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Sights and sounds of the Somme
GUN battery visitors can experience what trench life was really like for soldiers thanks to a £50,000 cash boost from lottery funds.
Bosses at the Heugh Gun Battery on Hartlepool's Headland say their new underground trench makes them one of the country's most unique wartime attractions.
The dig-out, which includes all the sights and sounds of a First World War trench, has been built after the battery, in Moor Terrace, received the funds from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
It has been meticulously planned by battery chairman John Southcott to mimic a trench in the Somme battlefields in France in 1916 and he even visited a similar set up at a museum in Passchendaele, in Belgium.
He said: "We are really proud of it. We have put it together in a month.
"A lot of men in Hartlepool volunteered to fight in the First World War and this replicates the conditions that they fight in and lived in.
"The story of the bombardment is why we are here but the men of Hartlepool did not just stay in the battery, they went off to France to fight."
The atmospheric trench has various features including a periscope showing battlefield images of 'over the top' and an cramped soldier's bunk area.
It also has a first aid station where wounded mannequins soldiers will be having their injured limbs dressed.
There will also be voice-overs, sound affects of shells falling overhead and authentic touches like a sniper shield that protected soldiers as they fired across no man's land.
Mr Southcott added: "It's almost a subterranean existence because poking your head over the trench meant certain death.
"This is an educational and interactive facility and it's the only realistic construction outside London."
The grant for the trench has also covered the cost of two new employees to staff it.
The trench is nearing completion, and will open from Saturday.
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Monday 28 May 2012
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