Fragile Clues To Identity Of Lost WW1 Soldiers That History Forgot BBC Timestamp

At the end of 2001, the transformation of the site at Boesinger from lost battlefield to industrial estate is nearing completion. But the diggers still have an important and delicate task to complete. They have found more human remains. They belong to a British soldier whose body, like hundreds of others, was lost in the battlefield mud. This is the 124th body they've discovered. Well, we have been working here for more than two hours now, and up to now we have found the remains of two soldiers, maybe even more. We've got the army boots. This is what's left of his entrenching tool. This is the entrenching tool blade, the shovel that soldiers carried to dig in under fire, to work on their trenches, on their positions. This appears to be the remains of his haversack with his personal equipment on it. This is a complete body. Everything that he died with is on him. These soldiers did not belong to the same regiments as those who were killed in the battle in July 1915. Their metal regimental badges identify them as Royal Welsh Fusiliers, a British unit which served in the Boesinger sector about two years later. And there was something else about them which interests Aurel. What made the soldier very remarkable is that there was a helmet, which means that probably the soldier was from 1916 or 1917. If this is from 1916 and 1917, he might have a dog tag, because there were dog tags, metal dog tags at the time. So far, the diggers have not been able to put a name to any British bodies they have uncovered. A metal dog tag, if one can be found, could identify its owner and put a name to an unknown soldier. Very often these soldiers became obsessed with the idea of their body being almost atomized on the battlefield and nothing for their family to see after the war. So to get around this, certainly in 1916, it became quite the fashion to have your own dog tag, your own form of identification disc. And this took the form of an aluminium disc, such as this one here, which was worn normally on the wrist. But the tags are not easy to find, even though many other fragile personal artefacts have survived. And there's an iodine ampule up here. Again, every soldier carried one of those alongside a first field dressing, a bandage that every soldier carried into battle, into the field, and had with him in a small part of his tunic, so that he had an immediate means of dressing a wound as and when or if he was if he was wounded. At last they unearth an item, which gives them a chance of working out who this soldier might be. We have a small wooden brush here that may, once Patrick cleans it up, have some further details about who he is. It could have his regimental number scratched on the top. During the past 25 years, only one body of an unknown British soldier has been positively identified in Flanders. If the diggers can identify this fusilier from his belongings, one more soldier's name will be brought in from the gold. It looks like a P there, possibly some initials. There's definitely something in the middle there, but it's not as clear as we hoped. It's very difficult to read it. It could of course just be scratching from general use. It's a disappointment for the diggers, but a few minutes later they found a small leather purse. With coins and other things. We've now found some coins in his wallet that are French francs, dated 1917, so that firmly ties us now down to a year. It can't be before then. It's very unlikely to be after then, because the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, as far as we know at the moment, didn't return to this area in 1918. So it's looking more and more likely to have been men killed sometime from January 17 up to just before the Battle of Passchendaele. Except for these clues about when he died, the coins reveal little else about their owner. But even if they can't identify the man, they are getting closer to finding out how he may have died. Now unearth the skull, and interestingly we've got false teeth here. But far more importantly, it clearly shows that this soldier died with his gas mask on. And we have the remains of it here. The clip from the gas mask bag just here. The remains of the filter of the gas mask, which was a box respirator. The fact that the remains of his gas mask are present like that indicates that he was actually wearing his gas mask when he died, which would indicate that some form of gas attack was going on when these men fell. And working our way down here, we're actually in the area where his hands were, and they were almost clasping each other at this point.