Tracing Great War Ancestors

Former soldier, military vehicle expert and presenter for Battlefield History TV, Richard Hone, has his origins firmly in Sunderland. Richard’s Great Uncle Bill, William Pye, died in the Great War somewhere on the Western Front. With his passion for military history, Richard sets out to trace the war time service of his Great Uncle Bill on the battlefields of France and Flanders in what is a highly personal journey.

Armed with the details of Richard’s great uncle William Pye’s service between 1914 and 1918, this film shows how with the help of battlefield historian, Tim Saunders, Richard attempts to ‘Find Uncle Bill’ and trace his war on the Western Front up to his death just weeks before the Armistice. Their journey takes them from his first battle at Loos, via the Somme and Passchendaele, to his last battle and lost grave in the Ypres Salient.

In ‘Uncle Bill’s Medals’, Phil Mussel explains which campaign medals that the five million British and Empire soldiers who fought in the Great War would have been entitled to as a result of their active service.