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With the coming of war, Britain needed to train thousands of its soldiers.

Luckily, the army had begun buying land on Salisbury Plain in 1897. It鈥檚 deserted, rolling landscape lent itself to large scale manoeuvres which meant that in World War One, it became the army鈥檚 primary training ground.

The plain is well placed; being in the south of the country. That lent itself to the building of extra rail links where they didn鈥檛 already exist, so that trained soldiers could be quickly transported to the coastal ports and off to battle.

Salisbury Plain is where civilians from all over the Empire were turned into soldiers. Remnants of their training still exist today.

Richard Osgood is an archaeologist working for the Ministry of Defence and is based on Salisbury Plain. He took a former soldier, Robert Cummings, to see the best preserved WW1 trenches, at Beacon Hill near Bulford.

Location: Salisbury Plan, Beacon Hill, Wiltshire SP4 9AY
Image shows a group of Canadian soldiers encamped on Salisbury Plain during World War I, circa 1915
Photo by Paul Thompson/FPG/Getty Images
Presented by MOD archaeologist, Richard Osgood

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