nonsuch
3rd November 2008, 08:08 AM
Michael Palin, now looking seriously beaten-up, tells the story of the last hours before the Armistice was signed. You would think we'd get tired of dredging up new material on this ridiculous and disastrous war, but we never do. There's something sinister, macabre and fascinating about the mass slaughter of the innocents in our time. It haunts our conscience, too, that 'this war to end all wars' proved so futile. November means fireworks, leaf-raking, digesting the Booker winners and, lest we forget - and that seems most unlikely, given that every respectable announcer and presenter on BBC TV has been wearing his or her poppy with pride for at least three weeks - Remembrance Day with all its solemn rituals.
Palin does a good job in this Timewatch programme, interviewing those who lost relatives in the carnage, threading these through with archive footage and still photographs. Nothing new, one might think, but there is! It seems that the end of the war was as chaotic and bungled as the beginning. Many went on killing and getting killed. Nobody seemed to know how or when to stop. General Pershing wanted to proceed all the way to Berlin and teach the Bosch a lesson they'd not forget in a hurry (foreshadowing later American bellicosity in Korea and the Gulf). Once again 'someone had blundered.' Watching this it is difficult not to feel both shocked and saddened by the rage for war that periodically grips nations. Further, one wonders at our obsession with replaying all these horrors 'lest we forget.' All our war museums, the way the subject is rammed down the throats of the young with visits to war cemeteries, the annual 'back to the trenches' projects and so on - is one supposed to take pride, feel guilty, be warned, be fascinated and excited ? All of these I suspect.
Whatever one's motives, there is no doubt that war is a subject that concerns us all. More on the abundant writings and some perspective on this may be found in a survey of WW1 literature by David and Ligaya James in the current edition of newbooks. Only a decade to go before the real bonanza - The Great War Millennium Celebration!
Palin does a good job in this Timewatch programme, interviewing those who lost relatives in the carnage, threading these through with archive footage and still photographs. Nothing new, one might think, but there is! It seems that the end of the war was as chaotic and bungled as the beginning. Many went on killing and getting killed. Nobody seemed to know how or when to stop. General Pershing wanted to proceed all the way to Berlin and teach the Bosch a lesson they'd not forget in a hurry (foreshadowing later American bellicosity in Korea and the Gulf). Once again 'someone had blundered.' Watching this it is difficult not to feel both shocked and saddened by the rage for war that periodically grips nations. Further, one wonders at our obsession with replaying all these horrors 'lest we forget.' All our war museums, the way the subject is rammed down the throats of the young with visits to war cemeteries, the annual 'back to the trenches' projects and so on - is one supposed to take pride, feel guilty, be warned, be fascinated and excited ? All of these I suspect.
Whatever one's motives, there is no doubt that war is a subject that concerns us all. More on the abundant writings and some perspective on this may be found in a survey of WW1 literature by David and Ligaya James in the current edition of newbooks. Only a decade to go before the real bonanza - The Great War Millennium Celebration!