'They Shall Not Grow Old'

[BBMmk2]

Strange what a succession of words can do to a title.

A very poignant film. If nobody has seen it, please do so.

[Keraulophone]

The original is both archaic and ugly

Archaic, yes; 'poetic' not ugly (IMV).

[Pabmusic]

Archaic, yes; 'poetic' not ugly (IMV).

Of course - it's all IMV.

[Keraulophone]

Of course - it's all IMV.

[ardcarp]

I suspect Elgar (never a sensitive word-setter.....)

I wonder if you could give a few examples Pabs? I'm not taking sides at all, but having sung loads of Elgar (songs, part-songs, big works) it never occurred to me that he wasn't. Thanks.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I wonder if you could give a few examples Pabs? I'm not taking sides at all, but having sung loads of Elgar (songs, part-songs, big works) it never occurred to me that he wasn't. Thanks.

Perhaps on a different Thread?

(Sorry of that sounds officious - but I think that this film deserves as much attention focussed on it for the remaining five days that it is available on the i-Player.)

[Stunsworth]

(Sorry of that sounds officious - but I think that this film deserves as much attention focussed on it for the remaining five days that it is available on the i-Player.)

Perhaps it should be in the General Arts section rather than Talking About Music?

[LeMartinPecheur]

Elgar sets it as "not grow old" and siince he wrote it in consultation with Binyon, I imagine it had his impramatur.

One musical setting that gets it 'right' (as per the printed poem) is George Guest's, which I in my local choir have been practising hard for weeks ready for a Remembrance concert this Saturday (Launceston Central Methodist 7.30pm if anyone's interested).

What took me completely aback a week or two ago on R3 Breakfast was a newly-issued CD recording of it where it was sung as "not grow old"

Our conductor suggested the CD might be linked to the film (I've not yet seen it), but I don't think that's any excuse. 'Linked to' or 'piggy-backing on'? Does anyone know?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Perhaps it should be in the General Arts section rather than Talking About Music?

Ah! I hadn't noticed that!

(Done!)

[Pabmusic]

Perhaps on a different Thread?

(Sorry of that sounds officious - but I think that this film deserves as much attention focussed on it for the remaining five days that it is available on the i-Player.)

Yes, I agree. I'm not keen to pontificate on Elgar's word-setting in the shadow of this marvelous film.

[Richard Tarleton]

I found it deeply moving. The contrast between the scratchy jerky film at the beginning and the cut to widescreen colour when we got to the tranches was very well done - someone elsewhere compared it to the Wizard of Oz.

It was a lot more graphic than I was expecting. I certainly wasn't expecting the footage of a shell landing next to some cavalrymen, and the aftermath.

As for the people who 'enjoyed' the war, I expect they were in a very small minority. There was an old interview with a veteran broadcast last week and he was asked something to the effect of "Were you relieved when the armistice came?", the response was "What do you think". The fact that people were still fighting over land on the morning of the 11th that they'd have been able to walk across in the afternoon in mindboggling - yes Pershing, I'm looking at you.

Agreed on all points. The people who said they "enjoyed" the war seemed to have been mainly private soldiers whose pre-war lives were pretty grim. Interesting how many (it said) grew an inch and put on a stone with the food and training. Peter Jackson has commented in interviews about the appalling state of the English privates' teeth, clear from the films. And as for the sanitary arrangements A lot of the combat footage was not taken during actual battles, because it would simply not have been practical for heavy cine cameras and tripods to be lugged about on the battlefield.

I've been researching the first world war careers of both grandfathers and a first cousin (three times removed) who all fought on the Western Front. Coincidentally (they didn't know eachother at the time, and indeed never met) both grandfathers were in the artillery - though one was in the Garrison Artillery, the sort which lobbed huge ordnance at the enemy from huge guns behind the baseline, and the other was in the Royal Field Artillery, the mobile variety. The Garrison Artillery one (my mother's father), a clerk, was also a church organist, choir trainer and all-round musician. He died in 1956 - I only knew this old man who was mostly in hospital with bronchitis. We were told growing up that he had been gassed, hence his poor health. This was untrue - with the help of a Forces War Records researcher I've obtained his (thick) file, which reveals he was a shell-shock victim ("Debility and/or Neurasthenia") and was sent to a specialist shell shock hospital on Merseyside at the end of the war. The gassing story was obviously considered by his wife a more acceptable story to tell everyone. He kept a scrapbook of his war, with photographs, drawings and cuttings, which my grandmother threw on the fire when he died.

My father's father had been a soldier briefly before the war but was a gentle, sensitive character who expressed his feelings by writing poems - he appears to have been involved at Vimy Ridge and the Somme. Owen or Binyon he wasn't, but they are touching and sad. I have the manuscripts, and am preparing an edition for the family. Some are from the Western Front, and some from Palestine where he was transferred later (including a poem written on the eve of the Battle of Beersheba). He lived until 1974, I knew him well but of course he never spoke about the war. The cousin I think I've written about before, a veteran of the Boer War who fought with Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry.

[BBMmk2]

Richard Tarleton, my paternal grandfather fought at the Somme, in the Royal Field Artillery, he was a Captain.

[Richard Tarleton]

Richard Tarleton, my paternal grandfather fought at the Somme, in the Royal Field Artillery, he was a Captain.

I wonder if they knew eachother, BBM. Did he ever talk about the war?

[Pabmusic]

Agreed on all points. The people who said they "enjoyed" the war seemed to have been mainly private soldiers whose pre-war lives were pretty grim. Interesting how many (it said) grew an inch and put on a stone with the food and training. Peter Jackson has commented in interviews about the appalling state of the English privates' teeth, clear from the films. And as for the sanitary arrangements A lot of the combat footage was not taken during actual battles, because it would simply not have been practical for heavy cine cameras and tripods to be lugged about on the battlefield.

I've been researching the first world war careers of both grandfathers and a first cousin (three times removed) who all fought on the Western Front. Coincidentally (they didn't know eachother at the time, and indeed never met) both grandfathers were in the artillery - though one was in the Garrison Artillery, the sort which lobbed huge ordnance at the enemy from huge guns behind the baseline, and the other was in the Royal Field Artillery, the mobile variety. The Garrison Artillery one (my mother's father), a clerk, was also a church organist, choir trainer and all-round musician. He died in 1956 - I only knew this old man who was mostly in hospital with bronchitis. We were told growing up that he had been gassed, hence his poor health. This was untrue - with the help of a Forces War Records researcher I've obtained his (thick) file, which reveals he was a shell-shock victim ("Debility and/or Neurasthenia") and was sent to a specialist shell shock hospital on Merseyside at the end of the war. The gassing story was obviously considered by his wife a more acceptable story to tell everyone. He kept a scrapbook of his war, with photographs, drawings and cuttings, which my grandmother threw on the fire when he died.

My father's father had been a soldier briefly before the war but was a gentle, sensitive character who expressed his feelings by writing poems - he appears to have been involved at Vimy Ridge and the Somme. Owen or Binyon he wasn't, but they are touching and sad. I have the manuscripts, and am preparing an edition for the family. Some are from the Western Front, and some from Palestine where he was transferred later (including a poem written on the eve of the Battle of Beersheba). He lived until 1974, I knew him well but of course he never spoke about the war. The cousin I think I've written about before, a veteran of the Boer War who fought with Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry.

Here is Frank Gough, my maternal grandfather. I never knew him. He joined up a few months before the war (what bad luck!) and so was a 'regular'. He was in the Royal Artillery and served in Mesopotamia, having contracted malaria at Salonika (a hell-hole for malaria). He was attached firstly to the DCLI and then to a Gurkha regiment. (I don't really understand the role of artillery 'attached' to an infantry regiment.) He apparently told of Gurkhas leaving the lines at night and returning with Turkish heads. He was wounded at some stage and sent to India, where he ended up as a Sergeant Major at the military prison at Poona. He stayed a regular till the mid-1920s. Apparently he was a very gentle person, but he died of a stroke (weakened by malaria) not too long before I was born.

[Richard Tarleton]

Thank you Pabs. Are those spurs he's wearing? And the puttees, we heard about those in the film. And a curious backdrop behind him in the photo. But most of all the eyes. My grandfather was actually living in India at the start of the war, and signed up for the Indian Army – he was briefly a motorcycle dispatch rider. But he was transferred to the UK, and to the artillery. Here he is in his puttees, with his proud (Scottish) mother, my great grandmother. In the photo taken at his wedding in 1923 he looks about 20 years older.