They Shall Not Grow Old - Peter Jackson documentary on WW1

[Bellini12]

I was just wondering if anyone else watched this on BBC1 last night? It was quite long but I was totally mesmerised. I will admit to not knowing enough about WW1 and these real life accounts with the outstanding footage which brought the horror and futility of war to life was incredible. I was absolutely staggered. Bravo to Peter Jackson.

Just finished watching it. Was very graphic wasn’t it, the bit about the battle. Very good though, really made it real. Those poor men.

I was surprised though at the men saying they’d do it all again though!

Yes, I watched it and found it utterly compelling. I agree the combination of real life accounts with the enhanced footage was outstanding. I really hope it comes out on a DVD because there was so much to take in, I think I could watch it again and again. Apparently lip-readers were used to provide authentic dialogue where people were seen talking in the film reel. It's one of the best films I have ever seen.

And very sad that they came home and couldn’t get jobs etc.

Yes, SgtFredColon, that was very sad. The comment at the end where the soldier had gone back to his workplace, and his colleague asked if he'd been on nights!

Yeah that was funny was awful at the same time. Also couldn’t believe how young they all were. I knew it theoretically but seeing their little faces made it real.

Yes; some of them didn't look more than 14 years old. I imagine some were genuinely underage and others were undergrown due to malnutrition.

That's what struck me about it too SgtFred. Seeing them mucking around in the footage, they were just kids.

They were so, so young, so many of them. And so naive - in an age before instant information, they really had no idea what they were letting themselves in for. It really brought it home, didn't it?

That transition from the unenhanced to the enhanced footage was amazing. I suspect it will be the sort of thing kids watch at school in years to come. I hope it is, anyway.

I hope we'll see it win acclaim in the next round of film and television awards.

Also the naivety of what they were entering into.
Plus the comments about it being ‘just like a camping trip’ but with the edge of danger.
Then the way they just got on with it without complaining. They really were a different, stoic breed back then.

Amazing and upsetting, I wasn't prepared for it to be so real compared to the blurry black and white pictures we're used to seeing.

It was amazing how different the footage looked when played at a normal speed. Having the introduction in black and white, jerky speed heightened the contrast.

Yeah they said that lots of times. That they had absolutely no idea what they were facing. And plenty of them lying about their ages. Horrible.

I think they are going to show this documentary in schools. It was quite graphic though. You can understand why the returning soldiers never talked about their horrific experiences and how no one could ever understand.

It was great. Even though I knew about the colour and technical enhancements they were going to use beforehand, I still gasped when it changed.

It was very very graphic. I wouldn't think suitable for children below 15.
My 18 year old cried.
It was brilliant. Devastating but brilliant.

It was stunning and very moving to see those young men, and interesting to hear the comments about the Germans. It was made by the BBC so it will probably be out on DVD at some point.

There's a very famous poem by Kipling which brings out that the returning soldiers were very much left to fend for themselves in a climate where jobs were difficult to come by. Their sacrifice was much less valued in the immediate aftermath than now. A lost generation indeed.

^You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all:
We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an` Chuck him out, the brute! "
But it's " Saviour of 'is country " when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
An 'Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees!^

Definitely one for older children - GCSE level, not primary school. Probably year 9? It was graphic - but not gratuitous. And it brought it home to me in a way no written work had, not even the war poets, who were such powerful writers. It was seeing that sea of barbed wire and wondering how on Earth anyone could hope to cross it, before you added bullets and shells to the equation - I do t know why but I had never imagined the wire to be so deep. I had it in my mind that it was three or four rows deep, perhaps, not metres and metres of it.

WW1 was in my GCSE History syllabus (80s) and I would definitely have appreciated this film at age 14/15/16. The course back then was more about the political aspects of the war than the soldiers' experiences.

Lambs to rhe slaughter werent they? Make you wonder what its all about.

And when a soldier said at the end that if you’d ask any German or British soldier what they were actually fighting for then none of them really knew the answer. They were so war weary.
I liked the fact that they became quite pally with some of the German prisoners too. Just human beings caught up in an unimaginable mess.

I read in the comments on the Guardian review that a copy of this film has been sent to every high school in the UK - I think that's a great idea.

Interesting discussion on R4 pm about how we see the soldiers as misguided victims, as "Lions led by donkeys". But survivors don't think of themselves like that. Many came from very poor deprived backgrounds and the war gave them a sense of identity and purpose. Some even said they enjoyed it and wouldn't hesitate to do it again if the chance came up.

Yes, I think it is important to remember the sort of lives some of the soldiers left, and the lives that some survivors came back to. Walter Greenwood's novel, Love on the Dole, while not dealing directly with the experience of war veterans, gives a vivid and shocking picture of poverty and unemployment in the 1920s and 30s. I thought of it when the veterans in the film were talking about how some of them found themselves unemployable.