They Shall Not Grow Old

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: 

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. 

At the going down of the sun and in the morning 

We will remember them.

On Sunday night BBC2 screened a documentary about WW1 to mark Armistice day. This year's day was very notable being 100 years since the ceasefire that ended the war.  It was called They Shall Not Grow Old. It was created by Peter Jackson and because of his involvement we knew we were in for something a bit different to the usual talking head documentaries.

The Great War is decimating Europe. Young English men are joining up in their droves. Some want to fight for their country, some see it as an easy way to earn a few bob, others see it as a chance to see a bit of the world and more are joining to avoid being presented with the white feather of cowardice. 6 weeks of basic training stood between them and their destiny. The going was tough and every man bar none grew sick of the terrible food and ridiculous training regimen. Little did they know this was paradise compared to what lay ahead of them across the English Channel.

Jackson had access to hundreds of hours worth of archival footage to use in this documentary and it's combined with interviews from surviving soldiers recorded back in the 1960's. The effect is stunning. Hearing the voices of these old men juxtaposed against footage of their fresh faces makes for poignant viewing. How the need to be patriotic saw 15 year old boys lying to doctors and recruiters, most of whom saw through the lie and turned a blind eye as the need for cannon fodder on the fields of France and Belgium grew exponentially. The early scenes in training are almost fun. The moaning about the lack of variety in the preserves served with breakfast, urine related hijinks, silly games, all shown to help you remember that these soldiers were boys and young men aged between 15-25, all heading off to fight the Kaiser's forces on the whims of old men.

At the front the documentary takes a massive turn as we watch the black & white footage turn to colour. The 4:3 old style film format expands into the 16:9 format we all watch everyday on our flatscreen tvs. The effect is genuinely hair raising. We aren't watching history anymore. The detachment and numbness allowed to us by historical B&W footage is gone and all of a sudden we could be watching modern lads lads marching off to die. And they die in their thousands. The colourised footage giving us the merest hint of the horrors faced by these brave young fellas. Pink brains spilling from a smashed open head. The red of a body dismembered by sharpnel. The grey pallor of dead skin. It's brutal. You'll want to stop watching when a montage of smiling faces from boot camp is intercut with images of the dead. It's nearly too much but it's important to keep going.

Thankfully Jackson doesn't gloat over the gore and shows us that despite the horrors faced everyday these soldiers somehow held onto their humanity. Jokes over latrine accidents will take you by surprise. The ingenuity shown during trench life with regards to cooking and sleeping will bring a smile and the soldier's descriptions of their first face to face meetings with German soldiers make you realise how important it is to not fall into the trap of becoming an automaton, of holding onto some bit of compassion. These young Germans were the exact same as the British. Men needing a job. They weren't nazi's. That horror didn't come until later. They misguidedly assumed they were on the side of the angels. None of this romanticises war though. It's depicted exactly as what it is. Hell on earth. One voiceover story of a soldier describing how he had to shoot a comrade to save him from the agony of his wounds is the kind of thing that will stick with you forever.

This is a vital watch. The kind of thing that should be mandatory in schools all over the world. It's great to see special effects and movie wizardry being used for something other than creating CGI blockbusters. Some may decry the use of technology as insulting to the memory of the dead or see it as a voyeuristic exercise but I see it as way of making history relevant to people who may not have had the biggest interest in it before. Without the distancing effect of B&W you're forced to see these soldiers as contemporaries and the effect is heartbreaking. We have to study history to learn from it. When we don't learn we're doomed to repeat it. And when it's repeated it's the young who get it in the neck. Everytime.