'They Shall Not Grow Old'

[Petrushka]

This was stunning television. I've never been entirely convinced that colourisation was right but the moment when the film went from grainy black and white to colour was one of the truly great television experiences I can recall. Breathtaking, in a word.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

This was stunning television. I've never been entirely convinced that colourisation was right but the moment when the film went from grainy black and white to colour was one of the truly great television experiences I can recall. Breathtaking, in a word.

Before this, the word "colourisation" meant for me those coloured-in Laurel & Hardy films, or even the "World War One in Colour" series - but the meticulous care taken by Peter Jackson and his team (checking exact shades of uniform, camouflage, even flowers) is in an entirely different league. I'd really recommend Forumistas - after they've seen this film - to watch the fascinating and - yes - moving documentary on how the film was made. It's part of the What Do Artists Do All Day? series:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0brzngq/what-do-artists-do-all-day-27-peter-jackson

The dedication shown in making the film couldn't have shown greater respect for the men involved. This is what justifies the Licence Fee.

[Historian]

I recall reading somewhere that the Germans were amazed at how small many of our (often Northern) soldiers were, and what bad teeth they had. Industrial revolution I suppose.

Not necessarily. I recall reading some Militia lists from rural areas around 1757 which gave the heights of men who enlisted. The average height for these men, who were mostly agricultural labourers, was 5 foot 5 inches.

That said, the poor diet (as well as atmospheric pollution and other factors) during the Industrial Revolution would have circumscribed the growth of many working men (and women).

Dentistry would have been without anaesthetic until the mid nineteenth century and restricted mainly to teeth-pulling. I assume (though open to correction) that dentures would have been a luxury. So, black teeth may have been better than no teeth at all.

[Historian]

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.

It sounds quite unusual; normally artillery were part of a Division (an all-arms force which included infantry, artillery, engineers etc.). It might have been an ad hoc arrangement if the infantry regiment was detailed for a particular operation which required artillery support. Can you remember where he was (which theatre) Pabs?

[Pabmusic]

It sounds quite unusual; normally artillery were part of a Division (an all-arms force which included infantry, artillery, engineers etc.). It might have been an ad hoc arrangement if the infantry regiment was detailed for a particular operation which required artillery support. Can you remember where he was (which theatre) Pabs?

Yes, certainly Mesopotamia. But of course, I'm repeating what I heard many times from my mother. Most likely it means something like "I spent months in the close proximity of the DCLI and a Gurkha Regt. This is the sort of thing that happened..."

[Pabmusic]

And in the closing moments, voices in the film were saying how the armistice was like being made redundant, going back to having nothing in their lives [I paraphrase - the structure, the camaraderie, the sense of purpose...]

My grandfather's poetry makes clear how much he loathed the business of war. Sometimes it reads like Tennyson on a bad day, occasionally it sinks into bathos (a poem about a badly-treated mule) but is at its best when gently humorous. He wrote about the travails of demobilisation, and the following, called "Demoralisation", about trying to slot back into middle-class life with his four terrifying sisters, later my great aunts (not surprisingly he headed back to his old job in India within a year or two):-

My warrior days are o’er,
I’m home again once more
Though still here in the flesh I’m “disembodied”,
And now, although it’s hard
I’m constantly on guard
Against committing faux-pas simply horrid.

... (etc.)

The opening verses of Kipling's Chant-Pagan (English irregular, discharged) - clearly about the Boer War, but still ...

Me that ’ave been what I’ve been –
Me that ’ave gone where I’ve gone –
Me that ’ave seen what I’ve seen –
‘Ow can I ever take on
With awful old England again,
An ‘ouses both sides of the street,
And ’edges two sides of the lane,
And the parson an’ gentry between,
An’ touchin’ my ‘at when we meet –

Me that ‘ave been what I’ve been?

Me that ‘ave watched ‘arf a world
‘Eave up all shiny with dew,
Kopje on kop in the sun,
An’ as soon as the mist let ‘em through
Our ‘elios winkin’ like fun –
Three sides of a ninety-mile square,
Over valleys as big as a shire –
“Are ye there? Are ye there? Are ye there?”
An’ then the blind drum of our fire . . .
An’ I’m rollin’ ‘is lawns for the Squire,

Me!

[kernelbogey]

I think this remarkable film deserves a thread of its own....In terms of structure, it's a perfect example of how to match form to content. That content is sometimes difficult to watch, but by the end I felt that I had been on a harrowing, but necessary, journey into my own family's history. Any doubts I may have had about colourisation or dubbing were removed as soon as I saw how skilfully and respectfully it had been done. I really can't recommend this film too highly. (NB: It's available on the iPlayer for SIX DAYS ONLY.

Bumping this up as the film is available on iPlayer only until 2305 on Sunday [18/11/18].

I saw it, and most of the interview of Peter Jackson by Mark Kermode, in the cinema last Saturday.

I hope this film will not prove ephemeral and would echo those above who have urged watching it: it is remarkable.

[kernelbogey]

I was moved when I first came across the Kohima Epitaph, reproduced on a war memorial in the cemetry of a church in Battersea:

When you go home, tell them of us and say,
For your tomorrow, we gave our today.

[LMcD]

Re #44: Lovely poem, thank you so much!
(Last night we watched 'Oh! What A Lovely War', courtesy of Talking Pictures TV. I'd probably have been more impressed had I not seen Peter Jackson's film. A truly cringe-making guest appearance by Dirk Bogarde - did he need the money, I wonder? The Christmas truce sequence was the best thing about it; as for the ending - well, for sheer emotional impact, the final moments of 'Blackadder Goes Forth' remain my yardstick).
I see that 2.1 million people watched the Peter Jackson on Sunday night - it will be interesting to see the 'consolidated' figure now once it's no longer on iPlayer and people have viewed their own recording of it.

[Keraulophone]

We were likewise moved when we came across the rather crudely painted words of the Kohima Epitaph on a board near ‘the’ bridge over the River Kwai while on honeymoon in Thailand almost twenty years ago. (BTW, the seven Oscar-winning film is almost entirely fictional, the bridge actually having being built over the nearby Mae Klong river in 1943 by Allied POWs and later destroyed by Allied bombing.) Incidentally, my late mother (who gave me the precious gift of a love of music and superivised my piano practice from the age of five) received the Burma Star after working in East Bengal as an officer in the cipher division of the Royal Corps of Signals, 1942-45.


The words are attributed to John Maxwell Edmonds (1875-1958), an English Classicist, who had put them together among a collection of 12 epitaphs for World War One, in 1916.

According to the Burma Star Association the words were used for the Kohima Memorial as a suggestion by Major John Etty-Leal, the GSO II of the 2nd Division, another classical scholar.

The verse is thought to have been inspired by the Greek lyric poet Simonides of Ceos (556-468 BC) who wrote after the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC:

"Go tell the Spartans, thou that passest by,
That faithful to their precepts here we lie."


(Derek Lawbuary, for the Burma Star Association)

[kernelbogey]

We were likewise moved when we came across the rather crudely painted words of the Kohima Epitaph on a board near ‘the’ bridge over the River Kwai while on honeymoon in Thailand almost twenty years ago[....]

Thanks, Keraulophone, for this. Interesting to see the attribution of the sentiment to Simonides of Ceos; I wonder how a modern version of the classical greek would read, not forced into a rhyming couplet.

There is so much that has been so deeply moving about the centenary of the 'First War' and of the Armistice.

I visited the Pages of the Sea event on Weymouth Beach on Sunday, one of 33 such events around the shores of the British Isles. Its focus (like the Peter Jackson film) on the individuals who died and on those who survived, touched me more than the militaristic atmosphere of the traditional event at the Cenotaph in Whitehall.

Notwithstanding having had no education about the 'Great War' when at school in the fifties and sixties, and five decades and more lived since then, I now know more, and feel more, about this terrible war than at any time before in my life.

[kernelbogey]

[...]I see that 2.1 million people watched the Peter Jackson on Sunday night - it will be interesting to see the 'consolidated' figure now once it's no longer on iPlayer and people have viewed their own recording of it.

It looks as though it is on until this coming Sunday night 18 November (tune in by 2000, I believe, to be sure of seeing the whole film).

[LMcD]

It looks as though it is on until this coming Sunday night 18 November (tune in by 2000, I believe, to be sure of seeing the whole film).

I believe that further showings in cinemas are scheduled.

[Historian]

Yes, certainly Mesopotamia. But of course, I'm repeating what I heard many times from my mother. Most likely it means something like "I spent months in the close proximity of the DCLI and a Gurkha Regt. This is the sort of thing that happened..."

Yes, of course; I was taking it too literally I think. Thank you very much; fascinating story (as are the others). The war (and army service in general) took men to places they were very unlikely to have visited otherwise. Too many did not return home.

[Historian]

I believe that DVDs of the film have also been sent to all British secondary schools.