are also pleased to have Rod on board, after his absence last year due to a more modern war. Welcome to you all.

As we have said before the idea of No Man's Land is an international venture and so we go on, our common purpose being to investigate something that once divided us.

In Despatches

Digging is only part of the story...the site work is fun but ultimately meaningless without reporting. Accordingly Richard and Martin have been working to collate the records from the summer and a report on the 2007 work is now complete and has been sent to our key partners in Belgium. The report is rather large as it includes integrated photos and illustrations so please don't ask us to email you a copy (all 26MB of it). We are very grateful to anyone who helped us in compiling this - you know who you are (and so do we)! Team members who want a copy should ask and we'll burn a copy to disk or do some illicit photocopying.

Now that we have submitted a report we can seek permission to undertake further work this year and already the landowner has received a letter asking where we can dig.

More news when we have it. I hope that soon we will be in a position to start talking in firmer terms about the 2008 season!

O For a Muse of Fire

Yesterday Martin gave a lunchtime lecture about the Plugstreet Project at the National Army Museum. There was an audience of about 50, including two team members. The lecture was well-received and stimulated both interesting questions and enjoyable discussion both in the lecture theatre and the NAM's cafe afterwards.

Thanks to anyone reading this who did come along and thanks to the Museum for giving us the opportunity to give the first major presentation on our work.

If your archaeological/historical society would like to hear about our work then get in touch via the blog and we'll see if we can arrange a lecture for you.

Martin also included the project in a presentation to Stafford and Mid Staffordshire Archaeology Society last Friday to an audience of about 100. He was actually talking about training camps on Cannock Chase and the New Zealanders but used the project as an example of how we can follow techniques and units from training to combat. It helps that the New Zealanders were assaulting Messines at about the time the Anzac 3 Div were attacking "our" German trenches.

Match of the Day

Christmas draweth nigh...as if we didn't know it.

Christmas moves the thoughts of many of us to that moment in 1914 when elements of the armies facing each other along the Western Front declared local, unofficial truces between them. Famously officers hosted their opponents for dinner, German barbers set up shop in no man's land and the world's strangest, most inspirational football international took place. I met someone who had interviewed a veteran who'd been involved in one of these matches and he said that the Germans won on penalties!

You know all this. What you may not know is that the truce didn't take place everywhere but it did take place at Ploegsteert, in fact Bruce Bairnsfather records it in trenches immediately north of our site. Is it possible that the fields we traversed during our work saw the Match of the Day 1914?

So may the Peace of 1914 be yours at Christmas, especially to readers in "hot spots", dear reader, and good things follow you through the year. This blog will be resting over the Festive Season but will be back shortly with exciting news, such as the 2008 season and our plans to dig more holes, as well as conferences, lectures and miniature battlefields that are connected with the project. The mini battlefield isn't a wargame by the way but I can say no more now.

Happy Christmas
Frohe Weinachts
Joyeux Noel
Goioe Kerstmis (I think that's right for Flemish)

Peter Chasseaud's panorama drawing looking east from Ultimo Crater

Photos of a 3-section panorama drawing I made from the north-east lip of Ultimo Crater, looking east. The coverage is approximately an arc from north-east to south-east. The photo below shows the whole panorama obliquely. The three above show the individual sections in the sequence: left - right - centre. All images Copyright Peter Chasseaud 2007.

Such panoramas were drawn during the First World War to show the views from observation posts for artillery and intelligence purposes. The drawing was often overlaid with a degree grid, sometimes showing bearings right and left of a centre-line, e.g. Warneton Church. The bearings given on my drawing are very approximate, and the whole thing needs to be recalibrated to give correct bearings.

Page 8 Lovely

As Featured in the Nord Eclair, Mr Litherland and the excavation team...

The Team

So here we are, the core of the team, including the field archaeologists, conservators, artist, geophysicist and anthropologist. Missing are Patrick and Nicolas, as well as a number of other locals, and Gontrand who was sorting out his Para-Commando veterans following their parade at the Last Post Ceremony. Also present with the group are our two Australian guests, Matt McLachlan (author) and Michael Molkentin (historian) who joined us on site with a film crew from ABC. We wait to see whether their recording of our work will make it to a final cut documentary.

We are standing in front of the Ploegsteert Memorial to the Missing, where we were honoured to take part and lay a wreath on behalf of the group. Our wreath party included Tori, who has a great uncle on the memorial and Ralph who is our expert on German military history. The Australian Defence Force also laid a wreath and were represented by Lt Col Paul Smith.

It is an odd thing to excavate a site and then to attend ceremonial at a monument to the Fallen, some of whom may lie in the fields where we had been working. This is one of the odd dynamics of working in contemporary archaeology, as is the possibility of idnetifying any skeletons. As it was, we didn't find any bodies.

Anniversaries, or not...

Last week there was a terrific hoo-hah in the UK media about the 90th Anniversary of the opening of the Third Battle of Ypres or Passchendaele as it is commonly remembered. There was a ceremony with attendant royals, the full ceremonial thing and our last veterans on parade. The tone was "90 years to the day", except it wasn't. The battle began on 31st July 1917 but I am told that by then the respective Royal families will have gone on holiday so the anniversary was shifted.

In a sense it doesn't really matter so long as the events and the fallen are comemorated but the innacurracy was very poor. I also heard the usual stuff about poor command and control and futility. One of the key things we have seen from the very inception of this project is that Messines was a model of preparation and of execution. Old General Plumer might look like Colonel Blimp but he knew his stuff and the troops were well prepared for the battle, which is why they did incredibly well. And that, my best beloved, is why the battle is forgotten - it doesn't fit the popular paradigm of the First World War.

Yesterday's Burials

The newspapers and news websites have all been carrying pieces about the funeral of the Lancashire Fusiliers that I was talking about yesterday. The BBC are now carrying this piece from their military history correspondent Peter Caddick-Adams of the UK Defence Academy:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6273292.stm

In the piece he describes the difficulties of arriving at any identification for the bodies that are still being recovered from the Western Front. He describes visiting the "Finding the Fallen" exhibition at the National Army Museum last year and learning how the smallest details could help identify a man.

I am proud to say that the exhibition was based on the work of No Man's Land http://www.no-mans-land.info/ and took it's title from a TV series that featured our work. NML is, of course, the lead body in the Plug Street Project and many of its members are key people in the August dig.

The BBC article underlines what I was trying to say yesterday - that attention to detail is important because it is those small clues, like the position of buttons on a cuff, that could make all the difference.