All language subtitles for Abandoned.Engineering.S14E07.Apocalypse.Airbase.1080p.UKTV.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-RAWR_track3_[eng]

NARRATOR: A top secret complex in
Arkansas

whose occupants carried the fate of
a nation in their hands.

MAN:They would have been very aware
of the fact

that they could be the person that
started a nuclear war.

An ancient ruin in Cambodia ravaged
by one man's cruel deception.

MAN:There were gun battles
happening.

They were fighting over the statues.

Calling these "blood antiquities"
makes a lot of sense.

A facility in Wales tainted by the
actions

of an international hero.

Winston Churchill is most remembered
in history for leading Britain

through the Second World War.

But for some, his legacy is more
complicated.

And a stronghold in France that
became the site of one man's

journey to clear his father's name.

The French commander, was he a
traitor, a coward,

or did he stay with his men?

NARRATOR: In northeast Arkansas are
the sprawling remains of a

secret facility that stood guard over
America

during its most dangerous hour.

WOMAN:This place is huge.

It's obviously been used for
something very big.

MAN:You've got offices, you've got
playgrounds,

you've got athletic fields.

There's all the makings of a proper
town here.

But this was no normal town.

It was built with a very specific
purpose.

One area, in particular, provides
the first piece of the puzzle.

MAN:The most obvious feature here
is clearly the runway.

With all the housing and other
facilities near the airfield,

you'd have to assume this is part
of the military.

These places were all around the
country and most people had no idea.

But what were they hiding?

Everything here was part of the
nation's last line of defence

during a time of perilous
uncertainty.

WOMAN:When the Cold War reaches its
most fevered pitch,

the people on this base

are tasked with the most serious of
responsibilities.

MAN:The crews knew that if they
were ever called upon to go aloft

and use their payloads in battle,
they would trigger World War III.

And for one terrifying instant, it
looked like that moment had come.

This was the closest that we, as a
nation, have ever come

to nuclear war.

Joseph Alley is a historian who has
spent almost three years

uncovering what went on inside this
clandestine compound.

Security was paramount.

There were very specific places
that you were allowed to go,

and there were also places that you
were explicitly forbidden to go,

and this was all laid out to you on
day one.

This is Blytheville Air Force Base.

It was first operational during
World War II.

But in the 1950s, as tension between
Western democracies

and the Soviet empire mounted,

it became part of America's
front-line defences in the Cold War.

JOSEPH ALLEY:In 1959,

when the Strategic Air Command took
this base over,

this is where they were going
to be making very important,

world-changing decisions.

WOMAN:So SAC, the Strategic Air
Command,

is essential to the Cold War
effort.

They're in charge of all the nuclear
capabilities that come from the air.

A squadron of B-52 long-range
bombers was based here,

poised to counter the increasing
Communist threat.

MAN:So, these big B-52s could carry
a nuclear payload.

And so they were meant to deter any
adversary.

But as soon as the Strategic Air
Command arrived at Blytheville

to evaluate the base, they realised
there was a critical flaw

in their deterrence strategy.

MISSILE LAUNCHES

If the Soviets were to launch
a first strike attack,

intended to cripple America's
defences,

they would not have been able to
retaliate fast enough.

WOMAN:SAC commanders understood
that the US was not ready

to respond quickly to incoming
nuclear threat.

Something had to be done to remedy
that, and fast.

PROF WAWRO:You have to fuel these
bombers.

You have to get them out of their
hangars onto the runway.

You gotta put the right ordnance
aboard.

The average time to do all that is
six hours.

Well, if you're in a nuclear
standoff,

and time is of the essence, that's
way too long.

And so Strategic Air Command decides

it wants to get that down to 15
minutes.

By 1960, the construction of a new
building designed to meet

the rapid-response objective was
completed on this base.

JOSEPH ALLEY:So this is the
Readiness Crew building.

This was a 70-man crew dormitory.

They would do what was called
an alert rotation.

For seven days, they would be
living, eating and working

in the Readiness Crew building.

The airfield's distinctive design was
also a key part of the defence plan,

if the pilots were called into
action.

The shape of the tarmac was all
about speed.

It ends up looking a bit like a
Christmas tree,

but without the kind of package
we'd want Santa to deliver.

The planes were fully fuelled and
armed on the branches,

ready to pull out onto the runway
at any moment's notice.

JOSEPH ALLEY:And then they're gonna
come up to the end of the runway

at a specific angle so that they can
very quickly take off.

There's no stopping and turning.

There's no having to work your way
in, arrange it.

It's just boom, boom.

Sometimes you would have one
plane's tail

fitted right up against one plane's
nose.

That's how close these guys
would get.

The payload each bomber carried

had the potential to inflict
unimaginable devastation.

JOSEPH ALLEY:You had five B-52s.

Each one was manned with two Hound
Dog GAM-77 cruise missiles.

Each of those cruise missiles was
roughly three times as powerful

as the nuclear weapons that were
used on Japan

at the end of World War II.

You also have about 58 other bases
all over the US,

so you can figure out just how much
destructive force

the United States was capable of
bringing to bear

with just the flip of a switch.

And it's not long before they get
the call.

In October of 1962, an American
spy plane flies over Cuba,

and they realise that there are
missile bases being built

on the Cuban islands by the Soviet
Union.

This was simply too close.

They could take out Miami or take
out Washington DC

with no warning really.

So this triggers the Cuban Missile
Crisis.

PROF MITCHELL:The B-52s across the
country were put on 24-hour alert,

and Blytheville was no different.

In this room, there was a meeting

with all of the crewmen that were
on alert at the time.

It was explicitly explained,

"Things are getting tense with the
Soviet Union.

"There's something happening down in
Cuba.

"And the Strategic Air Command
has officially notified us

"that they're going to be
implementing what they called

"their one-eighth program.

This means that one out of every
eight bombers

"in the Strategic Air Command is
gonna be in the air at all times."

This was all part of a wider plan
called Operation Chrome Dome,

which would run for seven years.

For 24 hours a day, 365 days a year,

around 60 nuclear-armed bombers
were circling the skies over America,

ready to strike Cuba, the USSR, or
elsewhere at a moment's notice.

And, as the Cuban Missile Crisis
escalated,

the threat edged ever closer.

On the 24th of October,

the Strategic Air Command issued a
new order.

PROF ZARSADIAZ:They stepped up to
DEFCON 2.

That's just one step away from
nuclear war.

The DEFCON defence readiness system

prescribes five states of alert for
the US military.

At DEFCON 2 You are at your station,
your finger is on the button.

And then, of course, DEFCON 1
is pressing that button.

While the American people were aware
that the country was on the brink

of nuclear war,

those inside this building knew that,
at any moment,

they could be called on to launch a
strike.

The tensions were real.

The stressors were real.

This was an incredibly dangerous
time.

JOSEPH ALLEY:You had this kind of
cycle where guys would wake up

and they would get their
assignments,

and they would be in this building,
just sitting and waiting

for that klaxon, telling them that
it is now DEFCON 1.

They would have been very aware
of the fact

that they could be the person
that started

a nuclear war.

For eight agonising days during the
crisis,

the personnel based here waited for
the apocalypse to begin.

The purpose of these bases can be
none other...

But behind the scenes,

President Kennedy and Soviet Premier
Nikita Khrushchev were negotiating.

Luckily, neither side really wanted
to go to war,

and so Kennedy and Khrushchev

were able to come to a peaceful
conclusion.

Nobody was happy, but nobody
was dead either.

The Soviets agreed to remove
their missiles from Cuba

in exchange for the US removing its
missiles away from Turkey.

The immediate danger may have passed,

but the conflict was far from over.

In the decades to come, those
stationed at Blytheville

continued to quietly guard the
nation from the skies.

JOSEPH ALLEN:You've got thousands
of people

that are working to keep up the
alert facilities,

so you've got a veritable army of
men and women

who are working to keep the country
safe.

DR SHARP LANDDECK:As we move
through the 1980s,

and the Cold War starts to ease,

American military bases are being
closed.

And so Blytheville was on the
chopping block.

In 1991, the last aircraft left its
hangar,

rolled along the runway and took to
the skies.

Following its closure in 1992,

Blytheville became a municipal
airport

and the Ready Alert facility was
permanently closed down.

Now, Joseph and his team plan to
turn this, once top secret site,

into a Cold War museum.

Originally, there were 59 alert
facilities over the continental US.

This is the last one that is fully
intact.

This is the last one that the public
will ever be able to visit.

And so we are very proud to be able
to take on a project like this.

In northern Cambodia is the ruin
of an ancient site

caught in the middle of a modern
day scandal.

MAN:On the ground, we can see we're
kind of in Indiana Jones territory.

There are ruined temples.

There are stone carvings, pillars,
walkways.

WOMAN:The labour alone that would
have been required to construct

something of this scale is
staggering.

But that's just the tip of the
iceberg.

You get the sense that these
structures

were part of an entire city.

NARRATOR: At its height,

this was once the capital of a
formidable dynasty

that mysteriously vanished.

Leaving behind an extraordinary
treasure trove

that lay forgotten for a thousand
years.

When it was rediscovered, that
became the beginning

of a different kind of tragedy.

If you look, you can see these
pedestals,

but it looks like something is
missing.

The treasures of this place would
be plundered in, what some

people have called, the greatest
art heist in history.

WOMAN:The mastermind operated in
plain sight,

masquerading as a friend of the
Cambodian people.

He was warm, he was funny.

And so he was a brilliant conman.

But his luck would eventually
run out.

Dr Ea Darith is an archaeologist
and expert on this site.

He first came here in 2005

and has been unearthing its secrets
ever since.

The origin of this lost world dates
back to the birth

of a great civilisation.

MAN:The Khmer Empire began to come
together in about 900 CE,

when a leader named Jayavarman began
to unite various warring tribes

into a large entity like a modern
state.

But just over a century later, it
was hit by a power struggle,

with Jayavarman IV emerging
as the potential new leader

of the Khmer people.

He needed an impressive city to
prove his superiority,

so he built this...

..Koh Ker.

He cemented his power with
deliberately

ambitious construction projects.

It would have been furnished with
priceless objects,

including statues revered by the
Khmer people.

By 928, Jayavarman's rivals were no
more,

and he proclaimed himself the sole
emperor at Koh Ker.

But Jayavarman IV's reign would be
short lived.

He died in 941, and in the political
shifts that followed,

the Khmer capital was relocated.

That, coupled with a likely water
shortage, left his city abandoned.

Koh Ker would remain hidden for
almost a thousand years,

but when it was rediscovered, it
opened the door to some

very nefarious characters.

In the late 19th century, French
explorers stumbled upon the remains

of Koh Ker and began documenting
the site,

including its numerous statues.

But a century later, in 1975,

when Cambodia was taken over by the
Communist Khmer Rouge regime,

the country and this ruin were cut
off from the world

until the late 1990s.

As the country recovered slowly, it
was becoming clear

that it wasn't just the Cambodian
people who had suffered.

Their ancient history had been
destroyed and ravaged.

Hundreds of temples were looted,
and at Koh Ker

virtually every statue was missing.

In 2012, lawyer Bradley J Gordon, an
American based in Cambodia,

was called in to help bring them
back.

I'd been hired by the Department of
Justice

to track down stolen Cambodian
antiquities.

My assignment was to find the
smuggling network,

and we were just focused on one
statue, the Duryodhana statue.

One year earlier, the statue had
gone up for auction at Sotheby's

in New York, with a list price of $2
to $3 million.

It was a 500lb sculpture of a
mythical Hindu warrior,

and it was taken from Koh Ker.

After a tip-off from the Cambodian
government

that this was a stolen artefact,

the US Department of Justice stopped
the sale and opened an investigation.

BRADLEY GORDON:We interviewed more
than 100 people.

We found one man in particular, who
remembered seeing it

at Koh Ker village on an oxcart.

But we also started to realise

that many of the people we were
talking to,

knew a lot more than just about
that one statue.

As Bradley dug deeper, it appeared
that the widespread theft

of treasures from Koh Ker could be
linked back to one man.

I came across the name of this
dealer, Douglas Latchford.

He was a well-known character
when it came to the sale

of Cambodian antiquities.

JIM MEIGS:He was this charming guy.

He presented himself as almost an
amateur archaeologist.

The idea that he might be a kind
of kingpin of an international

looting scandal was really shocking.

Latchford was born in British India
and moved to Thailand in the 1950s.

From there, he began searching the
ancient ruins of Cambodia

and became obsessed with the statues
at this site.

To me, Douglas Latchford was the
Shadow King of Koh Ker.

He was behind one of the greatest
art crimes in history.

Bradley's investigation revealed

that Latchford had used his contacts
and knowledge of the region

to exploit the chaos of the Khmer
Rouge period and make himself rich.

For 40 years, from his home in
Bangkok, he organised gangs

of Cambodian looters to smuggle
out statues.

The reward was so great, these
looters were willing

to risk their lives to get their
hands on the ancient treasures.

Er, calling these "blood
antiquities" makes a lot of sense

because they definitely have blood
attached to them.

There were gun battles happening.

They were fighting over the statues.

And so we've heard stories about
individuals being killed,

out here at Koh Ker.

It's estimated that Latchford's
gangs stole up to 100 statues

from Koh Ker alone.

We know that from one billionaire
client,

he sold him $35 million of statues.

That's just one client.

Latchford had many.

ALICIA GUTIERREZ-ROMINE:His
customers were private collectors.

But also museums, including the
world-renowned Met in New York

and the British Museum.

He was even knighted by the
Cambodian government

after donating a number of statues
to the National Museum.

Latchford had fooled the world

and in the process earned himself
around £75 million.

But the volume of evidence was
adding up

and his time was running out.

In 2019, US federal investigators
made their move.

He was indicted by the US government

for the trafficking in stolen
Cambodian antiquities.

Douglas Latchford escaped justice.

He died in his late 80s, and he
didn't serve any time

for these incredibly massive crimes
he carried out.

Bradley and his team didn't give up
the fight to get back

what belonged to the Cambodian
people.

We entered into negotiations with
the Latchford family.

We were dealing mostly with
Douglas's daughter.

During the negotiations, Julie
Latchford did the right thing.

She agreed to give back everything.

Now, of course, there remains a huge
problem of identifying and returning

the hundreds of other Cambodian
antiquities that Latchford peddled

over the years, but that's underway.

Our restitution team has already
successfully brought home

about 300 objects.

We know that there are more out
there, especially from Koh Ker.

I think for the rest of my life,
I will be working on this

and it will be far from over.

Today, Koh Ker is still revered as a
place of worship by the local people.

Meanwhile, in July 2024, 14 of its
statues were finally returned

to the National Museum of Cambodia.

For the Cambodian people, these
statues are not artwork.

They're not Picassos, they're not
Van Goghs.

They're living, they're spirits.

So they feel very strongly that the
statues were taken

out of the house, out of the family,
and now they need to come back.

In the Welsh town of Tonypandy
stands the relic of a time

when this region was the centre of a
fierce rebellion.

MAN:This building looms large,

and it's clearly from an era that's
now been forgotten.

WOMAN:Inside, it's just this vast,
cavernous space.

There's nothing really to suggest,
you know, what it was used for.

Yet, within these walls, a desperate
people mobilised

against the might of the British
Army.

MAN:This building was at the heart
of a conflict that was gonna

reverberate across the nation.

MAN:The townspeople here tell
stories of mounted cavalry

marching down their streets.

It must have felt like an
occupation.

And for them, the treachery lay
at the hands of one of Britain's

most lauded politicians.

Winston Churchill is most remembered
in history for leading Britain

through the Second World War,

but for some his legacy is more
complicated.

In time he would be regarded as a
hero.

Back then, he was seen as a villain.

He faced an impossible decision, do
nothing or send in soldiers

against his own citizens.

His decision still haunts the town
to this day.

This place was the flashpoint.

What happened here spread like
wildfire.

Philip Rowlands grew up in this
small Welsh town.

His grandfather worked here in the
early 1900s

and told him stories of a very
different place.

It was a little bit like the
Klondike.

People were coming in from
everywhere.

It was a vibrant, burgeoning
community, you know.

It's places like these that used to
be the industrial heart

of the country.

Each morning, men would file out of
their homes

and make their way to the sites that
built this town, the coal mines.

This coal field was the largest in
Britain,

and the town of Tonypandy sat in the
middle of it.

My grandfather's generation never
wanted me to go down the mine.

You know, they only wanted you to
be a teacher or something.

They wouldn't have given it up for
anything,

because the camaraderie and the
bonding that they made

was second to none, really.

But the nature of the work meant
that each day

could be the miner's last.

At the time, this was one of the
most dangerous jobs in the world,

and the pits in this valley were no
exception.

The issue the miners encountered
in the wet Welsh hills

was that as they dug, the water,
would pool and fill the mine shafts,

so they needed to constantly pump
the water out to prevent

it from flooding.

This is the Tonypandy Powerhouse.

Built in 1905, it housed
state-of-the-art machinery

capable of pumping up to 5,000
gallons of water from the mines

every minute.

It would have been very noisy in
here because of the machinery

that was used to...to pump and to
keep the mine clear of water.

It would have been a steam engine.

You would need to stoke the steam
boilers.

And that was incredibly dirty, hard
work.

Without these engines running, the
mines would be unworkable.

In many ways, this was the beating
heart of the operation.

But even with the powerhouse in
place, it was still a risky business.

The coal seam the miners excavated,
was one of the most hazardous

in Britain, and they wanted their
wages to reflect this.

It's gaseous, which means that it's
especially volatile.

It wasn't uncommon for workers
to end up dead from explosions,

partial collapses, any number
of accidents.

Meanwhile, the mine-owning cartel
who controlled these coalfields,

refused to compensate for the dangers
despite their exorbitant profits.

They called the shots, and they
would squeeze their workers

as much as they could.

There was no minimum wage in the
mining industry.

Wages depended on how much coal a
miner could cut during their shift.

Years of hard work, injuries and
meagre pay took a toll

on a place like this.

At some point, people were going to
demand a change.

It was a scene all too familiar in
mining centres across the world.

And in Tonypandy, in 1910, came the
final straw.

A new pit opened in the valley and
it came time to negotiate pay.

Workers and management were
immediately at odds.

The Cambrian Colliery Company first
offered its workers

one shilling and ninepence for
every ton of coal extracted.

The workers came back with two
shillings and sixpence.

The new pit was extremely difficult
to mine,

and the miners ended up with even
less pay.

The two sides wouldn't budge,
and the haggling went on

until the mine owners decided to
force the issue.

On September 1st, 1910, the company
locked out the entire workforce

from one of their mines.

It was a deliberate act of
provocation

because of the growth of the South
Wales Miners Federation

that would have challenged the coal
owners' power,

and they didn't want that.

But the union was already stronger
than the owners realised.

Miners across the region responded
by balloting for a strike,

and on November 1st, 12,000
men went out on strike.

Tensions were high and Tonypandy
had become a ticking time bomb.

Only one pit was left operating
in the area,

and it relied on the powerhouse to
keep it going.

On the 7th of November, angry miners
descended here,

determined to force the crucial
facility to shut down.

8,000 striking miners began to
gather in the town,

with their sights set on the
powerhouse, still churning away.

But the police knew the strikers
were coming

and had prepared for the assault.

There were about 100 police drafted,
waiting for any problems.

A tense standoff ensued.

The whole situation was balancing
on a knife's edge.

And then a stone came crashing
through one of the windows.

The scene quickly turned violent
and a riot erupted in town.

After repeated baton charges,
police drove strikers back

just before midnight.

Yet the police were terrified they
would be overrun by the strikers

and made a frantic call to the
government in London for help.

The man in charge of homeland
affairs at the time

was Winston Churchill.

30 years before he became
Prime Minister.

Churchill had authorised police
forces from London and Bristol

to maintain order.

But it was becoming clear this
wasn't just gonna go away.

The next day, the riots didn't
subside. In fact, they escalated.

People were smashing in windows,
breaking into shops.

It was a mess.

Churchill was faced with a tough
decision.

Appease the miners or send in the
army to crush the uprising.

He chose to use military force
against his own people.

At 1.20am on the 9th of November, two
days after the riots began,

Churchill dispatched a British
cavalry squadron to restore order.

This was a big call to make,

one that was guaranteed to be
contentious.

Fear spread throughout the town.

Not only were there hundreds
of police in the streets,

now there were armed troops
alongside them too.

The miners faced such an
overwhelming force

they had no choice but to back down.

The strikers had to go back slowly,
drift back because they didn't

have any money and, you know, they
were...

..Children were starving. Their
wives were starving.

The line had been crossed and that
would never be forgotten.

These weren't foreign enemies.

These were his own countrymen.

Winston Churchill was vilified here
for many years.

The stories go when the news showed
a picture of Churchill

during the war, you know, people
would boo.

The Tonypandy Powerhouse continued
operating until 1966, and today,

following the decline of Welsh coal
mining, only one mine

here remains in use.

That's the sad part. We are losing
our legacy

and we're losing our memory of
things.

We are trying to raise the awareness
of the rich and unique heritage

of this area, that people should be
proud.

In northern France, near the Belgian
border,

a bizarre collection of structures
litters the landscape.

MAN:It's an area covered in rolling
hills and sprawling farms.

But up on one ridgeline is a massive
metal saucer, tilted on one side,

almost like a UFO crashed there.

This huge, heavy piece of steel has
been popped up like a bottle cap.

What power was required to knock
that loose?

The land is scarred and riddled
with craters.

It looks as if a violent and
terrible event has taken place.

A short distance away is a building
that at first seems unrelated.

Yet further investigation reveals
they are intimately connected.

When you go inside, you realise
that most of this site is actually

underground and it is enormous.

We see bunk beds, crumbling walls,
twisted metal.

This was clearly a military site on
a massive scale.

This marvel of 20th century
technology

became the pride of France that came
before its fall.

Benjamin Dumont is part of an
association dedicated

to preserving the memory of this
site.

He was inspired to return when he
understood its importance to history.

That story began after Europe was
engaged in a conflict

that had grave consequences for
future generations.

After World War I, French leaders
began to debate how to best prepare

for what they saw as a second,
inevitable conflict with Germany.

They therefore began to construct
this line of defences

that would straddle the demarcation
between Germany and France,

and protect France from an attack.

It was called the Maginot Line

and was named after France's Minister
of War, Andre Maginot,

who ordered its construction.

By 1938, the line of fortifications
was complete.

This section was called L'Ouvrage De
La Ferte.

The result was meant to be
invulnerable,

both to airplane bombing and to
tank fire.

If a French soldier can stand in a
dome with a machine gun

and shoot Germans all day, that
makes the French

soldier more powerful.

The technology is a substitute
for...for manpower,

and the technology is gonna save
lives in the next war.

Of course, it didn't work.

In 1940, the Nazis invaded France

and the nation's defences would be
put to the test.

But there had been a major oversight
in the French design.

They never expected the Germans to
invade through Belgium,

and this part of the Maginot Line
had been left vulnerable to attack.

The idea is they're going to armour
the whole border of France.

But then budget cuts...

..it's expensive.

There wasn't enough money to fully
fortify this section of the line,

and this was a fact the Nazis were
all too aware of.

On the 18th of May, 1940,

the Germans began pounding L'Ouvrage
De La Ferte.

The French soldiers stationed as
the garrison there, fell

under the command of Lieutenant
Maurice Bourguignon.

With only around 100 troops, he was
left to fight a battle

against the Nazis he could never win.

The Germans have got 88mm anti-tank
guns.

These high-velocity artillery pieces
are capable of drilling rounds right

into those steel domes.

We can see the scars.

But worse was to come.

The German soldiers then moved
to the next stage

of their carefully orchestrated
assault.

The German forces had dug trenches
up the sides of the hill,

reaching the gun emplacements.

Once the fort's defences had been
breached,

the German attackers began to drop
bombs and smoke down inside.

Fire raged throughout the fort,
detonating munitions and filling

the passages with smoke.

It was clear the battle was over and
Lieutenant Bourguignon

made a desperate plea for help.

Lieutenant Bourguignon wanted to
save his people.

And the general comes back,

"Your fortress is like a submarine

"and you are going to go down with
the ship."

The French soldiers had no choice
but to retreat to the lowest levels

of the fallen stronghold.

They put on their gas masks
and try to survive.

The myth of the Maginot Line's
strength had been shattered

and the Nazi propaganda machine went
into overdrive.

The Germans are able to say that
superior German technology

and German racial superiority
overcame the vaunted Maginot Line.

One German leaflet read, "The
Maginot Line is a mass grave

"for all those who defend it.

"There's no way of resisting the
German army.

"Stop fighting, lay down your arms."

In the chaos that followed,

Lieutenant Bourguignon was accused
of betraying his country.

In June, the Germans gave the
French soldiers a burial.

14 of them were not named.

Among those unidentified was
Lieutenant Bourguignon.

Rumours swirled that he had deserted
his men, or even collaborated

with the Germans to hand over the
fort.

This was a theory that had some
currency during the war

and immediately after.

But one man was determined to find
out the truth and clear his name.

Eve worked tirelessly to contact
German war veterans,

hoping one of them might know
something.

33 years after the fateful German
assault, his prayers were answered.

They exhumed the shallow grave,
identifying some by their ID tags.

Bourguignon's body was confirmed
by his uniform stripes.

It was discovered that Lieutenant
Bourguignon had not

deserted his men.

Posthumously, he was given the
Legion of Honour,

which is France's highest military
order.

Today, the site is open to the
public and includes

a small cemetery for those who gave
their life defending France

in its darkest hour.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media