"They Shall Not Grow Old" Peter Jackson's WWI film

[Boom78]

Newarch said:

I wrote a few papers on the subject of the First World War associated with the centenary commemoration several years ago.

One thing to bear in mind with the early 20th century is that it needs to be viewed in context, something that is put across very well in Jackson's documentary. A lot of people who signed up to fight actually found army life, even on the Western Front preferable to life at home, especially working class people. Working conditions in many industries were pretty horrendous during this period, with long hours, low pay, often very dangerous working conditions, and no real welfare system or a pension scheme until after the war. We still had workhouses and childhood was the school of hard knocks intended to toughen them up for adulthood. One thing a lot of people said about military service was that for the first time in their lives they were treated with respect. Others spoke about the comradeship they never felt as strongly again in their lives.

I do slightly dislike the post 60s revisionism that has meant that these views are disregarded, or interpreted as service veterans putting a brave face on it. History is a very complex thing, and can't be simplified down or seen through only one point of view.

Excellent points. My g grandfather was the eldest of 5 from the poorer areas of Islington/st Pancras, his dad enrolled him as a teen in 1910 (ish) to the Army as it meant one less mouth to feed, he went on to serve at the outbreak of WW1 as part of the ‘professional standing army’ and fought through the European trenches, Salonika etc. Despite the horrors he said it was the best thing that ever happened to him, he was given a chance to learn, eat square meals, serve, box, earn a salary, adventure, see the world and eventually meet his wife via a barracks posting in 1919. The alternative would have been a very grim life of London poverty

[DaffyT4]

The Spruce Goose said:

Yes it was casualties. The point was clear, it was a horrendous day made worse by poor planning, the numbers of losses are still absolutely crazy. 25% died on that one day of the total killed in the battle.

I appreciate that arguing over the numbers could seem tasteless in this context, but as I said earlier we do not honour these men by making hyberbolic claims about their sacrifice. Total British casualties of the Somme campaign are stated as around 420,000 of which 131,000 were killed. 1 July 1916 was a terrible day, indeed the worst in the history of the Army but 19,240 is not 25% of 131000.

[anonymous-user]

DaffyT4 said:

I appreciate that arguing over the numbers could seem tasteless in this context, but as I said earlier we do not honour these men by making hyberbolic claims about their sacrifice. Total British casualties of the Somme campaign are stated as around 420,000 of which 131,000 were killed. 1 July 1916 was a terrible day, indeed the worst in the history of the Army but 19,240 is not 25% of 131000.

Are you arguing for the sake of it.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1022625/casual...

This is where the figure has come from. 19% yes is correct, i didn't really think about it, clearly not a ''hyberbolic claim'', that sullies the memory of the dead. Again it was the context of the situation, what 140 odd day battle, it was massive. 20k in one day. I really think this is the wrong thread to start getting all PH argumentative. Lets leave it at that unless you want to add some actual commentary.

''the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army''

[Pothole]

john41901 said:

Pothole said:

'd like to think they'd all refuse. There was no real need for that scale of conflict.

Refusers generally ended up getting shot for cowardice.

Are we talking about then or now? We must be talking about now or "millennials" would have no meaning. Mass refusal would not be met with mass murder by any government of this country

[fiatpower]

Boom78 said:

Excellent points. My g grandfather was the eldest of 5 from the poorer areas of Islington/st Pancras, his dad enrolled him as a teen in 1910 (ish) to the Army as it meant one less mouth to feed, he went on to serve at the outbreak of WW1 as part of the ‘professional standing army’ and fought through the European trenches, Salonika etc. Despite the horrors he said it was the best thing that ever happened to him, he was given a chance to learn, eat square meals, serve, box, earn a salary, adventure, see the world and eventually meet his wife via a barracks posting in 1919. The alternative would have been a very grim life of London poverty

I was shocked by the bit in his film that said recruits generally put just over a stone on during the training due to the poverty a lot of them came from meaning they didn't eat properly. It would be the other way around if that sort of situation was to happen today.

[Boom78]

fiatpower said:

Boom78 said:

Excellent points. My g grandfather was the eldest of 5 from the poorer areas of Islington/st Pancras, his dad enrolled him as a teen in 1910 (ish) to the Army as it meant one less mouth to feed, he went on to serve at the outbreak of WW1 as part of the ‘professional standing army’ and fought through the European trenches, Salonika etc. Despite the horrors he said it was the best thing that ever happened to him, he was given a chance to learn, eat square meals, serve, box, earn a salary, adventure, see the world and eventually meet his wife via a barracks posting in 1919. The alternative would have been a very grim life of London poverty

I was shocked by the bit in his film that said recruits generally put just over a stone on during the training due to the poverty a lot of them came from meaning they didn't eat properly. It would be the other way around if that sort of situation was to happen today.

Yup, they gained about 1 stone in 6 weeks. Malnutrition was a massive documented problem for British armies throughout the century’s. The calories they must have been lacking to gain a stone during mostly cardio based training is very telling.

[anonymous-user]

Boom78 said:

My g grandfather was the eldest of 5 from the poorer areas of Islington/st Pancras, his dad enrolled him as a teen in 1910 (ish) to the Army as it meant one less mouth to feed, he went on to serve at the outbreak of WW1 as part of the ‘professional standing army’ and fought through the European trenches, Salonika etc. Despite the horrors he said it was the best thing that ever happened to him, he was given a chance to learn, eat square meals, serve, box, earn a salary, adventure, see the world and eventually meet his wife via a barracks posting in 1919. The alternative would have been a very grim life of London poverty

That's a very interesting account.

[audikentman]

If anyone is intrested here is a link to a BFI film about my Great Grandfather (Mums side) returning home to Preston in 1916 after receiving his VC and his funeral

At the start of the film he is the soldier being carried on the shoulders of others with a bandged jaw

https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-home-com...

A bit of info on him if anyone is intrested

https://www.lancashireinfantrymuseum.org.uk/privat...

I think that was unusual was that he was awarded the VC while still alive.
For anyone in Preston his grave is in the town cemetery and he has a commemorative flag stone outside the Town Hall

Edited by audikentman on Wednesday 17th November 10:38

[CrutyRammers]

coppice said:

I remember driving between Albert and Bapaume, through countryside rather like my native Yorkshire Wolds .If memory serves, we passed a sign showing the front line in July 1916 , and , a few short minutes later , another sign showing the line a few months later. All I felt was sorrow , then rage at such pointless slaughter for so very little . And as for Verdun ...Jesus .

Verdun is an incredible place to visit, if you're ever passing near. No jokes about the French being surrender monkeys after that.

[CrutyRammers]

audikentman said:

If anyone is intrested here is a link to a BFI film about my Great Grandfather (Mums side) returning home to Preston in 1916 after receiving his VC and his funeral

At the start of the film he is the soldier being carried on the shoulders of others with a bandged jaw

https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-home-com...

A bit of info on him if anyone is intrested

https://www.lancashireinfantrymuseum.org.uk/privat...

I think that was unusual was that he was awarded the VC while still alive.
For anyone in Preston his grave is in the town cemetery and he has a commemorative flag stone outside the Town Hall

Edited by audikentman on Wednesday 17th November 10:38

Interesting bit of family history that, thanks.

The WW1 book "Diary of an Old Contemptible" (well worth a read BTW) was written by another East Lancs private whos stuff is at preston, IIRC. I found it because he gives a good account of a battle in which my Grandfather was wounded, in what is now Iraq.

[anonymous-user]

audikentman said:

If anyone is intrested here is a link to a BFI film about my Great Grandfather (Mums side) returning home to Preston in 1916 after receiving his VC and his funeral

At the start of the film he is the soldier being carried on the shoulders of others with a bandged jaw

https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-home-com...

A bit of info on him if anyone is intrested

https://www.lancashireinfantrymuseum.org.uk/privat...

I think that was unusual was that he was awarded the VC while still alive.
For anyone in Preston his grave is in the town cemetery and he has a commemorative flag stone outside the Town Hall

Edited by audikentman on Wednesday 17th November 10:38

Great story. Is the VC still in the family?

[anonymous-user]

Recipients of the Victoria Cross were and are very very rare indeed but many of those who were awarded them were still alive at the time of the award during the First World War.

Relatively few serving soldiers were repatriated for burial having died overseas, the practice was banned fairly early on in the war, because of the perceived effect large numbers corpses returning from overseas every week would have had on morale. William Gladstone the Liberal MP for Kilmarnock Burghs was last person officially repatriated after being killed in action in the Pas de Calais in 1915. Most soldiers buried in this country succumbed to their injuries having been brought back as wounded.

[MC Bodge]

coppice said:

What really is remarkable is that we still get dewy eyed over something that ended a century ago .As a kid in the Sixties, we had Remembrance Sunday at the war memorial , often with old soldiers from WW1 , we had the silence and prayers and that was it. It was like that until the Nineties , when the great poppy wars started - who would sport one first? Until then , nothing happened at workplaces , nor supermarkets , let alone buses stopping at 11am on 11th nor the rest of the current grief fest. Wonder if we celebrated anniversary of the Napoleonic Wars with so much vigour in 1865 or 1915 ?

The Napoleonic wars and Crimea war (my great great grandfather fought in that one, and and received a DCM) were apparently remembered and well celebrated - look at the number of memorials to them. Possibly more from a triumphalist point of view.

The Great War and its mechanised slaughter overshadowed them.

The 90s was a bit of a turning point in the UK. The old expectation of "stiff upper lip" thing appeared to pass. Look at the outpouring of public grief for Princess Diana. Maybe the first Gulf War and Balkan conflicts brought war back into public consciousness too?

[audikentman]

The Spruce Goose said:

Great story. Is the VC still in the family?

Nope, Grandfather gave it back to the regiment, its in the regimental museum

[fiatpower]

MC Bodge said:

Maybe the first Gulf War and Balkan conflicts brought war back into public consciousness too?

Iraq and Afghanistan certainly did.

[anonymous-user]

audikentman said:

Nope, Grandfather gave it back to the regiment, its in the regimental museum

That's a great thing.

I like how his NCO told him not to yet he still did.

[coppice]

CrutyRammers said:

coppice said:

I remember driving between Albert and Bapaume, through countryside rather like my native Yorkshire Wolds .If memory serves, we passed a sign showing the front line in July 1916 , and , a few short minutes later , another sign showing the line a few months later. All I felt was sorrow , then rage at such pointless slaughter for so very little . And as for Verdun ...Jesus .

Verdun is an incredible place to visit, if you're ever passing near. No jokes about the French being surrender monkeys after that.

Indeed -and only idiots come out with that crap. Any visit to a cemetery in a French village is testament to that . And , with so many views being uninformed and Anglocentric , horrors like Verdun (and it is indescribably ghastly ) tend not to feature in many conversations here. I'm as guilty - on holiday in the Vosges mountains in Alsace we were amazed to find whole networks of trenches , craters and so on high up in the forested hills.

[MC Bodge]

fiatpower said:

MC Bodge said:

Maybe the first Gulf War and Balkan conflicts brought war back into public consciousness too?

Iraq and Afghanistan certainly did.

Yes, definitely.

[Pothole]

MC Bodge said:

The 90s was a bit of a turning point in the UK. The old expectation of "stiff upper lip" thing appeared to pass. Look at the outpouring of public grief for Princess Diana. Maybe the first Gulf War and Balkan conflicts brought war back into public consciousness too?

Funny you should mention that daft cow. I have been blaming her for the irritating rise in mawkish sentimentality and people turning everywhere into flower and candle covered shrines since her death, but I was brought up short by the Radio 4 commentary on the Remembrance Day parade when the chap said that in 1920, the year the Cenotaph was unveiled in stone rather than the wooden structure which it replaced - which it had been intended would only be temporary, the flowers left by it reached ten feet deep!

[Hill92]

Pothole said:

MC Bodge said:

The 90s was a bit of a turning point in the UK. The old expectation of "stiff upper lip" thing appeared to pass. Look at the outpouring of public grief for Princess Diana. Maybe the first Gulf War and Balkan conflicts brought war back into public consciousness too?

Funny you should mention that daft cow. I have been blaming her for the irritating rise in mawkish sentimentality and people turning everywhere into flower and candle covered shrines since her death, but I was brought up short by the Radio 4 commentary on the Remembrance Day parade when the chap said that in 1920, the year the Cenotaph was unveiled in stone rather than the wooden structure which it replaced - which it had been intended would only be temporary, the flowers left by it reached ten feet deep!

Before 1939 Armistice Day was as a significant if not more so than Remembrance Sunday. Remembrance wasn't particularly religious at the very beginning (e.g. the Cenotaph was specifically designed to be non-denominational) but was quickly captured by the Church.

Post 1945 there was more of a focus on Remembrance Sunday to broaden the focus from just the First World War to the Second World War.

Then around the 50th anniversary of Second World War ending there was another shift back to including Armistice Day as a dual focus of remembrance.