More4: Nazi Megastructures

As it turns out, this wasn't too bad at all. Two of the three historians were a bit alarming (I'm all for enthusiasm for your subject, but they were going a bit far!) but at least Tony Pollard brought a bit of dignity to proceedings. The dramatic reconstructions weren't bad, as these things go.

It was interesting seeing the bunkers etc from a 'documentary viewpoint' having grown up with them as a background feature of my life (a trip to the beach involved going down the steps of Resistance Nest Fort Henry, with its twin 10.5cm gun bunkers and heavy machine-gun emplacement - luckily the automatic flamethrowers had long since been uninstalled!). The sea wall is actually an anti-tank wall, and when the tide is right the remains of massive tank traps emerge from beneath the sand. They're still occasionally turning up mines and IEDs which were missed during the post-Liberation clean-up. It was only a couple of years ago that the heavily overgrown land immediately opposite where I lived was the site of a forced labour camp.

I notice they seem to have avoided the restored sites, such as Batterie Lothringen in Jersey. (Having said that, Batterie Mirus, which they visited, was by far the biggest emplacement, with guns twice as Lothringen). I hope they had medical back-up when Dr Pollard visited Ho 2 - one of the reasons the tunnel complex was sealed up was because two 'relic hunters' died of carbon monoxide poisoning exploring it! I hadn't realised - or had forgotten - that the MP observation towers were unique to the Channel Islands. They're such icons in the Islands that you think of German fortifications they're one of the first things which spring to mind, so it's surprising they weren't used elsewhere.