Yesterday's Witness (1969)

Eye-witness accounts by two of the last surviving veterans of a war that was fought 80 years ago during the reign of Queen Victoria. Ninety-eight-year-old Archie Bowers was in the West Kent Yeomanry and 102-year-old Bill Bilham was with the RAMC. As a background to their vivid stories of the distant battles of the Boer War are illustrators' pictures from The Sphere, The Graphic and The Illustrated London News

Nov. 9, 1980, midnight

Towards the end of the Second World War the RAF Film Unit decided to make a feature length film about their part in supplying the French Resistance with arms and explosives for use against the occupying Germans. When they came to cast their film they chose a young man and woman, Harry Ree and Jacqueline Nearne , who had actually been parachuted into occupied France during the war to teach the Resistance how to make the best use of these supplies dropped by the RAF. Now, nearly 40 years after the war, with the help of the RAF's film, Ree and Nearne recall their lives with the French Resistance.

Nov. 16, 1980, midnight

On 18 April 1949, His Majesty's Frigate Amethyst set sail from Shanghai up the Yangtze River to relieve the British Embassy in Nanking. China was in the throes of the Civil War between Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists and Mao-Tse Tung's Communists and the next morning Amethyst came under heavy fire from the Communist forces on the north bank of the river. Seven of Amethyst's officers and ratings recall the attack and HMS Amethyst's subsequent 100 days' imprisonment in the river; a captivity that was only brought to an end by a dramatic dash for freedom.

Nov. 23, 1980, midnight

In 1937, on the North West Frontier, there was an uprising of Wazir tribesmen led by the Fakir of Ipi. The British army sent in columns of troops and the RAF went in as support. A young Air Force officer, Group Captain Robert Lister , who had just acquired a cine camera, filmed these punitive operations both from the air and on the ground. This programme consists of Lister's stories and his unique film.

Dec. 7, 1980, midnight

Few of the world's fighting forces have captured the imagination of would-be soldiers more completely than the notorious French Foreign Legion. Back in the 1930s, two young Britons decided to enlist: John Yeowell , who hoped for a military career, and Bill Crooks , who joined up as the result of a schoolboy bet that once in the Legion he could escape within six months.

Dec. 14, 1980, midnight

One of Britain's most urgent problems when given a mandate to administer the new kingdom of Iraq after the Great War, was to protect the shepherd tribes, who lived on the southern frontier, from raiding parties of camel tribesmen from neighbouring Saudi Arabia. To do so she employed the planes of the newly formed Royal Air Force in the air, working with a handful of Army liaison officers on the ground, one of whom was John Bagot Glubb, later to become the legendary Glubb Pasha of the Arab Legion. Now, over 50 years later, Sir John Glubb recalls his part in keeping peace in the desert.

Dec. 21, 1980, midnight