This episode follows the war home, tracing how the consequences of underground service shaped not only Alphonsus (Albert) Joseph Edwards’ life, but the lives of his wife, children, and the generation that followed. Framed through a family photograph from the early 1930s, it shifts the focus from battlefield to household, from explosions and gas to illness, endurance, and memory.

The episode begins with Albert in the years after the war: physically weakened by mustard gas, struggling to breathe, and slowly losing the capacity to work. Around him, a family takes shape under the quiet strain of permanent injury. His wife, Elsie Agnes Austin, emerges as a central figure - her own life marked by childhood poverty, institutionalisation, and loss in industrial England before she ever met an Australian soldier. Her resilience, forged long before the war, becomes the foundation on which the Edwards family survives.

Listeners follow Elsie’s journey from the Birmingham poorhouse system to employment at Cadbury’s, her marriage to Alphonsus in the aftermath of war, and her decision to leave England for Australia as a war bride. In the 1920s, the family builds a modest but stable life, raising six children while coping with Albert’s declining health. The episode makes clear that mustard gas did not end with the armistice - it lingered in damaged lungs, recurring infections, and a body worn down year by year.

The arrival of the Great Depression intensifies these pressures. With limited income, a sick husband, and a large family, Elsie becomes the anchor of the household, managing scarcity and maintaining dignity under extraordinary strain. Albert’s death in 1933, at just 39 years old, marks the delayed final toll of the war. Official recognition of his death as war-related underscores a central theme of the episode: that modern warfare continues killing long after the fighting stops.

From loss, the story moves to remembrance and continuity. Covering the Hill 60 Tunnellers’ Memorial, the episode reflects on those who died instantly underground and those, like Albert, whose deaths came later and more quietly. The memorial becomes a symbol not only of sacrifice, but of the families who carried that sacrifice forward.

The final section turns to the next generation. Albert’s son, Bernard Leslie Edwards, enlists in the Second World War, not out of romanticism, but from a sense of duty shaped by what he witnessed at home. Serving with RAF Bomber Command, Bernard survives, returns to Australia, and builds a life of service in peacetime - embodying continuity rather than closure.

The Long Shadow closes the series by widening its lens. It argues that the true history of war is not only found in battles and medals, but in families shaped by illness, resilience, obligation, and memory. The Edwards family’s story becomes a case study in how service echoes across generations, reminding us that the freedoms of the present rest on sacrifices that extended far beyond the battlefield and long after the guns fell silent.

Producer & Host: Dr Paul Watters. A production of Cyberstronomy Pty Ltd.

This podcast is supported by the Department of Veterans' Affairs through the Saluting Their Service Commemorative Grants Program.

This episode reconstructs, in forensic detail, one of the most devastating moments in Alphonsus (Albert) Joseph Edwards’ war: the mustard gas attack of March 1918 that permanently damaged his health and crippled the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company. Drawing closely on war diaries, appendices, and medical records, it traces the attack as it unfolded - minute by minute - from the first shells to the long medical aftermath.

Beginning in the tunnels around Loos, Béthune, and Hill 70, the episode shows how what initially appeared to be routine shelling quickly became a mass chemical assault. German gas shells released mustard gas that settled low to the ground and flowed into galleries, dugouts, and working shafts. Tunnellers, uniquely vulnerable underground, were exposed in conditions where respirators failed and escape routes were limited.

The narrative follows the immediate effects - burning eyes, choking lungs, collapsing men - and then reveals the true horror of mustard gas: its delayed action. Casualty numbers rose sharply over days as symptoms intensified, transforming a single morning’s bombardment into a rolling medical catastrophe. Within days, hundreds of men were blinded, burned, or left unable to breathe or speak. The episode places Albert among the most severely affected, matching his documented injuries - temporary blindness, loss of voice, skin burns, and long-term respiratory damage - to the pattern seen in the worst cases.

Listeners are taken through the chaotic evacuation process, from overwhelmed dressing stations to casualty clearing stations and base hospitals, illustrating how the medical system struggled to cope with mass chemical casualties. The scale of the disaster is laid bare: a specialist unit rendered nearly ineffective, its tunnelling work suspended not by enemy counter-mining, but by gas.

The episode then follows Alphonsus beyond the attack. Though permanently injured, he was not discharged. Instead, he returned to service on “light duties,” part of the vast, often invisible labour force that kept the front functioning in 1918. Repairing roads, maintaining infrastructure, clearing mines, and supporting civilians became his new war - one fought with damaged lungs and failing eyesight.

Interwoven with the broader narrative are the stories of other tunnellers who did not survive, underscoring the narrow margin between life and death in underground warfare. The episode closes by tracing the consequences of the gas attack into peacetime: Albert’s marriage in England, his diminished health, and the long shadow cast by a single morning underground.

The Gas Attack marks a turning point in the series. The war beneath the war has reached its most destructive moment, and from here, the story shifts to survival, aftermath, and the enduring cost of chemical warfare carried long after the guns fell silent.

Producer & Host: Dr Paul Watters. A production of Cyberstronomy Pty Ltd.

This podcast is supported by the Department of Veterans' Affairs through the Saluting Their Service Commemorative Grants Program.

This episode takes the listener fully underground, revealing the hidden battlefield beneath the Western Front and the reality of the tunnelling war that shaped both the conflict and Alphonsus (Albert) Joseph Edwards’ life. Set in France and Belgium in 1917–1918, it explores the unseen world of the Australian Tunnelling Companies - men recruited to dig, listen, counter-mine, and fight in total darkness beneath enemy lines.

Through sound design and narrative reconstruction, the episode explains how underground warfare worked: the silent excavation of galleries, the placement of massive explosive charges, the constant listening for enemy tunnellers, and the brutal close-quarters encounters that occurred when opposing tunnels met. It shows how tunnellers lived and worked in airless, unstable conditions where collapse, flooding, gas, or sudden explosion could strike without warning.

Personal stories anchor this broader history. Alongside Albert, listeners meet fellow tunnellers such as the teenage sapper Lyle Ranger and others whose service - and deaths - illustrate the human cost of this subterranean war. The episode situates Albert within the aftermath of major actions like Messines and Hill 60, explaining how the ground itself was reshaped by mining warfare and how tunnellers shifted from offensive mining to defensive and counter-mining operations as the war evolved.

Drawing on war diary entries, the episode recreates the psychological strain of listening for enemy activity underground: interpreting faint knocks, vibrations, and metallic taps that might signal an imminent counter-mine. It also examines the daily toll on the body - exhaustion, illness, lung damage - and why tunnellers were especially vulnerable to gas warfare, as poison vapours pooled in the low, confined spaces where they worked.

The episode culminates in the lead-up to Albert’s gas exposure in 1918 and the expanding role of tunnellers as the front moved, including clearing hidden mines and preventing catastrophic explosions in captured territory. Into the Earth reveals that the tunnelling war was not only about destroying the enemy, but about survival, endurance, and engineering skill under extreme pressure - setting the stage for the personal consequences Albert would face in the episodes to come.

Producer & Host: Dr Paul Watters. A production of Cyberstronomy Pty Ltd.

This podcast is supported by the Department of Veterans' Affairs through the Saluting Their Service Commemorative Grants Program.