Army site gives up more of its wartime secrets

Experts unearth clues about how soldiers trained for battle in trenches

“Time travellers” have returned to Tayside to unearth new clues about how soldiers were trained in trench warfare.

The trenches at Barry Buddon Training Centre on the Angus coast were used by soldiers to practise making the structures in which they would live on the Western Front.

Archaeologists returned this year after a previous dig at the site recovered various bullet types – the oldest from a Martini Henry rifle dating from the Anglo-Zulu War in 1879.

The Buddon site was used as a training centre for troops before they were deployed to France and Belgium.

The training system consists of an intricate arrangement of inter-linked trenches including recreations of front line positions, machine gun placements and communication trenches.

The team includes archaeologists from Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO), the part of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) which manages the land, Wessex Archaeology and Breaking Ground Heritage.

Phil Abramson, an archaeologist at DIO, said: “Our excavations on this site last year revealed the trench system soldiers trained in before going to fight on the front lines of the First World War, together with various artefacts such as bullet casings.

“This year we’re hoping to deepen our knowledge of how they trained here.”

The trenches which have been excavated have the tell-tale marks of the presence of sandbag, making archaeologists think they were a type of trench known as breastworks, used in Belgium, where the ground was particularly wet.

Instead of digging a full-depth trench, the sides were built up with sandbags to protect the soldiers.

Members of the Carnoustie Branch of the Royal British Legion Scotland visited the site.

Davie Paton, chairman of the Carnoustie Legion, said: “It was fascinating to have such an insight into how troops in World War One lived and fought, made all the more poignant by the discovery of articles of military equipment and personal effect that the team had uncovered during their excavations this year.”

There are no photographs available of any trench training taking place at Barry Buddon around the period of the First World War.

The archaeologists said they hope to return again next year as they feel that the site still has a lot of secrets to give up.

Picture: Kim Cessford. From left: Phil Abramson of DIO, Davie Paton of Carnoustie Legion and Alex Sotheran of DIO examine a turret that has been unearthed at Barry Buddon.