Welsh Towns

Eddie Butler uncovers extraordinary tales of tragedy, triumph and everyday spirit in Welsh towns that were changed forever by World War One. In Swansea he meets the daughter of the first Welshman to win the Victoria Cross during the conflict and tells the inspiring story of the munitionettes, the women who risked their health and even their lives making shells for the war effort. Eddie explores the terrible toll that war took on the town's football and rugby teams and learns about the sufferings of the Swansea Pals, the town battalion that was torn apart at the Battle of the Somme. He reveals the hopes and fears of ordinary people living in extraordinary times, in a community that welcomed Belgian refugees with open arms but shunned and persecuted German families already living in their midst.

Eddie Butler uncovers extraordinary tales of tragedy, triumph and everyday spirit in Welsh towns that were changed forever by World War One. In Porthmadog he learns of the sea captains marooned in German ports with their cargo of slate and discovers how the quarrying industry in nearby Blaenau Ffestiniog was nearly wiped out as Britain turned itself into a war machine. He reveals startling footage of the sinking of a Porthmadog ship by a German U-boat. And he meets the grandson of former premier David Lloyd George, the local boy made good, who became known as The Man Who Won the War. Eddie visits the Trawsfynydd home of Hedd Wyn, the Poet of the Black Chair, who is a symbol today for the suffering and loss of a generation of young men. But he also celebrates the unsung foot soldiers who fought and died at the Western Front or at Gallipoli on the Turkish coast. And he unearths a unique collection of photographs taken in Porthmadog in 1918 that depicts a society on the cusp of a transformation.