War Horse is a children’s book by Michael Morpurgo originally published in 1982. In recent years it has become well known as a stage play seen mainly by adults and it was really only a matter of time before a transition to the screen would happen. Directed by Stephen Spielberg, the film stars some of the best of Britain’s current actors and some superb newcomers. But what should a military historian make of such a film?

Before I went to see it today I had been keeping an eye on comments via online reviews and on WW1 sites like the Great War Forum. The latter has at least two threads running where some of the more serious types who frequent it have nothing good to say, but it is hard to tell if they have actually seen the film or not. The key contention is the history; in theirs and many others eyes it is ‘wrong’ and presents an outdated view of the war. For me the history side of it was the least of the issues that troubled me about War Horse; generally speaking an attempt had been made to get it right from the chronology of the uniforms and equipment to the ‘feel’ of the battlefield. Aspects of the story do indeed defy historical disbelief, but for a story that had its setting in the Great War it was convincing, in the same way that other good war films draw you into the period.

What surprised me was that it did not feel like a Spielberg film at all. When I think of Saving Private Ryan there was a great sense of place in that film; the battle sequences did not feel like they were taking place in isolation. In War Horse they did; the cavalry charge at the start being the most baffling – the British cavalry regiment appearing to be the only Allied soldiers on the field. The trench scenes got less convincing when you saw the same brick arch in both British and German positions and that the trenches had been made straight to allow the rails of the dolly to be laid for tracking shots. The last scence in France where the auction took place was so obviously filmed in Britain and looked nothing like rural France, making it yet again seem odd. Whether this was a budget aspect or not I have no idea.

But while a few points like this did niggle me, what the naysayers fail to take into account is that this film is fiction. It isn’t a documentary; it has a basis in the past, but the reality of that past has been stretched to make the story, and that is not different to any other film. Do go and see it; War Horse is hugely enjoyable; the character of Albert is wonderfully played by the unknown Jeremy Irvine and the horses are simply fantastic; and they are the real stars of the tale from start till end. And it is beautifully shot with some stunning landscapes.

The huge public interest in the film – the cinema was packed today with another same-sized crowd waiting to get in, and this seems typical across the country – means that this will be very much the talk of the battlefields this year; it will become a point of reference for many, and while it’s history may be dodgy in places and the story more than a little far-fetched, thousands will think about the Great War when before they did not, and some will go on to read books like Richard Van Emden’s Tommy’s Ark or J.E.B. Seeley’s Warrior – or just rekindle a feint memory of grandad’s story of the cry of those noble beasts who served and suffered under the clash of the guns. In some ways that is where the film should have ended – with the Animals in War Memorial in London and a rememberance of the millions of animals who died, and never made it home like Joey.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 12,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

While I spend most of my professional, and a good portion of my personal life on and around battlefields, this year has certainly been a busy one. I started in January going backwards and forwards to Arnhem and Normandy getting things organised for Dig WW2 and then went into the filming for that in Belgium, France, Holland, and Germany, with our last overseas shoot in July. I also found myself in Italy for a month this year either working on TV projects or guiding groups. But for the Great War it was  a quiet year, as time only permitted me to do a handful of Recces or tours on the Western Front; in fact in twelve months I only found myself in Ypres twice, something that hasn’t happened for more than 20 years. The autumn into the winter saw the start of two new TV projects, one we have started filming for Channel 5 – Hero in the Family. As snow descends on the old battlefields in Europe, it certainly is time for a break.

On the writing front, Your Family Tree  have kept me busy, and 2011 The saw a reprint of my first book Walking the Somme and I finally finished my first WW2 book, Walking D Day.

But there have been tragic times, too. Spending time with veterans is a blessing, but it is heartbreaking when they fade away and it was a hard loss when Don Carter died just after our visit to Cassino. We owe men like him so much, and their quiet heroism is humbling. I know where my new years toast will be directed in a couple of weeks time.

Next year promises to be just as busy, with two WW1 TV projects looming close, the publication of another book and two series go to air sometime in the Spring.

For now the walking boots are stashed away, the last few words of the year written, and I take my leave from the Old Front Line, as much as it ever leaves me, or I it.

Today is a fitting one to be reviewing a new iPad App about the attack on Pearl Harbour as it is the 70th Anniversary of the ‘Day of Infamy’. The App is a joint venture between well known military publishers Osprey and App design company Aimer Media; it indeed uses text, images and graphics from one of Osprey’s own Campaign series.

The iPad lends itself for this sort of new media, and the information and graphics are well presented. After the ‘splash page’ the App opens into a map of Pearl Harbour with a timeline below. Clicking on the Timeline takes you into a text and image section which gives the background to the battle; the images and maps are enlargeable at a click and are all very clear. Data on aircraft is also including, with some nice profiles. Next clicking on First Attack Wave takes you to the main map. Here you can add overlays of the aerial assault, highlight US ships and follow the specific timeline. Points appear on the map and these are then click-able throwing up more information and images. In simple terms the whole thing is a massive interactive visual book, and works really well. It ends with an aftermath that includes an audio file of Roosevelt’s Day of Infamy speech.

This was a very slick App and makes good use of the iPad but… it does cost £4.99. This is really my only bugbear with it. Osprey are a top class publisher known for high quality material, and Aimer have used their skills to make good use of the existing paper sources. But for nearly a fiver I would have expected a little more – animated maps perhaps, and some video as well as audio. But it really is early days for this type of military history Apps; we’ve had quizzes and a few wiki cut and pastes from App designers that have come and gone, but this is a serious effort with good intent, and the history of Apps have proved there is always room for manoeuvre on the price, so I look forward to more from this excellent stable.

During some research for an upcoming television series, I had the privilege of spending some time at the site of the Concentration Camp at Bergen-Belsen last week. Despite having visited WW2 battlefields for more than 30 years, this was the first Concentration Camp I have ever been to. Part of me has been putting it off for years as my grandmother’s French family all died in Auschwitz and I really did not know how I would think about it. Perhaps Belsen has proved to be a gentle introduction to Holocaust sites, as much as it can ever be gentle, as it was not the dark foreboding place I had imagined, but a place where nature has taken hold once more; there are trees, shrubs and birds sang in the trees – something many modern visitors claim doesn’t happen at these places, so I recorded it on my iPhone to make sure I wasn’t imagining it. Belsen looks little like it did during the war; there are no surviving buildings but the grave sites are marked in a very subtle way, and the information centre was excellent.

Belsen was a place where the ideals of a society drifted into a cruel and inhuman madness; today it stands not only as a potent memorial but as a warning, that the Holocaust was not just about one man, or a small group of men, and what they believed, but was about a whole society being culpable, even if it was often through ignorance. The fear has always been, could it happen again? And the darkness that such a thought brings makes the hair stand on the back of your neck among the swirl of branches and birdsong at Belsen today.

The Heroes of Hailsham

By David M. Dyer (DMD Publishing, Hailsham)
ISBN 978-0-9569155-0-4, 172pp, illustrated, £9.00

The small village of Hailsham sits in rural East Sussex, not far from the Sussex coast at Hastings. The local war memorial lists 88 dead from the Great War and 35 from the Second World War, a typical casualty roll for country villages like Hailsham.

The author has adopted a traditional format to the book for War Memorial productions. He explains a little about the local memorials that exist and then a page or more is devoted to each casualty, describing their military career and the battle in which they died. Portrait photographs are provided for the vast majority and where these are not available photographs of graves or names on memorials to the missing overseas. The section on WW2 follows a similar approach.

One of Hailsham’s Great War heroes was Nelson Victor Carter VC. Carter was awarded a posthumous VC while serving with the South Downs battalions at Richebourg and while he lived in Eastbourne in 1914, his Hailsham roots are often forgotten, so it was good to see this section of the book; Carter is given a full chapter to himself.

The section on additional information was interesting, especially where the author breaks down the casualties on the memorial in terms of statistics, showing for example that most men on the memorial were aged between 21 and 25.

One other casualty in the book that attracted my attention was Frederick Marillier. I wrote about him in my own book Walking The Salient so it was interesting to read more details about him and see a photograph. Frederick came from a well-to-do Sussex family but enlisted as a common soldier, was decorated with a DCM and given a battlefield commission, until he fell in Flanders in 1914. A short war, and all too common when reading stories of other Hailsham Heroes in the book.

David Dyer has done a good job of bringing all the sources together in one publication, adding more to what we know about this men from Sussex who gave their all, and it is certainly a very modestly priced book, with some of the profits going to the Royal British Legion and Thank The Forces. A good little production that does the Heroes of Hailsham proud; they are just names no longer.

The book can be purchased from: www.theheroesofhailsham.co.uk

During the Great War more men were wounded than died; something that is often forgotten. Some men were wounded several times, others once and so badly that it lead to their discharge from the army. Men with missing limbs back in civilian life could never be mistaken for anything but what they were – wounded ex-soldiers. But some wounds that lead to men being discharged were not so visible; and many men left the army with sickness caused by active service. In the early period of the war such men found themselves the centre of unwanted attention from over zealous patriots – often young women – who would step forward and present the seemingly fit and un-uniformed young man with a white feather, implying his cowardice for not enlisting.

In 1916 the War Office therefore introduced the Silver War Badge. Made from solid silver, the small circular badge bore the cipher of George V and the legend ‘For Services Rendered’. Each badge was numbered – a unique reference identifying the serviceman it was issued to – came with an issue slip and later a large certificate which could be framed. A badge was decided upon so it could easily be worn on civil dress, thus instantly indicating the person concerned had ‘done their bit’ (as can be seen in the photo above).

But what sort of men got the badge and for what reasons? Everyone from Brigadier-Generals to Private soldiers were awarded the badge. The reasons varied from gun shot and shell injuries, trench fever, illness caused through exposure and shell shock were all reasons given on the Silver War Badge rolls prepared by the War Office. Less common reasons included chronic alcoholism and epilepsy – both reasons for discharge stated on rolls I’ve viewed.

These Silver War Badge Rolls are available in their original form in class WO329 at the National Archives. They have also just been released by Ancestry – although you need their most expensive subscription to view them – and now can be searched and downloaded easily. Military Publishers Naval & Military Press also have plans to release the rolls as a CD Database. It has therefore never been easier to research the ‘forgotten wounded’ of the Great War.

It is at this time of year all our thoughts turn to those who fought and died in the Two World Wars, and subsequent conflicts. For myself, I am lucky that my life has been touched by knowing many veterans, of many different conflicts. I grew up of course with my father and all my uncles, all WW2 veterans, and was lucky to know several hundred Great War veterans whom I interviewed in the 1980s. The last of ‘my’ WW1 veterans died just as I moved to live on the Somme, and I wondered if I would ever know men like that again. But working as a battlefield guide for many years I have been privledged to meet veterans on a regular basis. In the last decade, just as with those from the trenches, I have got to known dozens of WW2 veterans who have become good and valued friends; and I have been fortunate to spend time with them on the battlefields where they fought as young men and women. But it’s not just the World Wars; I’ve spent many a night in the bar of a hotel with a Falklands veteran talking about Bluff Cove or Goose Green, or with a man who defended a sangar in NI and more recently those who served in Iraq or Afghanistan. There is often a common thread I’ve seen over three decades of talking to these men; regret at the loss of comrades, sadness that so many acts of bravery go unrewarded or recognised, and a common desire not to tell of their experiences, but at the same time to want to; to share that journey into Hell, to make some sense of it.

At times we don’t know what we owe these men and women, or have any appreciation for what they have done – and in the case of serving veterans – of what they are still doing. I remember being in Normandy some reasons ago when one of the Vets knelt down at a grave, tapped it with his right hand and said ‘son, we owe you a lot… we owe you your life and all that held’. The grave was a sixteen year old Canadian.

War cuts short lives, destroys hope, and makes widows and orphans; there is much more to conflict than what takes place on the battlefield, and even five minutes with a Veteran will help you realise that. We may at times question the motives of war, and the decisions of our politicians, but that is never a reason to forget. Soldiers at the sharp end deserve our recognition, and their families our support.

But knowing Veterans has its sadder side. This year I have said goodbye to several and over the years have seen some not just fade away, but sink into madness or illness, or both. The ‘forgotten wounded’ need to be remembered in equal ranks with the dead.

For most of us thankfully war will never be a reality, but at this time of year especially, we should pause for a while, look for that list of names on the memorial in the town you’ve passed several times, visit that white headstone with a familiar looking badge in the town cemetery, dust off that picture of granddad in his khaki, read a Blog of a serving soldier or his wife, and pin on your poppy with pride. That little splash of red let’s us stand united with all they have achieved, all they have suffered, and it is really the least we can ever do.

I was pleased to get an email from a friend letting me know that this Out of Battle Blog has received a positive review on the Culture 24 website. The full review is shown above. The website describes itself:

Culture24 exists to promote and support the cultural sector online and to serve the needs of online audiences. We are a not-for-profit online publisher, working across the arts, heritage, education, and tourism sectors.

It’s nice to see the Blog is having an impact and the comments are appreciated. The site can be viewed here:

www.culture24.org.uk/home

Berlin October 2011, a set on Flickr.

Just returned from another visit to Berlin. My favourite European city, Berlin has so much military history. In fact it has inspired me to work on a dedicated blog about military history in Berlin, as I have several more trips in the pipeline. The Blog – ‘Military Berlin’ – can be found here:

http://militaryberlin.wordpress.com/