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Delville Wood - the slaughter of the Springboks

31 min • 4 november 2020

In this episode, we walk the battlefield of Delville Wood, the scene of the first engagement of the South African Infantry on the Western Front. In a period of six days, they suffered almost 100% casualties and were subjected to German artillery bombardments of a ferocity unprecedented even by Great War standards. We hear of the heroic struggle to hold the wood and the story of how a bag of 400-year-old Huguenot acorns was used to replant the wood in the aftermath of the War.