Andy Chatterton

Yeah, a massive surprise.

If you think at the start of the Second World War, the French army is the largest and most mechanized army in the world.

And they've just been beaten in six weeks.

Destroyed.

And we can look back in hindsight and say whatever we like about the German invasion or the likelihood of German invasion of Britain.

But at that point, it was an absolute shock.

Yes, it had started.

In the years kind of running up to the Second World War, there was a slight ponderance around actually is attack the best form of defence?

So larger amounts of battalions went out to France because that was the feeling that actually attack is the best form of defence.

But that's not to say that regulars weren't still in Britain.

And after the fall of France,

Basically, with all our mobility basically left on the beaches, or most of it.

Exactly right.

Suddenly, we have to think about how do we defend Britain without such mobility?

So, General Ironside, the CNC of Home Forces, constructed in a matter of weeks this whole, that we still see in our landscape today, pillboxes and stop lines and anti-tank teeth and anti-tank ditches, just huge amounts of concrete that come into our landscape.

Yeah, there it is.

And actually, when we see pillboxes like that one, I think it, in many ways, kind of reinforces our perception of Britain at that time.

It's

isolated concrete boxes that look a bit rubbish, if I'm being honest.

But seeing it in a wartime setting, seeing it connected up with the other pillboxes in the area, seeing the slit trenches around it, seeing the fact that it's camouflaged, and seeing the fact that it's part of a stop line that's pushing the invading German army in the direction we want them to go,