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Elizabeth Allen's avatar

My father fought in Greece, Tripoli and Egypt and he wrote a lot of letters describing his experience. I have them stored in boxes and have started collating them into a story. I started with Burnham Military camp and reading the letters I got a sense of how a boys own adventure turned into a horror story during their first major and flawed engagement in Greece. The descriptions are stark, laced with a wry humour that overlays the terror. We had planned to retrace his steps starting in Northern Greece last year until covid changed everyone's plans. We still hope to do that, in the meantime I am continuing his journey via letters written all those years ago. For me it's like watching A World at War, only this is more personal.

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Robin Capper's avatar

Perhaps, like 'The World at War', it focuses on people a documentary I stumbled upon (TV1 daytime ANZAC Day) decades ago made an unforgettable impression. 'A Game of Ghosts' interviews some of the last surviving British WW1 Veterans. One tells a story of five soldiers, four who died and how living (an apparently happy life) meant dealing with the burden of surviving.

Some of the audio features in 'The Ballard of Bill Hubbard', the opening track of Roger Waters 'Amused to Death' album

The doco is on YouTube https://youtu.be/EviSiRh-_74

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