The Great War: The People's Story

Episode 1 (1x1)

Air date: Aug 10, 2014

1914:-Newly married lieutenant Alan Lloyd writes to his wife Dorothy from the trenches whilst Oxford undergraduate James Butlin, having obtained a commission also as a lieutenant, sends letters to fellow student Basil Burnett-Hall. Cockney Reg Evans, an early volunteer, writes to his religious mother, including an account of how he heroically undertook a dangerous mission though two years later a shell will explode in his face. All three men initially write in positive tones which turn to disillusion as the war progresses. Emancipated would-be journalist Dorothy Lawrence dresses as a man and cycles to the Front, from where she sends back reports until she is arrested as a spy and sent to a psychiatric unit. She will survive another fifty years and die in 1964.