'War Junk: WWI' documentary series tells human stories behind battlefield artifacts

Historian David O’Keefe and producer Wayne Abbott pose recently outside a German tunnel in Beaumont-Hamel, France that was dug during the Battle of the Somme in the First World War. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO, Chris McDowall)

TORONTO -- Historian David O'Keefe says not to take the title of his documentary series "War Junk: World War One" too literally.

In the series, O'Keefe and producer Wayne Abbott travel to the battlefields the Somme and Ypres, dig up artifacts and uncover the stories behind them. Two one-hour episodes focusing on each battle air on History on Sunday and Monday.

"It is not junk," O'Keefe said in a telephone interview. "It may look like junk. It may appear to be junk to some people, but at the end of the day it's got a human story attached to it."

O'Keefe, author of "One Day In August: The Untold Story Behind Canada's Tragedy at Dieppe," said the experience of travelling to battlefields is far more potent than reading about them in history books.

"It's the smell. Believe it or not, it's the aroma, it's the weather, it's the dampness or the heat, or whatever else, that just takes you back into the experience that was there," he said. "You are really walking in the paths of your forefathers."

In Sunday's episode, O'Keefe and Abbott travel to northern France where the Battle of the Somme raged between July and November 1916. Some 650,000 Allied soldiers were killed, just over 24,000 of them Canadian.

O'Keefe said many associate the First World War with trenches, but it was also fought in extensive tunnels that were dug in order to place explosives under enemy positions. He and Abbott explored one German tunnel that runs five storeys below the Somme battlefield.

At first they discovered the usual interesting "junk": German rifle ammunition, a rare bullet, a boot. Then, a startling discovery: scrawled in handwriting on the tunnel wall, "Pte. H. Robertson, 334, R.E., Altrincham."

Eventually, they found several signatures left by British soldiers, proving that Allied troops had been inside the tunnel -- either to explore or to seek refuge from the nightmare above.

"That was probably the most touching," said Abbott, also speaking by phone. "It's just a handwritten signature but you realize those soldiers stood exactly where you were standing and they had to leave their mark at that point... I think for both Dave and I, we were kind of emotionally affected by those names."

They didn't think they'd be able to find a family member of one of the British soldiers, Abbott admitted. But to their surprise, the show's research team was able to track down the great-nephew of one of the men who signed his name nearly a century ago.

"I think that was one of the best things, that we could tie one of the names with his great-nephew and bring them down into the tunnel and actually show it to them," he said.

Abbot said this is an example of how the series "flips history upside down." Instead of starting with the big story of the battle, they begin with a tiny, mysterious artifact and find the human narrative behind it.

He feels it's vital to keep the stories of the two World Wars alive.

"When you look at the millions of people around the world who fought in those two World Wars and the millions of people who were killed, even civilians, I just feel there's a story behind every one of them," he said.

"I just think we should just keep telling these stories year after year, so that people don't forget."