Dan Snow's History Hit - Waterloo Uncovered: Bones from the Battlefield

Episode Date: July 22, 2022

In a special episode from our sister podcast Warfare, Dan is joined by host James Rogers fresh off the Waterloo battlefield in Belgium where last week an astonishing discovery was made. The project Waterloo Uncovered unearthed bones that could hold extraordinary insights into the experiences of Waterloo soldiers, their diets, health, life and death.This episode was edited and sound designed by Aidan Lonergan.For more Warfare content, subscribe to our Warfare Wednesday newsletter here. If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to the Android or Apple store.

Hi everyone, welcome to Down Snow's History. We've got a special episode today. We're bringing you one of our sibling podcasts, Warfare, and its excellent host James Rogers. And the reason we're doing that is because Team History had got wind a couple of weeks ago. There's something big time was happening on the battlefield of Waterloo. And so we sent James down, we deployed James as part of the Allied force to Waterloo itself, Mont Saint-Jean, where Wellington stood on that fateful day in June 1815. And James was there when the remarkable archaeological breakthroughs were made. He's made a documentary for History at TV, which you can go and check out. He's joining me right now in this introduction, and then you can listen to his episode of the podcast that will follow. James, how's it going, dude?

Good, Dan. How are you doing? Very good indeed. Always great going to Waterloo, isn't it? It's a great battlefield. It's an great battlefield. It's an incredible battlefield. And you can really picture what happened there over 200 years ago. You see that famous reverse slope. You can stand in the steps where soldiers fought and soldiers fell. It's incredible.

It's impressive. But it's also incredibly moving as well. Definitely. As you say, the reverse slope is so fascinating. Wellington chose his ground so carefully. But tell me, what was it like being there? Because there's always been a big sort of mystery around the dead of Waterloo and where they were buried and what happened to them after they were buried. So it must have been really exciting being there.

It was, yeah. An incredibly morbid backstory and theory behind what happened to the dead of Waterloo. We're talking, what, 50,000 dead and injured from this battle. They say that, well, it took the dead three days to die and the battlefield to lie silent. And then locals were brought in to take those dead and put them into mass graves or to burn them on giant pyres. And then a couple of decades later, and this is some of the work that's been pioneered by Tony Pollard, who's running the archaeological side of things over there he was saying that about 20 years later the bones of the dead of waterloo were dug up they were ground down into

bone meal a fertilizer and then used back in the uk on the soil as a means to grow our crops but you've got to think it's a very different time then. There wasn't the Commonwealth War Graves Association. There wasn't these attempts to try and make these kind of lasting memorials to the horror of war. There was a functionality to the dead. And I'm afraid that this is what befell the victims of Waterloo. And we thought that that's the reason why we couldn't find so many of the bodies until now. I mean, there was only one body that's been found from the Battle of Waterloo, which is so strange to think. But yes, this is where the breaking news, the international news, history-changing news comes in, that the second body has now been found.

Yeah, what's the importance of that find? body has now been found. Yeah, what's the importance of that find? Well, it can be threefold, I guess. First of all, it adds a new layer to the history of Mont Saint-Jean, which was the field hospital at the Battle of Waterloo. This is found, it looks, in a purposely dug ditch next to that field hospital. And within that ditch, it looks like there are the remains of horses that have been injured in the battle, led in one after another, and then a musket ball to each horse's head appears to have been found, and they've slumped into that pit. And then alongside that, there are a really quite shocking number of amputated arms and legs. And yet within all of this, there is the entire skeleton of a human body.

And so it shows us that people who died on the operating table at Mont Saint-Jean were not you know given military burials or even cast with the rest of the remains instead they were put into a pit for the detritus and the leftovers of battle and medical procedure so it really was unceremonial. And then if you go down into the science, you can start to figure out what this person died of. So you can get an insight into some of the injuries at Waterloo. But you can also look at the diet that the soldiers were on.

We know from accounts that these soldiers were incredibly underfed. Wellington would leave his troops, the scum of the earth, to go and pillage locally and we think that once there's more scientific study of these remains then we can find out exactly what their last meals were so you're starting to add these whole new layers to the history of waterloo from this one discovery and then we don't know yet if this is actually a soldier i mean it likelihood is percentage wise that it probably, and it's probably male. But time will tell. There were women and children in and around the battlefield.

Soldiers would bring their families with them. This is a skeleton with a small stature. Could this be a relative, a family member from Waterloo? But if it is a soldier, then yes, I think that the team over at Waterloo Uncovered, and Tony especially, will be looking and pushing for a reburial with full military honours. And so this is not only a starting point to a whole new history, but the rightful end to an individual who potentially fought at Waterloo to their personal history. And lastly, James, what's the plan in the future? Is the project ongoing? The project is ongoing, and Waterloo Uncovered is a truly fantastic project. It takes veterans who have fought in the recent wars

and those who are potentially suffering from post-traumatic stress and other issues, and to bring them together to work on conflict archaeology, to work as a team across different sites across Europe, to really, well, I think it's from talking to those who are involved in this, it's therapeutic because you're part of a team, you're working on a really set core mission to fulfill these goals, but you're also bringing troops home. And that's certainly what they were doing at Waterloo Uncovered. And they're going to continue to do

next year and the year after and the year after. And History Pit will be there to find out more. You bet. It'll be so fun. Well, thanks for going out this year bud and before people listen to your episode of warfare in which you walk the field of waterloo tell us what else people can find on there at the moment you're having a bit of a bumper time we are yeah well i often say that the warfare podcast stretches from napoleon to now and i can kind of prove that i can evidence it because while i was walking the battlefield of waterloo i then headed back to my hotel room to record a podcast on the life the letters and the death of Bin Laden so I mean you can literally see that we are covering this whole period of history this modern history of warfare and if anyone's interested in that then go and check us out two episodes twice a week every week

lovely James thanks very much here's the episode on Waterloo. Enjoy. Hi, Tony. Welcome to the Warfare podcast. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat. It's a pleasure. Now, give us a little indication of what your role is with Waterloo Uncovered.

Well, I am one of, I think there are four of us now, field directors. and so we have oversight of what's happening on the site in any given year but I'm also the academic lead. I'm Professor of Conflict Archaeology and History at the University of Glasgow so when it comes to the kind of academic outputs and academic arc of our adventure here I have a lot of input on that. So how long have you been involved in the project? Right from the start I was the third person in. Charlie and Mark who founded it, and everybody

knows that story now I guess, but they invited me down to London for a meeting, it would be autumn of 2014, and they said how do you fancy leading up a project doing the archaeology of the Battle of Waterloo now you might think Pollard's gonna jump at that but I was very busy I had other interests and to be frank Waterloo hadn't really been on my radar it wasn't on my bucket list yeah but then they said we'll be working with veterans. And that was it. That was the clincher, because I already had this idea of working with veterans

on a an archaeological project in the Falkland Islands, looking at the 1982 war, which is actually just had its first season that finally came together. So this had things in common with that. And when I say I wasn't a buff about Waterloo I am now yeah I am an obsessive now so you know like every other buff I have a study full of books on Waterloo but what we do here is very different from the books well I've been here for a few days now and I am now I've got the bug I'm obsessed with Waterloo and one of the reasons is because of what you've been

able to find here over the last few days. So give us a bit of context to where we're standing right now. Well we are outside of, we're on the eastern side of the farm of Mont Saint-Jean and as you can see it's still a very active place. There's actually a brewery here but on the day of the battle on the 18th of June 1815 it was a very different place. We are behind Wellington's line and if it wasn't for the apple trees you'd be able to see the ridge on which most of Wellington's army was placed and beyond it towards us. And so this is behind the lines and it was used as the main field hospital for Wellington's Britishish and allied army and casualties would be brought here for immediate treatment and mick crumplin who's an expert in the surgery of the time he reckons that

upwards of 500 limbs were probably amputated here arms and legs because there is very little option if you're hit by one of these soft lead musket balls there's very little option at the time other than to take it off because you've got to stop that bleeding somehow and you can't treat the wound you can't get to the artery so you've got to get that clean wound exactly and i suspect it's probably in the lap of the gods as to whether you survived or not the shock because there's no anesthetics no antibiotics so a really basic but essential form of surgery and we've seen the evidence for it here in the most visceral and unique way really. Well take us into a bit of detail about that because this place must have been living hell when the battle was taking place. It is raging over there, you can hear it, you can see it, you can smell it.

But the actual real world human impact of the war is seen within these trenches? Very much so. And I think one of the things about Waterloo is that, and we were talking about being a buff, is that there is a lot of romance about Waterloo. It's, you know, the fancy uniforms, the colour, the chivalry, the cavalry, Napoleon and Wellington. But what we have seen here is the harsh reality of the Battle of Waterloo. It's the closest we'll get to a time machine.

And I actually find this trench quite disturbing. I'm glad that I'm not walking you around it and taking a close-up look. We're stood at the side of it. And one of the reasons is that I find the contents quite disturbing. My name's Sam Wilson, and I'm one of the team supervisors for Waterloo Uncovered. The ground that we're standing on was the start of the battle occupied by the Union Brigade, the cavalry, including the famous Scots Greys that have this big charge during the battle. Ahead of us we can see the reverse slope that Wellington used so well as a defensive position

and that would have been occupied by Picton's division immediately in front of us. So Wellington was a defensive master we know that is this the place where he would have got his troops to get low to fool Napoleon and his generals about just how many troops there were? Absolutely so you can see how the ground dips away in front of us here this is where all the infantry would have been laying down and also we can only just about see the ridge line from here so you can appreciate that all of these troops would be completely hidden even the cavalry standing here would have dismounted been standing with their horses no one can see that they're here until they reach the top of that ridge line and once they reach the top of that ridge line is it then too late do we have any artillery behind us that can start taking

fire we do have some artillery up here. It's mostly infantry, actually. So there's a heavy firefight. When D'Allens Corps comes across the battlefields in the early afternoon, we have Picton's troops really taking the brunt of that assault. How close are they when Napoleon's troops get to the top of that ridge? We could see them from here. You know, they are literally on that ridge line. And it is one of the early crisis points of the battle where the infantry are engaged heavily in this firefight. But they are literally on that ridgeline and it is one of the early crisis points of the battle where the infantry are engaged heavily in this firefight but they are you know they're starting to take a few steps back back the inexorability of the french columns smashing up to the ridgeline

and it's at that point that the cavalry gets sent in and they tip the balance in the allies favor you can almost imagine that sight the silhouettes emerging on the top of that hill, and then it's the cavalry that are sent in to charge them down. Absolutely, yeah, and that's when the columns get broken up and we get that famous, we have the famous painting of Scotland forever, the Scots greys charging, it's that moment of the battle. What we do know from the archaeological work so far is that where the French are up on that ridgeline, some of their musket balls are actually falling into the fields where we're currently stood. And that's all overshot, basically, from that firefight.

So the musket balls are very much at the extreme end of their range, but they're dropping into this field. You can imagine them like hailstones or something, falling amongst the cavalry as they waited for that order to go. Terrifying. Terrifying. So that's what we're going to look for now. That's it. The more the merrier, I think. All right, Sam, let's get on with it. Let's do it.

What happened here during the day was the saving of lives, the losing of lives. And we have, to give you a flavour, there is an amazing account by a British soldier the day after the battle, who visits the farm and writes about it. And he describes in the middle of the courtyard, which you can walk into now. It's still there, yep still there it's still there was a mound of severed limbs arms and legs just in a huge heap in the middle and obviously after the battle it has to be cleared up so the battles fought on a sunday they're still wounded on the battlefield believe it or not by the wednesday and thursday the dead take at least 10 days, or at least most of the dead, and they bring in local people to dispose of the dead. And you might think, well, yes, they buried them. Well, they did bury them.

They put people in pits in great numbers, but also in twos and threes. And a couple of visitors described the fields and hills and the rolling landscape as though it's covered in molehills these are all the graves of the dead right some of them are big pits but that process takes about 10 days but it's not just the pits they're actually burning the dead as well there are so many maybe 15 to 20 000 dead it's difficult to put your finger on it there's actually a new paper about to come out on the number of dead but let's use that you know 15 000 as a working figure for not the wounded as well just the dead so they have to be disposed of and we've done a lot of work in various locations now on the battlefield and we're actually carrying out i think the most intensive

geophysics project survey of a historic battlefield ever undertaken, certainly from the 19th century. And so what we've started to do in 2022 is to test the anomalies that are coming up from that to see whether they are related to the battle. Could they be burial pits? It's early days on that yet, but when we were last here in... so we started the project in 2015, we came back every year thereafter up until 2019. What happened in 2019 was we were doing a metal detector survey of the orchard we're in at the back of Mont Saint-Jean and we found musket balls. And we were quite shocked to see how close the battle got to the farm. I mean, there was fighting around here. was fighting around here and then one of the detectorists over towards this road was stood by

hit a signal and started to dig just thinking it was another metal object and encountered in his little excavation trench a bone and we further investigated it and it turned out very quickly to be a human bone so we put in a proper excavation trench, took a lot of care over it, and what we uncovered were three amputated legs. So, Hans, tell me, what have you found on the battlefield? Today it has been a part of a horseshoe, and I found a little pistol ball. Oh.

Why would there be a pistol ball here? Is this the last shots of an officer this is the question i have to leave to tony pollard yeah because it's quite strange because we found pistol balls more south to montanjan now we are up here on the high part of the field and it's a great find to find a pistol ball up here. Of course, also a musket ball, but it seems that if we go further down to the slope from where we are standing now, we have a huge concentration of musket balls. And also yesterday I found a pistol ball

in the very same lane I'm sweeping now or scanned with my detector. So we are in the line of fire. Yeah, I will say that. It really does add that extra three-dimensional layer to understanding the history. When you're standing here and you know where those musket balls were coming in,

you know where an officer might well have been firing their last shot, and then you look down that hill there and you can see where cannonballs have been found and where the French would have been standing, you start to place yourself in that moment in history. Yeah. The three amputated legs were lying on top, a dump of ammunition boxes, of tin boxes, which is what gave the metal detector signal.

So, you know, we're not looking at metal detectors that detect bone. It was the metal underneath that gave the bone away. And that was phenomenal. looking at metal detectors that detect bone, it was the metal underneath that gave the bone away. And that was phenomenal, so we spent most of 2019, the two weeks we were here, excavating that deposit. So that was the clue right here to start with, and this road that's beside us, that was here during the battle as well? There was a, yeah, we went back and looked at the mapping, there's a map from the 1770s,

1780s, which shows the farm in good detail. And there is a road here. And the idea that, well, we found the human bones, but further along on pretty much the same line, we found animal teeth protruding from the side of the trench. And we thought, right, that's either a horse or a cow. But the problem was we were running out of time.

So we had specialists in, so the bones were lifted and taken to the lab in Brussels and they underwent analysis and we covered the rest of the trench over and we thought right we'll come back in 2020. Little did we know that we'd be hit by the pandemic and so 2020 passes, 2021 and we're now in 2022 so this is the first time we've been back since then so you've been waiting for three years to find out what is really here yeah so we've done a lot of thinking obviously and the theory i came up with was that through that mapping evidence through the location on the edge of the orchard next to the road what we were looking at was debris from the hospital

literally being dumped in the ditch which would have run alongside this road. So it's just being used as a rubbish pit. And these human remains were treated as rubbish. And that was the working theory. So when I put together the project design for this season, I put this, you know, one of our research questions will be, are the amputated legs that we found in a ditch? Because the animal bones were on the same line line so clearly this was a key target when we came back and we've only been here it's now friday when we started work here on monday and so much progress has been made then do you think you can clearly say that your theory is playing out we're still debating that there are other questions now because there's always more questions and that's

why we're here that's why we keep coming back and the point is that it was a horse so we've excavated what looks like an intact horse from the battle from the battle and it's not just one horse there are three horses in there nose to tail i just told the team in the wrap-up talk here that i've been doing conflict battlefield archaeology for nigh on 25 years, says the old man. And I have never seen anything like this. I've excavated mass graves on the Western Front from the First World War. I've never seen anything like this.

These four horses sat nose to tail in this depression in the ground. Now, it's not just the horses. As I said, we had the amputated legs at the end of that line of horses, and we found a human skeleton. So, as you can hear, our director, Mark, is working really hard at his job by getting hooked into metal detecting.

Mark, what have you found? So far, we've found a piece of non-ferrous wire, which was extremely exciting and now we are investigating what is probably going to be some kind of iron rich metal so you're finding you think this is going to be napoleon's badge cap uh we're not entirely sure yet we believe the piece of wire was probably from a maybe a stirrup some kind of horse fitting um for the scots greys as they mustered here before their charge against the French. And in this hole, I'm imagining maybe an Iron Age pickaxe,

something like that. So I've got nothing sort of too spectacular, really. Mark, you found nothing. No, it just means it's deeper, which means it's older. Ah. If this is an Iron Age pickaxe, I'm done. Tony, what is the significance of finding that skeleton? Well, the human skeleton is an incredibly rare find

because there's only one other on the entire battlefield that has been excavated archaeologically. So it has the potential, it's dreadful to say it, but those human remains have the potential to give us insight into at least one individual and it already looks it's not fully exposed but looks as though that person was quite small in stature which is not hugely unusual but it's interesting to see that that's one of the features leaping out at us and those remains will be taken away and analyzed and i would hope i mean i led

the team that found the biggest masquerade from the First World War encountered since the 1920s. So I am not unused to dealing with this sort of site. Everyone is unique, as this clearly is. But I would hope that once that analysis has taken place, that that individual will be given a, you know, I'm already in my head seeing a funeral with full military honours.

And that's just me. Yeah. The idea that this is some sort of dump dump it's a place that when everything is going on the turmoil of conflict that anything that is not useful you know arms and legs it's a crass thing to say that they're thrown into this pit but that can't be the case for a human body it can and the treatment of the dead was very perfunctory. We have very different ideas and different attitudes towards death, pain, and everything that goes with it, including the disposal of the dead. We have military cemeteries. We have this idea of hallowed ground. None of that existed in the early 19th century. It developed as the 19th century passed, but certainly at the

time of Waterloo, the dead were just something to be disposed of. There was no Commonwealth war graves mission. Absolutely not. There were no flowing marble gravestones going on into the distance. This just wasn't a thing. There are monuments but they're an entirely different thing. There are no formal cemeteries. Some of the bodies will define their way into graveyards in local churches but by and large you know that 15 000 dead they are buried in pits on the battlefield or burned on the battlefield and there are very vivid i've just done a study of these accounts by early visitors including a guy from glasgow is a cloth merchant from glasgow living in brussels i've just studied his papers because his family bequeathed them to Glasgow University Library. And he writes of visiting the battlefield 18 times over about two years. The first visit, it takes a bit of working out, he was here the day after the battle.

He talks of soldiers dying in his arms. Phenomenal stuff. But he describes both the graves being dug, the pits being dug but the bodies also being burned because there are just too many to dispose of in that traditional manner that there were the searchers after the first world war those who went to look for their missing sons it would plague them for their entire lives and so many were found and brought back home or put into those battlefield cemeteries. Did you have the same here? Did families come out? Were they desperately looking for their loved ones?

They would. And the thing is that we're looking at a time where you have camp followers. So families would come on campaign. And there are descriptions, you know, there's a story here of a child being born in the middle of one of the squares. It might be slightly apocryphal,

but there were certainly wives and women here. And there are descriptions of their dead bodies being found on the battlefield. I mean, there's one story I encountered recently where they were stripping the dead, and that's the thing. All of the kit, all of the clothing was stripped. One account says everything but these socks of the Highlanders. We won't go any further into that. But the point is that those bodies are entirely naked by the time they're

disposed of and all of that kit is sold recycled used and it becomes almost an industry and for years things are being found on the battlefield and it's quite clear from the work i've done that the cuirass the piece of armor that would be on the french cavalryman's uh breast the breastplate was the most sought after item and this glaswegian merchant that i'm talking about some of his papers take the forms of letters to his brother and his nephew in glasgow and accompany parcels of kit from and he said you will find enclosed a cuirass, a bonnet, you know, such and such for your brother or whatever. And so there's this list of what he's found. And he describes the cuirass.

And he said, when I picked it up, and I think he picked it up near La Bella Leonce. And he says, he says it was caked in blood and it stank. And I've tried to clean it up. But here, but this guy in Glasgow had requested it. You know, he hadn't even come over and taken it as a souvenir. He wanted one. He'd heard about this and wanted one. So he shipped it back for him. So this becomes almost an industry to the point where by the 1850s, it looks like local factories

are making fakes that can be palmed off as- The demand is so high for the spoils and souvenirs of war that they're making fakes. Exactly. It's phenomenal. It's a phenomenal story. And being an archaeologist, I deal with the afterlife or the after death of battles. And I've become more and more interested in the afterlife of Waterloo, how it became what it is today. And an incredibly interesting

and important part of that story is how they disposed of the dead and how those artefacts and objects are treated. We're back with mark how's our iron age pickaxe coming well as you well know james as historian the layers of history are deep and so to get to this iron age pickaxe which i'm certain it is we have to go slightly deeper than anticipated okay so um mark mark we'll leave you to it it's tea time over here

so we'll come back in a few hours and see how you're doing. All right. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings.

Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. It's a lingering mystery, isn't it? Because there haven't been that many bodies at all found of the dead at Waterloo. Am I right in thinking that this is the second ever skeleton of a human being to be found? There are others. There was one skeleton that was excavated by our Belgian colleagues when they did the

watching brief on the museum which opened a decade or so ago. And given the amount of ground that was opened up, just one is quite a surprise. And there are one or two others, and there are other human remains. But we have no accounts of, in the modern era, of grave pits being encountered. And we've been working here since 2015. We've done a lot of work around Hougoumont, we've looked at geophysical anomalies. We haven't found a single grave pit. Even in areas where we have paintings from the time and descriptions of the time of grave pits, there has been nothing. And I've just published a paper which is, to my huge surprise, garnered quite a lot of interest. And I suggested there that stories that have been passed down about these grave pits basically being mined out in the decades after the battle and the bones collected and shipped across

to the UK and ground up into bone meal and bone dust and used as a fertilizer and we have newspaper stories from the 1820s and 30s of that happening, but very little other evidence. So my working hypothesis, if you like, when we arrived here this week was that we're not likely to find many of these grave pits because my feeling is that a lot of them have been robbed out, but I needed further evidence for that. And we have the negative evidence in the form that in the archaeology hasn't, that's notwithstanding, obviously. evidence in the form that in the archaeology hasn't this notwithstanding obviously but i'm now working with a belgian historian and a german historian who on the continent are coming up with much more evidence for that industrial use of human bone and i'm not going to say any more now no this is a story in the making in fact i've missed phone calls from my colleagues today who have made further discoveries on that but there is no smoke without fire so to speak and there

is more of a story there but it looks as though that's part of the story but time will tell because like you say you're doing this massive survey of the battlefield the biggest that's ever been done and if you found human remains here you may well still find human remains on the battlefield and i think it's likely they're not given the number of graves that there would have been not not even if there was semi-industrial removal of bones they're not going to have cleared everything and so there will be relics like this and but this is a very specific type of pit yeah and i'll talk you through it because it's quite we're still trying to work out exactly what's happened but the story we've got thus far and being an archaeologist i could well be telling somebody a different story in a week's time, because that's how we operate. But what appears to be happening is, I don't think it is a ditch,

but we're still debating that. And that's what archaeologists do. It's great, you know, on site and in the bar later. Well, I don't think it is, you know, there's this, that. But my view of this now is that what we're looking at is a purpose-cut, rectilinear, long, thin trench with a flat bottom and I've actually found a painting one of the James Rouse painting of the Hay Song which is a farm just over the Crest there that's the aftermath and then in the foreground they're burying stripping bodies and burying them

but in the background on this side of the road there is a linear trench that's clearly been backfilled very recently and I think we're looking at a type of disposal site and so they've dug this long trench we don't know how long it is we haven't found the ends yet as I've said there is a human skeleton at that end we've still got space to go on the other side so I can't tell you how how long it is if it is a trench I'm going to annoy my colleagues if I totally throw away the ditch idea ironically because that was my take initially i mean that was that was the idea i had during lockdown it's got to be this ditch but the point is that what they've done and this is where it gets disturbing and we have accounts of this there are if you imagine that let's say nays famous cavalry charge

french charge in the afternoon about 4 p.m. That involved between maybe 8,000 and 10,000 horses. You imagine how many of them are killed or wounded. And given the fact that it was easier to shoot at a horse and hit a horse than the man on it, especially if he's got armour on. So a lot of thousands of horses are dying and thousands are wounded. And effective to do that because it knocks the man off the horse. Exactly. Exactly. And it creates an obstacle. Yeah.

But there are descriptions of horses wandering the... I can feel myself getting... It's dreadful that we're so impacted by the suffering of animals when you're dealing also with human remains. But it's the reality. And there are stories of horses with shattered muzzles, hobbling around with three legs. know absolute horror show and so obviously a lot of these had to be destroyed put down is the only thing to do what they've done here i think is they've cut this pit

there's probably a ramp at one end they've led them in one by one and they've shot them and they've just dropped and we've actually got people on the team that you know the cavalry still exist in some form within our veteran community and i had sam tell me that this is exactly how a horse body crumples when it's shot just dropped straight down and that's captured here that moment is captured in skeletal form and then we brought gary in with the metal detector we said right scan the trench every skull gave the signature of what we think is a musket ball so they brought them in one after the other nose to tail shot them in the head that's what we're working on but that story

might change we're still cleaning them up and so we've got at the moment four horses in a row at the moment, four horses in a row in a pit specifically cut for their disposal and the disposal of human bodies. We've got at least one. It looks a complete skeleton. But then on top of that, we've also got what we think are these tin ammo boxes. On top of a stack of them, we have the three legs, which have been amputated and brought out and when we got those back to the lab when the belgian specialists were looking at those in the lab one of them had a french musket wall lodged in it right um so you know this it doesn't get any more visceral so you can forget your lady butler paintings of you know guys with swords on beautiful gray horses the glory reality yeah this is the reality and it's hell yeah and but it's a

great privilege for all of us on this team to actually experience this i mean as i've always described archaeology as the closest thing we have to a time machine and we are in the tardis now right here and it's not pretty but it's the reality and it's a privilege to see it. And it's exactly the sort of thing I wanted us to be encountering, to give a gravitas, to take away from the boy's own image, you know, the thin red line. And the reality is here, right in front of us. And this is the true human cost of war, the cost of war to the animals. And you're able to tell almost every layer, aspect of the battle.

And one thing that I find fascinating about being here is it's also that veteran community that is helping you to tell this history. Yeah, yeah. Without them, you wouldn't be able to know those details. No, they've got that experience to the point where when we excavated those three limbs in 2019, we had a double amputee veteran on the team. And you might think, well, that's horrific. That person is being exposed to that. Well, let's park that for one thing. We have an incredible mental health and welfare team. I've met them. They're amazing.

I mean, we have become, I think, world leaders in that, along with others. But the amazing thing was that his attitude was a positive one because he basically said, I'm pretty sure if that was me at the time, I wouldn't have survived that. And yet here I am having a crack with the team, and going to the bar this evening, and a very pragmatic, realistic measuring up of his own existence in comparison.

We don't know whether the guys that lost those legs lived or died. Chances are that 50-50, whatever, or even less. So that encounter was phenomenal. Well, it's fascinating to see how you're able to take this history of the impact of war, the visceral impact of war, and link it in with those who are still living with the impacts of war today.

And I think it's safe to say that the history of Waterloo is very much still alive and still fluid. Very much so. There are libraries of books literally on Waterloo, but we are telling the story afresh on a daily basis. And that's what I tell, you know, in my briefings. I say, don't listen to anybody that tells you that an archaeologist is just a technician

providing data for a historian. You are the historians. Every time you're on that hill, you pull out a musket ball with your metal detector, you are rewriting the Battle of Waterloo and its history. Well, Tony, thank you so much for your time today. It's been a pleasure. I'm glad we tore that through, actually.

It's almost a form of therapy. Liam, welcome to the Warfare podcast. It has been a long day. It's been a hot day. Down in the, slogging in the trenches. We're back at the hotel. We've even got some quite interesting lounge music going on around us, which is a strange thing as a setting for discussions about Waterloo, but we will

persevere. Now, you've got to tell us a little bit about when you first got involved and how you heard about Waterloo Uncovered. So I am ex-army. I served in the British Army for almost 15 years. I was very lucky to serve between two very prestigious regiments, the Royal Scotch Dragoon Guards and the Household Cavalry. And yeah, I left the army in 2017. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings.

Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit.

Wherever you get your podcasts. And I loved it, had a great career, and was put onto the charity Waterloo Uncovered by an old colleague who knew I had a very amateur sort of passion for history, particularly Napoleonic history. And at the time they were doing and I'm sure they'll do them again they were doing online courses and they really support the you know they're all about the veteran community the wider military family serving personnel so yeah and I applied for the first course it was quite nerve-wracking I'm not

an academic by any means I haven't done anything academic since GCSEs, which was quite some time ago. And to be honest, I started Battlefields Uncovered 1 in September last year, and I just haven't looked back. When I talk to people about what Waterloo Uncovered are doing, I say that this is an organisation that brings veterans out to battlefields across Europe, specifically the battlefield of Waterloo since 2015. And it is and can be for anyone who

has served, but also for those who suffer from PTSD, war trauma, post-traumatic stress, whatever label that you want to give it. And it really offers support and a little bit of camaraderie. And they turn to me and they say, right, okay, so you're taking veterans who have suffered from the traumas of war, and you're putting them into a battlefield situation, perhaps exhuming the remains of those who have died in battle. For many, it doesn't quite add up. Now, being here for the last few days, I see exactly how it adds up. But maybe you can explain it to us. Absolutely.

I mean, archaeology in itself is extremely interesting. Conflict archaeology is a whole separate genre, if you will, and getting veterans and service personnel. And like I say, the wider military family together. First of all, archaeology is surprisingly therapeutic. There is a lot of it that is very, you know, you have to be very careful. You have to be very gentle. And when you're doing that sort of work it it takes you away you know you all you're concentrating on in that moment is you know the trowel and the ground and squaring things off

or you know uncovering an artifact for example your mind is focused absolutely absolutely and all of your troubles in that moment and i understand and i've suffered myself with it at times the archaeology really just focuses your attention and it takes you away. You know, it's a huge escape. And it's got to be a part of it is the team here as well, because they are truly remarkable. Oh, I mean, I cannot speak highly enough

of the people that run this charity. They have absolutely changed my life in a crazy and positive and wonderful way. I'm having the time of my life with what they uncovered just such a good bunch and and you know a real team oh absolutely they they complement each other well everyone gets on everyone pulls together there's always there's always someone there if you need them if you need time away if you need to take five you know it's incredible the amount of support that's available. The level of care is really something else.

But let's go back down into the archaeology itself, because we've been talking to a number of people here, experts, enthusiasts, veterans, everyone who is involved in this process. And no one was expecting that what was found here was going to be found. And this is going out after the embargo. This is an exclusive. We now know that there have been human remains, which may well be a veteran of the Battle of Waterloo,

that have been found. And there's many of those who talk about this in terms of almost excitement, vitriol, that this is truly something amazing for for history but we only talk about that when a battle is outside of living memory for you and for those who have served this must be something that is actually a little bit more somber this is a human this is a veteran this is probably someone that served with the british and in battle. Do you feel that as we're involved in this project? Oh, 100%. Like you say, this is a real person and this isn't a remote place. This isn't a paper or a study online. This could be someone's dad, brother, someone's son,

and this is where they've ended up. And like you say, they could be British, they could be one of our allies from the battle, And it's hugely important. And I know the stock that Waterloo Uncovered place on that respect and on that dignity. And it's hugely important to me that if at all possible, we do everything that we can to ensure that that person has that dignity and respect. I think dignity and respect are the key words there. And one thing for me that I didn't know too much about Waterloo. I knew the big ticket items.

I knew that this was Napoleon's last stand, his last chance, and Wellington's greatest victory. Although Wellington goes on to be a terrible prime minister, but we won't hold that against him at these times. We know of many terrible prime ministers. But as we look at this and we go down to the human level and those who served we also know and one thing i've learned from being here is that there are so few bodies that were found despite the fact that there were thousands killed and there are many theories as to why this is the case do you think that it's important that this is only the second

ever skeleton found on the battlefield do you think this is important to remember those who served and died for britain during the battle absolutely you know you take the words right out my mouth these these young people signed up to do their bit for their country like i say whether they be british or allies and it's hugely important that we do everything we can to you know there is an element of celebration I think but to celebrate their sacrifice and their lives and their commitment to the cause in freeing Europe from tyranny it it sounds a bit of a trope but it's really important and many of the guys at the time probably didn't realise the impact that their actions were having on European history. We see the link between Waterloo and where we are today.

And you can't argue with how much it affected European history from that date. It's a world changing battle. Absolutely. And at the beginning of this podcast, you were saying to me, you know, you're no expert. But I hear that you've been giving lectures on this now. And you are one hell of an expert on some of the aspects of this battle. to me you know you're no expert but i hear that you've been giving lectures on this now and you are one hell of an expert on some of the aspects of this battle so what do you think in terms of the understanding of the battle that this particular slice of history tells us about

waterloo do you think that what waterloo uncovered doing here across multiple sites and with following across different trenches and also the the quite incredible use of metal detectors for only the second time i think with approval at least official search across the battlefield what do you think they're adding to our understanding of waterloo oh i mean the the level of knowledge that this investigation and and it isn't just digging trenches it's reading maps it's it's huge it's speaking to local farmers and landowners it can change the whole course of what we know about things you know we rely on primary sources and and they get diluted over time and a person might

have been at waterloo in 1815 and not wrote their memoirs until the 1850s and you know memories change and and thoughts fade and all that stuff. But what Waterloo Uncovered are doing is it's world-changing stuff. It really is. It's that level of understanding, you know, to prove myths, to disprove myths, to establish facts. It's just, and to have the veterans and service personnel and, like I say, those people involved, it's a world-class programme. You know what?

There was something that Tony, the head of the archaeological side of the dig, said today. He said to you guys at the end of day briefing, what you're doing here will be remembered in a hundred years' time. And I think that is 100% true. Liam, will you be here next year? They can't get rid of me now.

All right. Well, we're going to talk to you again next year. Liam, thank you so much for your time. Thank you very much thanks for listening but before you go a reminder that you can now follow along online on Twitter at HistoryHitWW2, on Instagram at JamesRogersHistory, and on TikTok also at JamesRogersHistory. You can also subscribe to our free Warfare Wednesdays newsletter via the link in the show notes. you