Neil Oliver will tell touching WW1 story

Neil Oliver was proud to remember the men of Skye.

Neil Oliver’s latest TV project was so moving it left his wife Trudi unable to sit through it again.

But the Scot, who has become famous for brining history to life in our living rooms, told The Sunday Post that his family’s military past made this his proudest-ever screen moment.

The Machine Gun and Skye’s Band of Brothers is the latest documentary marking the centenary of the First World War.

It tells of the devastating impact of the newly-developed Maxim machine gun, a weapon like nothing ever seen before that chattered out 666 rounds of deadly hot metal slugs per minute.

And, in particular, the horrific toll on one small island community.

“We watched it and my wife said she couldn’t sit through it again,” revealed Neil. “She found it very affecting.

“I’m naturally inclined to be moved by the First World War. My mum’s dad was in Gallipoli and my dad’s dad was in France. They were both injured but survived.

“My mum’s dad died before I was born but my dad’s dad was alive in my lifetime and my dad wanted to go to see some of the battlefields.”

A walk on any battlefield turns up shrapnel and even live ammunition that’s lain there for 100 years.

Much of it comes from the Maxim which brought death on a scale never seen before. Troops walked into a killing zone between guns and, standing on the very spot, Neil reveals the fate of one band of Scots.

A group of men from Portree had set sail to fight for King and Country.

Tragically, on a battlefield at Festubert in France, they were savagely cut down, many on a single day.

“Eleven telegrams came back to Portree on the same day,” Neil said.

“For a population of fewer than a thousand, that’s a wound you wouldn’t expect a body to survive.

“Walking across that field I felt I knew about the men and their backgrounds and that really intensified it.”

“I hope people who watch will be struck by the simple humanity of seeing what happened to this small handful of people,” added Neil.

The Machine Gun and Skye’s Band of Brothers is on BBC 2 Scotland on Monday at 9pm.