A century later, Peter Jackson produced an informative and fascinating documentary about the First World War, seen by the English, in the trenches of the Bay of Somme, with dusted and colored archive images.
Almost everyone expected a brief and victorious war, which, as it was said at the time, would be "over at Christmas". The continuation was very different and became a trench war. Hygiene was deplorable until it became laughable but the atmosphere within the troops was fraternal despite the constantly oppressive atmosphere.
And we also learn that the English infantrymen regularly had a mission to capture a Fritz. Knowing that from a military strategy point of view, this is a complete nonsense, a war prisoner being systematically an useless and cumbersome dead weight, it is perhaps a pity that this documentary does not give to the audience an explicit explanation. And the only rational explanation is probably this one: to force the English infantrymen to attack the Germans, the prisoner of war being the proof of the effectiveness of their attack ...
Almost everyone expected a brief and victorious war, which, as it was said at the time, would be "over at Christmas". The continuation was very different and became a trench war. Hygiene was deplorable until it became laughable but the atmosphere within the troops was fraternal despite the constantly oppressive atmosphere.
And we also learn that the English infantrymen regularly had a mission to capture a Fritz. Knowing that from a military strategy point of view, this is a complete nonsense, a war prisoner being systematically an useless and cumbersome dead weight, it is perhaps a pity that this documentary does not give to the audience an explicit explanation. And the only rational explanation is probably this one: to force the English infantrymen to attack the Germans, the prisoner of war being the proof of the effectiveness of their attack ...