History Channel – Soldiers’ Stories (Northern Ireland)

The History Channel (sometimes facetiously nicknamed “the WWII Channel”) this week launched a programme on the experiences of British Army soldiers who served in Northern Ireland from 1969-2007.

A dedicated website page provides links to video interviews, a potted history of the conflict, timeline, photo gallery, links for support/help, and details on books by Ken Wharton, who significantly contributed to the making of the Soldiers’ Stories programme.

The video interviews provided online are not comrades-in-arms, but instead individual recollections of particularly memorable events. How the ordinary becomes the extraordinary: getting around by car/helicopter, ordinary residents trapped by circumstance, reporters on patrol, buying a meal at McDonalds, stopping in for cups of tea, asking permission to pet a dog.

The History Channel is being generous by allowing these video interviews to be embedded elsewhere, so here they are below. The website is still worth a visit.