Our World War is a gripping factual drama series offering viewers first-hand experience of the extraordinary bravery of young soldiers fighting 100 years ago. Drawing on real stories of World War One soldiers it uses the visual techniques and imagery familiar from modern warfare – POV helmet camera footage, surveillance images and night vision – to immerse the BBC Three audience in life on the Western Front.
Each episode is closely based on first-hand testimony, interviews and memoirs that reveal often hidden and sometimes disturbing aspects of the combat experience. The first follows a single company of riflemen and machine gunners as they fight the first battle of the war against a vast German army, a battle which delivers the first four Victoria Crosses of the war.
The second episode, set against the backdrop of the Battle of the Somme, follows the extraordinary real journey of a soldier in a Pals regiment, from the moment he enlists, through his first brush with warfare, the experience of hand-tohand combat in fearsome and unexpected conditions and the challenges of no man’s land.
The series culminates in a final episode set in the last months of the war, tracking a tank commander and his crew as they pound their way across enemy territory, fighting against the odds to survive.