Local History

As part of the BBC's Remembrance commemorations this year, we bring back a voice from the past from a little known campaign in Britain's military history.

It was over 90 years ago, but at first sounds like it could have been lifted from yesterday's news: the British Army facing unrest and under fire from forces in remote regions of Afghanistan.

It seems a very small footnote in history now, but under the shadow of the Great War was the much smaller but no less bloody battle between British Forces and the Mashud Tribe in the Summer of 1917.

The diary of C.J.Lane, a signaller involved in the fighting at the time, is read by BBC Oxford's Tim Bearder, Lane's great-grandson. The tales recounted are so amazing, even Lane admits in his writings, "If I were reading of a similar occurrence in a book I should think what an impossibility it was that such things only happen in books. Nevertheless what I have written did occur, only too well do I know it."

Click on the links below to hear all five parts of "Waziristan", as serialised on BBC Oxford during Remembrance week.