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Hidden away in the backrooms at Humbolt University and the Ethnological Museum in Berlin are some of the most remarkable sound recordings ever made. They date back to World War One and capture the voices of some of the ordinary men who fought in ‘the war to end all wars’. They were recorded by German academics who realised they didn’t have to go abroad to research the world’s many different languages. Instead, they were able to focus on captured soldiers from the furthest reaches of the British Empire, who were being held at prisoner of war camps all over Germany. Among them were a group of Hindus, Sikhs and Indian soldiers imprisoned at camps on the outskirts of Berlin. They performed poems, songs and stories which were recorded using Thomas Eddison’s latest invention.

How these men lived out the rest of their lives has been cloaked in obscurity. On a quest to discover what happened to them and how they died, and armed with the recordings, Priyath Liyanage travels from Germany across the world to some of the villages in northern India where these men lived. It proves to be an emotional journey, resurrecting memories which had long been forgotten. These old soldiers may be long gone but their voices live on.

(Photo: Digital composite of injured Indian soldiers of the British Army at the Brighton Pavilion, converted into a military hospital around 1915. Credit: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)