Doctor Glyndwr wrote:
Mr Chris wrote:
No, you're not. I studied it back in school, but it still seems to come down to "we really needn't be having this war, but these bits of paper say we must".
I don't think it helps that, as far as I can tell, to bring it down to a real Hollywood story kind of thing, there were no particular bad guys. Certainly nothing like was the case in WWII.
Absolutely. That was an interesting thing in the programme about COs last night - there was this one artillery chap who was sent in to scout around at the Messiness Ridge* after the bombardment, and he found a german soldier sat in a shell hole who he thought was asleep - but was dead. He was holding a photo of his girlfriend, who looked just like this artillery man's gweetheart back home. That really did it for him - the Germans really were just like "us".
They weren't evil monsters, like you could argue the footsoldiers of the Nazis were. Just regular guys, being told to go and sit in a trench and shoot at other regular guys for no fucking reason at all.
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Hmm, that provokes another thought, why are there no WWI films? Or are there some that I'm not aware of? Given how thouroughly WWII, Vietnam, Westerns, even the Boer War has been explored on celluloid, why is WWI comparatively overlooked?
You know, you're right. I can only think of "The Bunker", which is a horror film. That's really quite odd.
*Look this up - it's an amazing battle, if that's the right word. The british dug under the German positions and dumped hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of tonnes of explosives underneath them and then set it all off - the explosion could be heard in Dublin. Phenomenal.