Richard R
If one lived in 1914, they would hear people saying when going into what is now known as World War One. Nevertheless, this was far from the truth; the film They Shall Not Grow Old, directed by Peter Jackson, shows the true essence and the dark side of World War One. The movie is made from footage once locked away in the Imperial War Museum in Britain. First, the footage was colourized. Then they got lip readers to read what the soldiers were saying, and finally found the right voice to match the soldiers. Overall, this movie is a real eye-opener in many factors; primarily, it allows people in the modern-day to see what trench life was like, the perspectives of the enemy, and what happened at the end of the War.
The lives of soldiers who lived through war do not come to the mind of the average everyday person. When asked what they think of the life that the soldiers fought in the war, one would likely think of a clean trench with everyone vigilant. People take turns standing guard. The people who are not on guard drink tea, play cards, tell stories, and have proper places to sleep. But what they would think was unfortunately very wrong. The truth revealed is that the trenches are not clean; in fact, they have mud and human excrement everywhere. The trenches are littered with blood, the dead body of a soldier shot, and human body parts exploded by explosives. The soldiers most often slept in the trenches without beds and in the very bloody and rat-infested trenches that they fought in, and only every four days would they be able to get cleaned, but even then, their life was no fun in that a large majority of the suits would have lice in them since lice like to live in wool and that is what their uniforms were made out of. So, the only thing that was right in the previous narrative is that everyone remained vigilant, and soldiers took turns standing guard. Life is not easy even when off duty; you still fear bombs and mortar shells falling on you. This is only the life inside the trenches; to get to the trenches, the soldiers had to carry 109 pounds, which is about how much a hawksbill sea turtle weighs (13 Items That Weigh about 100 Pounds, 2020), and they brought this weight for 100 miles, to add to this most of the people who joined the war were not in shape. Therefore, they were struggling when doing the 100-mile trek.
During the war, the British and the Germans were not best friends. This hatred was in full effect at the beginning of the war, and the motive for many British soldiers who joined the war was “I want to kill some Germans.” The British did not see the Germans as much of a threat primarily because of the mentality that “Britain could never lose.” The hatred towards the enemy was reflected on the battlefield; even though they had never seen a German before, this didn’t affect the war. If a German ever broke into the trench either over the trench walls or through the ground, they would kill on sight or even if a German felt into their trench of poked their head or any other part of their body over their own trenches the British soldiers would fire. This was the same on the German side; if the saw a British soldier they would fire. Remarkably a large amount of this hatred faded a little as the war went on. The most significant representation of this new-found perspective on the enemy was shown during the final push. When the British and the Allied Forces invaded the enemy trenches, most people would not kill the ordinary soldiers or Germans who surrendered; however, when the machine gunners surrendered, they were killed because of their mass kill. After the prisoners of their own will help bring the injured back to get treated to add to this, around this time, the hatred faded away; one soldier quotes, “They looked like us, I would assume it would be us against the Russian and French” (find timestamp). This marked the end of the British and German soldier hatred.
The average person would think that the soldiers were rewarded when they returned to their homeland after the war. The footage and photos showed could not be farther from the truth. In fact, they were not treated as people when they got back because most of the people that returned had mental or physical disabilities, and at that point, the public did not know the truth of war. The footage and photos were locked away in Imperial War Museum in Britain and only recently revealed to the public primarily through the film They Shall Not Grow Old and other forms of media. When they got back, it could be seen that no one wanted to hear them, so they were left without jobs. To add to this, most job application posters wrote that no ex-serviceman needed to apply. Even to this day, veterans of any war are not given the care they deserve. Now, it is better than it was in 1918, but unfortunately it has not changed much.
Under the circumstances that these people have been through, it is a shame that they were not treated like warriors. But even to this day, the government isn’t doing much to help war veterans in general. Thankfully They Shall Not Grow Old helps to show the torment that these people have been through. The film also reveals the filth that soldiers had to live through. And the fact that the government and generals saw these people’s lives as so expendable should have never occurred in the first place.
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