They knew they were going to die

Send us Fan MailOur next episode takes in one of the most iconic and poignant spots anywhere on the Western Front,  Devonshire Cemetery on the Somme.  Containing 161 men of the 8th and 9th Devons who died on the opening day of the Somme, the cemetery contains the graves of two men who foresaw their own deaths - Captain Duncan Martin and Lieutenant Noel Hodgson.The story of Captain Martin's plasticine model has become the stuff of legend, but were the men of the Devonshire Regiment really cut down by machine-gun fire from the Shrine at Mametz Cemetery, or was this firing from elsewhere? We look at Hodgson's enigmatic and pathos-ridden poem "Before Action" in which he foresees his own death, and recall a memorable visit to a French cemetery on All Souls Day, where the chrysanthemums explode the cemeteries into a riot of colour.Also in this episode, we consider Edwardian society's view of death, and hear the story of a quack American psychic, the unlikely named Aloysius Craddock, whose stage show "Tomorrow is the new yesterday" caused shock and scandal to the great and good of London's theatre-goers.