Passchendaele: John Palmer

Among the recordings made for the BBC's landmark series 'The Great War' in the early 1960s, one in particular stands out. John Palmer, a British Gunner who served as a signaller from 1914 onwards on the Western Front, admitted to being at his lowest ebb by November 1917. Towards the end of his time in Flanders fields, he admitted considering a self-inflicted wound to get out of Passchendaele, and the apocalyptic landscape he was crawling around in night after night. Finally, on his last night in the front line, sheer exhaustion left him unable to react as he heard a shell coming towards him. According to the historian Peter Hart, who recorded many of the interviews with First World War veterans for the Imperial War Museums' collection, John Palmer is the voice of the British soldier of 1917: suffering, drained, and almost broken.