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Went and saw it on my own Thursday night...wife wanted to go, but i told her to stay home...

Who told you you weren’t stupid?

Went and saw it on my own Thursday night...wife wanted to go, but i told her to stay home...

it was less bloody than I anticipated...late show I went to, there were a lot of veterans in the theatre...
more Iraq/Afghanistan Vets than Vietnam Era Vets...

my thoughts were going back to my time in the Army, working at the hospital at Ft Lewis, Madigan AMC...

Predominately assigned to the Surgical Recovery Ward... a 90 bed ward...

this was in the 70s... 50% plus of all of our patient load, were WW 1 vets, most being in their 70s and 80s in those years..

I've had conversations with 1000s of those guys, on a daily basis asking about their time in war, as you took care of their daily recovery plan....I feel that was a bonus like blessing to have had that privilege..

during the movie, I was wishing I could relive those experience at Madigan once again.. and listen even closer to what they said and the stories they told...

When I lived in England from 63 to 66, many of the older residents were WW 1 vets...and there was a lot of them...
yet in our little town, during WW 1, most of the boys who were between 17 and 24 during the years 1914 to 1918
went to war... over 40 % of them never made it home..

The older men delighted in any interest we younger boys had in the stories of their youth back in those days...
The one thing I remember the most of their tales...,,many of the dead didn't last long at the front... just days, not even weeks..
and the deaths they suffered were horrible...more blown up than shot.. bodies that weren't moved were a daily thing to deal with... corpses rotted in the trenches, and especially in shell holes...they never got use to the smell, yet learned to endure it daily...
a wound that sent you home was like a winning lottery ticket...many that returned home, did so without a leg or arm, or hand...
some told of being sent home all messed up inside their bodies due to gas attacks...

Guess hearing those stories, it came to mind, when the Albatross was shot down when they were at the barn on that abandoned farm.... instead of just pulling the German pilot out of the burning plane, it went thru my head, that they must not have been at the front for very long.. if they had, they would have just shot the German and let his body burn...

and as it turned out, after doing so, the German, stabbed one who had just saved his life, while the other was trying to get him water.. that is how WW 1 was described to me by the folks who had fought it...you just put your enemy down before he had the chance to put you down...it was a slaughter house, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day....

and then to think, after it was all over in 1918, The Spanish Flu hit worldwide, and it killed more people than had been killed in all fronts in WW 1, by all participants combined....

I've always been in awe of how people survived that period of time at all in Europe.. and even the WW 1 vets that came home from Europe when it was all over.... We lost 58,000 men in like 18 to 20 years involvement in Vietnam... We lost over 50,000 dead Americans in WW 1, in a little over 1 year of combat...and if wounded...medical treatment was usually an amputation in the field hospital....or gas took your lungs and your eyesight....

They evidently still teach that history in England...here, the average millennial doesn't have a damn clue of what those people did to keep their nations culture and sovereignty in those days....

I am thankful I know, because of being able to know and speak with so many who went thru it,, both at Madigan but also when Lived in England as a kid... and then there were the WW 2 veterans.. both there and in the Army Hospital at Madigan...

I guess you weren't paying attention during the dogfight scene?

Or when the officer that gave him a lift explained that he should present his orders in front of witnesses? Because some officers will try and ignore the order?

And I guess you were buying more popcorn when he had to walk past five or six different Lieutenants? All of whom wouldn't listen to him as men poured over the wall?

Or the fact that when the Colonel receives the message his initial reaction is not listen to the Lance Corporal?

These scenes are put into the script to provide context to the audience. So that you understand the necessity of the mission. And why it can't be thrown like a paper airplane out of Sopwith.

You're welcome.

The story behind the movie...

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a30456703/1917-movie-based-on-true-story/