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To mark the centenary of the armistice that brought to an end World War I, the great war, the war to end all wars, a war that resulted in the loss of over 15,000,000 lives, Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, King Kong, Bad Taste) has mixed together archive footage from the Imperial War Museum with audio interviews with the men who served in that conflict. Jackson doesn't seek to tell a historical story, or to explain the whys and wheres of the war, so much as document the lived experience of those that served in it.
Something, it seems, that is remarkably rarely done. What first wrongfoots the viewer is how so many soldiers look back at the war phlegmatically and, in many cases, even enthuse about what an exciting time they had. None seem to regret it and many describe how they felt their war experiences were what shaped them, what made 'men' out of them.
Even though many of them were far from men. You were supposed to be between nineteen and thirty-five to sign up for the army and go to war but teenagers as young as fifteen and sixteen lied to authorities so they could go. The authorities knew these boys were lying and, in many cases, even encouraged it. War was, in those days, a numbers game and the numbers that counted were not the age of the soldiers but the sheer amount of them available.
The horrific term 'cannon fodder' was first coined in Napoleonic France but World War I was the event that proved how ugly a concept it was. Many of the soldiers thought the war would be over in six months and most, on either side, (my friend James suggested it would have been useful to hear testimonies from German soldiers and in the case of WWI I'd agree, WWII - not so) didn't really know what they were fighting for.
This didn't seem to bother them. They were there to do a job and that's what they were going to do. It's an unquestioning attitude that's hard to imagine today. These were, quite evidently, very different times. These were times when men still called Germans 'Jerry', times when a fifty pence pay packet was expected to last you a fortnight, and these were times when servicemen were still expected to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country, and for those who both ruled their country and got them into this bloody war in the first place.
Over footage of soldiers marching, posing for the camera, and war posters and cartoons of the era we hear the testament of several servicemen. Voices from all classes, all backgrounds, and all regions of Britain speak with clarity, perspective, and admirable articulacy. They speak of their shock of arriving in occupied Europe to find devastated, derelict Belgian towns that looked like Paul Nash's painting The Menin Road and inspired the poetry of Rupert Brooke.
As the British Army headed east past shell holes and stunted vegetation they met 'old sweats' returning from the front who'd tell them it was "bloody awful, mate". En route they would raid French carrot and turnip fields (and some were presented with bread and wine by their grateful hosts) to supplement their meagre, and hardly mouth watering, rations. Breakfast was bread, butter, and bacon. Other staples included stew, milk pudding, plum and apple (but never strawberry) jam, and, of course, bully beef. One soldiers talks of enjoying a stale biscuit complete with green mould.
A half-pint mug was handed out but no toilet roll. You had to wipe your arse (after defecating off a log sat next to your buddies, also shitting) with your unclean hand. Dirty bums were one thing but tt was a crime in the army for the buttons of your uniform to be unclean. Although, as nobody was provided with cleaning fluids, soldiers would use their toothbrushes. Frustrations could be taken out on comrades or even seniors. A moment of light relief arrives in the story of a sergeant who ended up with a precariously placed (on top of a slightly ajar door, Beano style) pot of piss all over him.
It was not the worse thing that could happen. As we reach the trenches, about a third in, the film moves into colour. Jackson has used the technique of colourisation to great effect but, unlike The Wizard of Oz, the arrival of colour does not represent the arrival in a fantasy land. Quite the opposite.
This is a land crowded with corpses. The dead bodies of men and the dead bodies of horses lie side by side in the mud and the mire. Sometimes they're not whole men, just bits of men. Sometimes they're not whole horses, just bits of horses. The rats, for the most part, are doing okay. They're all a lot fatter than usual. They're getting plentiful and regular food.
Men, boys really, sink helplessly to their deaths in mudbaths as soldiers attest that, at that time, many of them simply wished to die quickly and with as little pain as possible. Rather this than the long, lingering deaths they'd witnessed their friends suffer. Often to simply walk across a field it would be necessary to use the dead bodies of one's fallen colleagues as a kind of bridge. Often it was simply impossible not to tread on a dead body. One tank driver describes crushing two thousand bodies beneath his tank during a very short journey.
The British didn't really know why they were there and nor did the Germans. The British soldiers speak favourably of their German foes, "damned good people" is one's estimation. The Bavarians and the Saxonians were not keen on the Prussians who they felt had dragged their entire country into an unnecessary war and they told the British soldiers to give the Prussians 'hell'.
Which they did. Because everybody there gave everybody else hell. That's what war is like and those of us who have had the privilege of never having to live through one, never having to fight in one, or never losing our loved ones in a war need to remember that. We reach for warlike language far too easily these days. Football isn't war, politics isn't war, and even Brexit isn't war. Despite the rhetoric of far right politicians who'd like to make us think it is.
What it does have in common with war, and this war particularly, is that the decisions made by affluent, powerful, and often amoral people don't end up adversely affecting them but can cost the lives and livelihoods of those forced to do their bidding for them, those who have the most to lose, and those who have the least blame for the situation.
Yes, in war, we can see 'the best of British' (could there be anything more British than lots of jolly Tommies drinking tea in the trenches or having a kickabout with the Germans) but do we really want to glamourise shitting in holes in the ground, having your arms and legs blown off, or dying at the end of a bayonet before your eighteenth birthday? On the whole, I'd say war is best avoided.
Despite these sentiments I see no dichotomy in saying that I honour and respect those that fought, and died, in this and many other wars. There's no cognitive dissonance on my part in holding a (mostly) pacifist position and a desire to see people live in peace (and resolve their differences with pens, not guns) and feeling awe and admiration at the sacrifice these boys and men made. Alas, those who choose to rule us will never suffer like these soldiers did and now, it seems, they speak jingoistically not of necessary heroism but of heroic sacrifice. A heroic sacrifice that our current batch of populists continue to cheapen by using it serve their own agendas.
But these concerns were concerns for the future and the soldiers on the frontline of World War I were uncertain how much future they had. In some cases, it proved not much at all. So trying to make the most of your lot became crucial. Entertainment came in the form of rugby, tug of war, playing It's a Long Way to Tipperary on a tin whistle, gambling (particularly popular, apparently, with the Canadian and Australian forces), and, unsurprisingly in the circumstances, getting drunk and smoking fags.
Woodbines and Players were preferable to army issue cigarettes and it's hard to imagine alcohol was not involved when we see footage of a group of young soldiers breaching tank etiquette in a highly unorthodox manner. If their seniors were not available to punish them there was always the chance of a bit of 'discipline' in a brothel. Sexually naive young recruits tell of being terrified of being spanked by whores. Foreign whores too!
But when the fun and games (and spanking) stopped it was back to the chaos, back to the killing. So many officers had been slain at one point that there was nobody available to give orders. We hear of twenty-three men being burned to death by a flame thrower and one man reflects upon the time he carried out a mercy killing of a 'pathetic' comrade whose eyes were hanging out as he screamed in agony. Years later he still cries as he recounts this sorry tale and, worse, he still feels the need to justify his decision to put a man, a man who would have died anyway, out of his misery.
When the British and German soldiers met, or took each other prisoner, they would agree on how bad war was but that didn't stop this war or so many future wars. If it seems inconceivable that wars in Europe could now be fought to help royal families or dynasties that, sadly, doesn't mean that people, or governments, can't still find things to kill each other over. Wars now are fought for ideology, religion, oil, and, mostly, for cold hard cash.
When the First Wold War finally ended more than 1,000,000 British serviceman had lost their lives and many of those surviving felt they'd lost their livelihoods, their jobs. Back home in peacetime, there was little or no work available for them with some employers expressly stating that they would not take on ex-servicemen.
Home life was not much easier. Friends and family, parents even, didn't even ask those returning about their wartime experiences. It was over now and it was time to get on with normal life but some had seen things they could never not see, they'd seen the bodies of their fallen friends eaten by rats, they'd driven tanks over the crushed corpses of their comrades, and they'd seen death and destruction on an almost unimaginable scale. In all likelihood many were suffering from undiagnosed PTSD.
Some of those who never served even sought to tell those who did what it was like. A lack of empathy, and an incuriosity, that borders on the sociopathic. Incuriosity and lack of empathy are societal poisons that bedevil us now as much as they ever did and if we refuse to learn the lessons of why we went to war, not just how we won the war, then we are in danger of repeating those same mistakes. Nobody even said 'thankyou' to the soldiers who risked, or lost, their lives in World War I and so it was that in little more than two decades the world was again at war. World War I proved to be anything but the war to end all wars and that proved to be not just a travesty but a death sentence to millions.
15,000,000 died in the war and that suggests to me that there are 15,000,000 different reasons that those people were there, and 15,000,000 different stories to tell. Peter Jackson made a fine job of collating those stories into a recognisable narrative and one which managed to both show the horrors of war and the sense of camaradarie at the same time.
One of the last stories in They Shall Not Grow Old comes from a returning serviceman and his encounter with an ungrateful civilian in his local shop. "Where have you been? On nights?" was the question he received on returning to what he might reasonably have expected to be a hero's welcome. A definition of privilege as sure and stark as you could ever (not) wish for.
I'm a lachrymose man at the best of times and I thought I'd struggle with They Shall Not Grow Old but, somehow, I kept it together until the credits rolled to the sound of Mademoiselle from Armentieres, a song kids at my school changed the words to be about flatulence before singing it on ice skating trips to Southampton.How often we remember but how soon we forget. As one ex-solider said in the film "they were the longest and shortest hours in life".
"Where have you been? On nights?". No, they went to Hell and back for your freedom and you never even had the decency to say thankyou. The best way to thank them for their service now is not to argue about wearing poppies or not, not to boast of our military strength, or bemoan our loss of empire but to strive to live in peace with our neighbours and to not elect leaders who speak of the glory of wars in which they never have, nor ever will, partake.
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