Help yourself to a shameless plug and tell us about your next book and TV work.

If you’ve been lucky enough to attend one of Andy Robertshaw’s talks on the Great War you will know how passionate he is about military history and just how much there is for archaeologists to discover. This seems incredible when you consider the war was part of the lives of grandparents or even the parents of many HMVF members and just about remains within living memory. It is even harder to imagine that this will one day be equally true of the Second World War, but time marches on. Andy is a prolific author and much in demand of documentary makers and somehow finds time to run the Royal Logistic Corps Museum. Here he gives us a bit of insight as to how he fits it all in.

When did you first develop an interest in military subjects?

Aged about six, I went to Marston Moor near York with my grandfather who told me about the battle of 1644. He has worked at Long Marston station in the Great War and had lots of stories. Afterward he used a knife and string to make me a bow and arrows. Was this my first re-enactment?

How did your career progress?

From teaching history in Secondary schools for five years to the National Army Museum much helped by a reference from Brigadier Peter Young whom I had met via the Sealed Knot. My move to my present post came after 22 years at the NAM.

Did you ever imagine you would be running a museum?

See above! I had often thought about the possibility, but it was only when I saw the advert for my present post that it became a potential reality.

Tell us about the RLC Museum. Be so kind as to outline the sort of information it can offer military vehicle owners, and how and they should go about getting in touch?

The museum covers the current RLC, formed in 1993, but also the forming Corps from the middle ages onward. The corps are the Royal Corps of Transport, Army Catering Corps, Royal Army Ordnance Corps, Royal Pioneer Corps and the Army Postal and Courier Service. The museum offers tremendous variety and covers some areas of specific personal interest. These include ordnance; I used to make muskets, and cooking. My father and mother were both bakers and my youngest brother is a chef.

If you own a British soft-skin vehicle or trailer from the Second World War onwards almost up until today there is a very good chance that we hold the ‘B’ Vehicle record card. The search fee is £25 and we cannot promise to be successful although we still have to conduct the research. A successful result will tell you the history of the vehicle, which units used it and when it left military service.

What would you say are the biggest challenges facing military museums?

Making the military relevant to a modern British public. Very few people now have relatives serving in the Armed Forces and the number of veterans is falling. As a result the ‘military’ is viewed as not being linked to most people’s lives. Family history and popular genealogy is helping but there is much to do to prevent a gap opening between the military and civilians.

Oshkosh HET transporters of 8 Transport Regiment at Beverley.

Do you think there is any likelihood of an incarnation of the defunct Museum of Army Transport ever surfacing? I was at Beverley when the army took the exhibits away in a big convoy and it was a very sad affair.

The majority of the large vehicles are now stored by the National Army Museum at their unit in Stevenage. The plan for NAM North was ambitious and almost worked. Getting funding for such a scheme in the current economic climate is difficult to contemplate.

The famous 1949 Nuffield-Morris Gutty waiting to be loaded up

The old HMVF chestnut: What is your favourite tank?

The Comet. Used by my favourite Division, 11^th Armoured, for an allied tank in Western Europe it was well armed, fast and British!

Who would say had the greatest influence on your interest in military matters?

My history teacher Mr Phibbins, whom I still see; Rose Coombs from the Imperial War Museum who took me on my first battlefield tour and Brigadier Peter Young.

Do you have a favourite museum?

The Imperial War Museum in Lambeth.

Turning to battlefield archaeology, you are well known for your work relating to the Great War. What would you say have been your important achievements in this field?

The team of people with whom I have worked for ten years have made Great War archaeology familiar to an international audience. A large number of people who are interested in military history are now familiar with the damage illegal metal-detecting can do and that it is possible to identify war dead providing it is done scientifically. The result of this has been meeting the relatives of soldiers who died in 1915. This has been a humbling experience.

What is the most challenging aspect of your work on the Western Front?

The cold, the wet, the mud, the danger of gas and explosives the boredom (some times) and the occasional encounter with human remains. Put this way it is the closest I have got to being in the army.

Archaeologists work in all weathers. The temperature had slumped from 15 to 3 centigrade in Thiepval Wood on the morning this snap was taken last October.

What have been the highs and lows?

The high point is the arrival of a photograph showing a man I first saw as bones, rotted uniform and mud. The low point is finding the same person. No matter how promising the outlook of identification may look, you know how this man died.

Excavating a trench mortar position

Is there a specific battlefield location you enjoy visiting the most?

The Somme. I don’t know why. I have been there so often I no longer take a map.

Some things are obvious, but how much do you think the ‘Old Front Line’ has changed in recent years. What do you think are the good and not so good points?

Battlefield visitors like the place as they first saw it. There is a fine line between good facilities and over commercialisation.

What is the greatest danger facing the First World War battlefields today?

Intensive farming and human development. The countries of Northern Europe have to balance living with the battlefields with their need to build houses, factories and roads. This requires sensitivity and understanding by all parties involved. We cannot turn the Western Front into a theme park, but do not want to see the remains bulldozed away. This has happened before. The decision by West Flanders to abandon the extension of the A19 motorway near Ypres was based on archaeological evidence and the demonstration of a clear threat to a joint European heritage.

What do you think of the growing market in battlefield relics? It’s fair to say desecrating graves is pretty serious stuff and some of the dealers and hunters are pretty unpleasant people. Do you think there is any hope of the authorities dealing with them in a serious way?

The French already have a law preventing illegal metal-detecting and have very serious penalties for those that break the law. Sadly there are criminals in all areas of human activity and those that raid the battlefield come from all over Europe. This includes the UK.

Some people are reckless enough to handle unexploded shells like these. A quick photo and walk away quickly is MB’s sound advice, if you must!

How important are field trips for school students? Do you think they have a serious value to understanding the conflict?

I have been on many school trips and have seen the impact a well run tour can have on the most difficult students. Too many cemeteries, too much time on the coach and insufficient explanation of what happened under ‘your feet’ turns off students of all ages. Plan carefully, tell a story about people not numbers and be factual; this always works. Most soldiers never wrote a poem, were under 16, got shot for ‘cowardice’ or went over the top to ‘certain death’.

Help yourself to a shameless plug and tell us about your next book and TV work.

The next book is entitled ‘Digging the Trenches’ and looks at the stories that surround all the recent projects that were filmed for television. My co-author, who did all the hard work, is David Kenyon the archaeologist. Published by Pen and Sword Amazon tells me that it is out on 20^th March 2008. We start filming series two of The Trench Detectives/Finding the Fallen in late January.

The Somme battlefield. Ovillers cemetery stands out in the autumnal farmland

Away from the Great War, what other periods are you interested in?

The English Civil War is still a great favourite and I have a book in the pipeline on Colonel Sir Marmaduke Rawdon a Royalist officer who died in 1646.

Is there anywhere in the world you would like to go exploring?

I would like to do a television series about battlefields round the Mediterranean. This would be filmed in the summer and would make a nice contrast to Belgium and Northern France in winter.

Do you have a favourite figure from military history?

Perhaps not surprisingly Peter Young. He is someone who had a fantastic career in the Second World War, was larger than life, and yet had time to help a young teacher get started in military history.

What are the best and worst aspects of making TV documentaries?

The best aspect has to be getting positive responses from people who watch the programmes. The worst is trying to condense complex subjects down to something that suits the format of television. A documentary is not a lecture or a book.

What ambitions do you have for the future?

To continue to help people learn about military history using as many techniques as I can. I really want to make a contribution to popular understanding of the period 1914-18 for the centenary anniversary. I won’t be around for the bi-centenary!