War as Horror: The Confederate Infantry Attack in "Free State of Jones"
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- Опубліковано 12 вер 2024
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Find the other videos in the collaboration here:
• "War is Hell: No Matte...
This video is a part of the "War is Hell: No Matter the Era" Collaboration! Nine channels making nine videos on themes of privation, trauma, and death in a military context prior to the First World War. Because even when it features orderly lines and pretty uniforms, war is anything but polite or adventurous.
In this video, I explore the theme that war films should feel more like horror movies, than they do action or adventure. This is because, well, War is Hell! In particular, I focus on one of the battle scenes, The 2nd Battle of Corinth, in "Free State of Jones" (2016) which uses excellent sound design and physical effects, as well as clever cinematography, to achieve just such a result.
Find the original battle scene here: • Infantry Charge Free ...
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CITATIONS:
Sorry I forgot to include these in the video! But here are the sources for all the quotes I pull in this video.
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1st) "No sooner had our men..." - The History of the Civil War in America, by John S.C. Abbott
2nd) "There were men with their arms..." - ibid.
3rd) "The disorganization of tissue..." - Medical and Surgical Reporter, Vol. 9
4th) "John Barry of Co'y C..." - History of the 19th MA Volunteer Infantry
5th) "Battlefield searchers and the wounded..." - Perryville Under Fire, by Stuart W. Sanders, amzn.to/3H4DWk1
6th) "Union officer John W. De Forest..." - This Republic of Suffering, by Drew Gilpin Faust, amzn.to/3gVbq9Z
7th) "Frank Coker of Georgia..." - ibid.
8th) "Of all the horrors..." - ibid.
9th) "I rode over the battlefield..." - ibid.
10th) "I never saw so many dead..." - ibid.
11th) "Unable to explain..." - ibid.
12th) "I had not gone far when..." - Bullet and Shell, by George Forrester Williams
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This video is a part of the "War is Hell: No Matter the Era" collaboration! You can find the other eight videos of the series here: ua-cam.com/play/PLbGwg11hQxtnPCEzoUoK96DWrPWz7a1zh.html
(One video is going to be delayed a few days, so there are only eight total at the time of my writing this)
You can purchase the poster I mention in this video, "War is Hell: Bunker Hill," here! www.nativeoak.org/shop
Also, a silly but too-late-to-correct mistake on my part in this video, I forgot to include my citations in the video. So, you will find a list of sources for all of the quotes in the description. And if you'd like to read any of the primary sources, they are now all posted free of charge as PDFs in the library section of my website, here: www.nativeoak.org/library
War is not hell, war is war and hell is hell, the difference is in hell only the guilty are punished and everyone there did things wrong, in war innocents suffer and die
YEAH, LET'S GO BRANDON!!!
You should make a video about the song Yankee doodle dandy
I'm not sure about the notion that the further back in time you go, the more romanticized and mythologized war is. I think it depends to a large degree where people are from and what conflict they talk about. While there certainly is plenty of mythology about the Thirty Years War, both the number of cities razed and the massive depopulation it caused in the area most of it was fought in illustrate quite solidly that war was pure hell for everyone.
Or as Sabaton would put it:
Has man gone insane?
A few will remain
Who’ll find a way
To live one more day
Through decades of war
It spreads like disease,
There’s no sign of peace
Religion and greed
Cause millions to bleed
Three decades of war
you can also hear how terrified that Officers are iun that opening scene. their voices are SHAKING.
One side of war people often overlook (aside from everything in this brilliant video) is the aftermath of a battle. You hear 'X amount wounded', but how many of those wounds are actually missing limbs, men who have bullets left in them as it's too risky to take it out, the horrors of the butchers table and how for so very long battlefield medicine was all about chance. They might sow the wound up, but infections were rife and led to other complications down the line. Would love to see a video in this genre; showing how men on the field would tend to their fellow soldiers in the Civil War, how the North and South differed and if there were any tactics used to deliberately cause more wounds or the like.
I read a very good book several years back called "A Cavalryman With Custer," written by a man who commanded a cavalry troop in Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade. He said for him the worst part of the battle was after it was over. Prior to there was certainly an amount of fear and apprehension, and while the battle was in progress he was too busy to be frightened, but later on looking at the carnage was almost too much to bear. Even his horse was spooked by the sight.
imaging living in Leipzig during the battle of the nations and then being force to clean up the battlefield.
@@Nonsense010688 there may be some valuables on the dead soldiers... i m just saying :D
I'm reminded of how during the AWI the pacifist Moravians got stuck with nursing the sick and wounded and burying the dead. They didn't even believe in war but the worst parts of it literally landed on their doorsteps anyway.
Look into the wreck of the Sultana where former Confederates helped save the lives of the Union soldiers who were on board. Second Battle of Gettysburg filmed 40 years from the survivors of the great battle fought there, also showed the compassion of both sides to heal their wounds that they suffered together in battle.
A friend of mine was in Afghanistan and Iraq during the wars we fought there. He finished his required tour and went back for another. The pay was good and he was not afraid of combat. One day he and his fellow soldiers were using a mortar to attack an enemy line. One of the soldiers was a new recruit. Just before dropping in a motor, an enemy soldier popped up waving a white flag - but it was too late - the mortar flew in and the man's head exploded. "I guess he'll surrender faster next time," my friend said, and all of the soldiers laughed. All except the new guy, who looked horrified. My friend said, "When I looked into that man's face, I saw terror and horror - not at the fact the enemy had been killed trying to surrender - but at our callous attitude towards it. I realized that I was losing my humanity, and that it was time to go home." He resigned as soon as he was able and came back.
Sounds like he wasn't soldier material
@@chickencharlie1992 And you are?
@@tamlandipper29 he's an idiot ignore him
War turns men into monsters.
@@tamlandipper29 Nope, unless you mean the Meme Wars of 2016
I think one huge factor in the nature of war is omitted very often in many kinds of portrayal of it: the non-combat causes of casualties. Starvation and disease often kills much more soldiers than combat, and most of the time those are the main things for soldiers to worry about on campaign. The Napoleonic Wars were the prime example of it, but this issue has been inseparably connected with warfare since the dawn of history.
Never wage a land war in Asia, or Russia…
If what I've read is correct and it probably is WW2 was the first war in history where disease didn't kill more soldiers than combat.
Plus accidental death, e.g. dropping one's gun making it go off and kill you. That happened so many times in WW2.
@@JohnyG29
I remember a line from the last episode of Band of Brothers: "The war was over, but men were still dying."
I remember reading a statistic on Spanish fatalities on the Spanish-American War: there were more casualties due to Beri-Beri than from combat, and overall for every soldier KIA there were like ten that died from illness. By the way, there is an excellent film set on that war called "1898: Los Últimos de Filipinas" (1898: The Last of Philippines)
The whole scene is supposed to feed into Newton Knight’s disillusionment as well.
And it works very well. One line sums it up as well.
“He died with honor. No Will, he just died.”
And it is certainly true - he just died. There's so many civil war pictures of sunken, disturbed faces and horrifically mangled bodies that it's hard to think anyone who saw those would still believe in the classic, fanciful view of war. Cameras had advanced enough that exposures would be between under a second to a few seconds tops - not "hours" and "minutes" as that misconception goes. (The tintype for instance was the most popular type of camera, and had pretty instantaneous exposure times.)
Point being, this certainly contributed to why the US Civil War was the most photographed war until the First World War, and the many, many photographs showing the true and very real horror of it support that scene, and the point you're making well.
EDIT: 11:48 is enough to stop any delusions of glory and grandeur.
"War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell, but war is chock full of them - little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for a few [...], almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander."
-Hawkeye, M*A*S*H Season 5, Episode 20. “The General’s Practitioner.”
Starship Troopers is kind of an interesting case of this with it being satire and sci-fi. It revels in the triumphant music and heroic charges while also despising it and contrasting it with extreme gore and death. One scene after a woman soldier is stabbed through the abdomen she gives her usual touching goodbye moment just like Armistad in Gettysburg, but instead of giving one last exhale and fading away it's followed by violent convulsions, choking on blood, and desperate final pleads to not go. What started as a touching scene left me rather horrified.
Starship Troopers is a very interesting film to analyze as it fits into so many tropes, but also doesn't.
A small note about Gen Armistad. He did not die there on the carriage of that gun. He was severely wounded and lingered for two more days in a barn-turn-field hospital. But I believe there is some truth to his conversation with the soldiers attending him.
@@2ezee2011 I've heard something along those lines. I'm sure there's enough Civil War buffs to have given all the fact v fiction of the film.
On topic of war stories, I always respected that All Quiet on the Western Front has a soldier take also about 2 days to die. Sometimes humans are amazingly resilient but in the worst ways.
DIZZZIE!
Would you like to know more?
The opening of 'Glory' with the entire Antietam sequence made my 12 year old heart race with absolute terror. We did have the sweeping music and pageantry at the beginning but when the battle sequence begins the music is cut suddenly and all we hear are the stark and brutal sounds of combat. For me, no other Civil War movie 'got it' like this. It always chilled me when you hear a shell go off and a collective groan can be heard. Totally accurate by the accounts of veterans I've read. One veteran wrote about the peculiar 'sluck' noise of a ball passing through a body.
The soldiers of the Civil War developed a very morbid and dark sense of humor. When marching to what would be Gettysburg, veterans of the Army of the Potomac came across state militias in their dandy and colorful uniforms. The veterans whooped and hollered with much derisiveness at these men 'playing soldier' and coldly said things like how it'd be a shame to dirty such fine uniforms by getting buried in them. They'd also ask them where they buried their dead. So called 'rookies' were treated very disdainfully until they'd proven themselves in battle and were welcomed to the brotherhood. The 'heavies' in 1864 had a tough time of it but quickly were accepted. (Usually after getting cut to ribbons in the continuous Overland Campaign fighting.)
Antietam was a showcase of the ferocity the men would work themselves into during battle. One regiment had fired so feverishly their barrels fouled and they resorted to using rocks to hammer down their ramrods. The inferno of battle there reached levels so high that even veterans after a few hours simply couldn't take anymore and would wander to the rear in a near catatonic state.
After the Antietam scene, there’s also another brutal scene where a man goes through surgery without anaesthesia. He starts shrieking and crying, pleading “Please don’t cut any more! Please!”, cut off by a gargle and more screaming as blood splatters onto the nearby curtains
Sounds absolutely brutal. Thanks for sharing this info
I think this short bit from a British comedy called Only Fools and Horses from the 1970s - 1980s it was hilarious but would have serious and dark moments, captured it well.
In an episode called the "Russians are coming" after the character Del Boy talks about how he thinks we need a war because he'd never experienced one himself. The character of grandad then does a speech about war it goes : My brother George was at Passchendaele. Half a million allied troops died there, all for five miles of mud! I was at Kings Cross Station when his regiment come home after the Armistice. Most of them was carried off the train. I saw men with limbs missing, blind men, men who couldn't breathe properly because their lungs had been shot to bits by mustard gas. While the nation celebrated, they was hidden away in big, grey buildings. Far from the public gaze! I mean, courage like that could put you right off your victory tea, couldn't it? They promised us homes fit for heroes. They gave us heroes fit for homes.
I'm not sure I entirely agree with the assertion that war is hell. Sun Tzu famously said that "All warfare is based", and I think he knows a little more about it than you do, pal, because he invented it!
He didn't invent war he just created a strategy or strategies to improve the chances of victory.
@@frankburklin1116 someone doesn't get the reference
And then he proceeded to perfect it so that no living man could best him in the ring of honour. In fact, he went so far as to herd two of living animal on earth onto a boat just to beat every single one to a pulp (presumably to prove his theories right).
"all warfare is based" lmao
No he didn't.
This video reminded me of my visit to the Holocaust Museum in D.C.
The room filled with the shoes of the dead, and nothing more, is a brilliant way of giving visitors just a taste of what this horror means.
The first thing to hit you is the smell, like a wave. The smell of decaying fabric takes on an almost rotting-flesh like odor; it was horrifically palpable, and all the worse as your first instinct is to feel disgust rather than sorrow.
Then the sight of the shoes, a massive pile filling an entire large room, with only a small walkway along which to pass from one door to the other. The absent dead loom before you, their footwear representing them, abassadors from beyond the grave reminding the living that those murdered are not just a number.
"those murdered are not just a number."
Couldn't have said better myself :^)
@@reallifeautismsports Thank you. I think it is very important that we remember the war, and I feel many today have forgotten its lessons.
_"One death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic."_ - Joseph Stalin
@@GeneralJackRipper The quote is sadly quite true. It is impossible for the human brain to conceptualize a million sorrowful families, a million last words. I like the film "Come and See" because it somehow manages to do it by telling just one story, and when you get to the end of the film you realize that what you just saw played out thousands of times, over and over.
@@GeneralJackRipper falsely attributed to him, it was written by kurt tucholsky in his satirical piece on war
I remeber the account of an Australian AA gunner on a destroyer doing the Tobruk spud run that really demonstrates the absurdity of the horror of war and just the humanity of it. He talked of how: The Stukas would do their dive at your ship, and as they pulled out of it they'd have to fly straight and level for a short way next to the ship and you could at that moment shoot them down with the most ease. So after he has attempted to strafe and bomb you there is a moment where as he passes by you so close you can wave at him, and he waves back at you. And then you try to kill him.
I recall a similiar account of a British Officer during the retreat to Dunkirk stating he could see the Stuka pilots from the cockpits laughing whilst diving at the British
"Oh hey! It's Karl! Hi Karl!👋"
🛩️👋
"Bye Karl." 💥
@@cosmonautcat5116 Yes and i was there too and saw this totally possible thing
"absurdity" yeah right people should just have stayed at home instead of defending their country right that's how we'll get the german boys
This reminds me of one segment in They Shall Not Grow Old, a movie where they took old footage from WWI and corrected the speed, colorized it and added sound, making it very real. The segment had clips of living soldiers laughing and drinking and then showing the same men dead, my sister had to watch it for history class but we had to stop it at that point. Another scene that showed absolute callousness was a scene of a Tommy reading a letter while sitting on the rump of a bloated dead horse
That was a great documentary. It’s hard to articulate but old black and white photos and especially the poor uneven frame rate video of that time definitely create some kind of mental distance between you and the people. Watching that really narrowed the gap and you could see how they were just dudes in a horrible situation.
soldiers in ww1 had absolute balls of steel. most of them at least.
Despite the horrid conditions of the first world war, most of them kept their spirit, as seen with the french mutinies that were not for the end of the war but rather getting better generals to win it, and the russian peasants which did not want to end the war until the communist... "convinced" them it was the right to do if you see what i mean.
As for why that didn't carry over in the "pop-culture" and such, well, i could probably make an entire essay on the various reasons of why that might be the case. Most of them aren't good though
You almost don't feel the uneven lead ball shatter the bottom half of your sternum
The sensation of the blood in your lungs is a fullness and a blockage, not a pain
The darkness pulling up around you feel more like sleep than death
But then again, no one ever comes back to tell us what it's supposed to feel like
That's something I'd rather not find out lol. 3 of my 3rd great grandpas fought for the Union one was a Zouave in the 2nd Delaware and lost his right eye I couldn't imagine the hell he had to endure going through something like that and then to carry on through the war serving in a reserve regiment.
@@rc59191 We will be authentically portraying those Delaware Boys in the Trenches of Williamsport MD, during “Receding Tide” a Civil War Reenactment Event.
True badasses write poetry as they are dying on the field.
@@HistoryBoy oh cool wish I could be there for it hope you guy's videotape the event would love to see it.
That seems a mercy compared to one Napoleonic officer stating that he'd 'rather spend an hour under artillery bombardment than five minutes at the field hospital'.
American Civil War buff here, and this was the first time I've heard or even thought about wild hogs scavenging the battlefields. I am filled with so much excistenial dread right now
Yeah, I specifically looked into whether there was any truth to it because of this scene. Not a fun topic.
I had a thought
A video game where you're a wounded soldier trying to shoo hogs away trying to eat your dead comrades
Many Norse kennings referenced crows and ravens feeding on battlefield corpses. Names like "swan of blood" to refer to corvids and "feeder of ravens" to refer to warriors.
I read an account of the burning of Columbia South Carolina. Spoke of hogs eating the dead.
I don't remember the name, but when I was probably a bit too young for it, my dad decided to read me a passage from a Civil War Story (by Ambrose Bierce I think, but not Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge), which had a passage about hogs scavenging the aftermath of a battlefield. I think he felt the Gettysburg movie too sanitized. It certainly left an impression.
I like the idea of a war movie that starts out feeling like an adventure. The main character experiences his first battle, the music is high spirited and glorious, but then it goes super realistic when blood and brains from the man beside him sprays across his face. The following battles has the character taking delight in killing the enemy, capturing the feelings mentioned in this video. The final scene has the main character die, his fellow soldiers pushed out of their position which is quickly occupied by enemy soldiers. One enemy soldier, played by the same actor as the main character, takes delight in seeing the corpse of the main character.
That's what makes "all quiet on the western front" an absolutely great war movie. It's shows how the young boys thought of it like an adventure and glory until they were all torn apart by the war machine. I'm jewish and it's hard to watch.
A Russian movie “come and see” doesn’t hit exactly what you want, but it does a great job of turning adventure into horror
I've been watching this channel for years and I must say that you have truly outdone yourself. This is the education that our society needs. BRAVO Brandon, and thank you for being who you are.
I appreciate that very much, thank you! I'm glad you've stuck around!
"Come and See" and "Das Boot" are my favorite films exactly because they try and show how horrible war is. I also recommend "Grave of the Fireflies", which my mom and I watched when I was way too young, not realizing that it was nothing like other Studio Ghibli films.
Graves of the fireflies,die brucke,stalingrad and all quiet on western front both old and the new one are good too.
@@ktheterkuceder6825 Stalingrad I've seen, Due Brucke I will need to watch, thanks for the recommendations!
@@Zogerpogger Its old but its about young german kids in ww2 fighting and dying defending a bridge at the end of the war.
@@ktheterkuceder6825 Interesting. There are a lot of German anti-war films from the late 20th century. Many are very good, but also we should be careful when watching them, as they tend to retroactively depict Germans as innately against the conflict and merely "doing their duty" when in reality many were extremely ideologically motivated and commited horrible crimes.
Another film I watched recently was Cross of Iron. Downfall is also really good.
Opposite perspectives yet the same message.
My grandfather was wounded in Korea during the initial Chinese attack in November, 1950. He spent a couple of days almost freezing until he was found by other American units. He had also been wounded in the Pacific. Curiously, he loved a good war movie, and my dad gave me the impression that he enjoyed his time in the US Army. He also had a massive library of war books. I think that may have been his way of figuring out what the hell had happened to him.
Glad your gramps made it
My mates grandfather fought in the australian imperial force in papua new Guinea against the japanese and he walked in when we were watching the pacific and just told us the best noise he has ever heard in his life is noise a Japanese soldier makes when you bayonet him
@@kremepye3613 I mean bayoneting someone is quite an intimate experience
I think the horror in war movies comes more from the realism than the horror, it’s why the village burning scene in Come and See is extremely disturbing despite the lack of gore but in over the top action war movies where people get blown to bits it’s not that horrible. It’s one thing I didn’t like about the new all quiet film, it’s gory sure, but not realistic aside from the one single scene they kept from the book which was horrifying to watch. They were going for shock value instead of realism value which in the end made it less horrifying.
How are you suppose to know that the gore on All Quiet isn't realistic? There are many accounts out there that mention how horrifying it was seing their comrades get blown to bits instantly, and how brutal the trench raids got
@@facemcshooty6602 it was more the presentation than the gore itself. The movie did not do a very good job at showing just how deadly machine gun fire and running across no man’s land was; during the 1st battle of Ypres German soldiers went on record saying the British felled by hundreds to German machine guns, a carnage we never see in all quiet 2022. It also cut the scene where horses needed to be put down after being hit with artillery.
I’ll give it props for having a scene showing the deadly effect of artillery, even though it was just one scene.
Overall the movie is whitewashed albeit not as bad as usual war movies.
What scene are you referring to that they kept from the book?
@@JTelli786 I don't know for sure, but it's probably the part where Paul goes back home before eventually returning to the front.
@@JTelli786 the bit where he stabbed the Frenchman is the crater. They pry kept it because it’s the most famous scene.
Honestly this is why Gundam 0080 will always to me be the best Gundam anime. Didn't glorify the war in the slightest, in fact it kind of beat viewers over the head for being naughty as the main character who was an 11 year old boy obsessed with space battles and the giant robots in the Gundam universe rather than the horror of the war itself and was made specifically to be a parody of Gundam fans that cared more about the robots, which was cooler, rather than the messages the franchise was trying to present to it's viewers. 0080 took that message and dug the knife pretty deep. Nothing like seeing mangled bodies of innocent civilians being pulled out of ruble and having one heck of a knife gut twisting ending.
0080 is probably the Gundam show that best depicts the tragedy of war. Others may be more spectacular, brutal, dark, bloody etc. But none is as personal as 0080. That last scene where Al is the only one crying while his friends are excited for the "cool" wars that may yet happen in the future is one of the most tragic scenes in the series.There's no gore in that scene, no explosions, no screams of the wounded and the dying, no dramatic last words. All there is is a child whose innocence was stolen by war and who now has to live with a kind of pain that no one else could understand.
I come from a family with several re-enactors, and I hear a lot about re-enactors who claim that they want to honor the soldiers, but if you delve deeper and talk to them they take the sanitized view of war. This is such an impressive video, and I’m thankful to see it from a member of the reenacting community.
The first ten minutes of the movie Glory did a great job of showing the contrast of the idealized vs realities of warfare. It begins with waving flags, innocent letters home, and dramatic music. As soon as the the line of optimistic marching men reaches the battlefield the music cuts and all that is left is the brutal, bloody, confusion of combat.
Great commentary and analysis. As a veteran I can say that you are hitting the mark, well done kind sir. War brings out the worse of us and right now as we watch this it is going on and men and women are dying. Let us pray that one day we can move beyond it.
I was in the valley of the Somme in September. My grandfather fought there, and at the 3rd battle of Ypres. In Thiepval there is a monument to the missing, those men utterly consumed by the millions of artillery shells over the months of the battle. 72,246 names, these are the bodies never found. So yes, war is hell. Battlefields are butchers shops. Despite the numbers of dead and wounded (just over one million, in 5 months), it’s the individual stories and histories which hold the greatest horrors.
My great uncle was an ANZAC. He is buried in Heath cemetery.
My grandfather was sent over to France in 1918 I believe. He was there just a couple months when he was gassed in a battle. Spent months in a hospital then sent back to America.
An utter waste of time and effort.
That John W. De Forest quote is pretty accurate. There's an almost indescribable animalistic purity in the middle of an all-out engagement. You feel everything, speak in an adrenaline fueled jibberish, and give everything you have in a primal yet highly intelligent effort against someone who is doing the exact same to you.
Anthropologists studying various human ancestor bones have basically arrived at the conclusion by now that our wrists have gradually evolved to be better and better, specifically, at throwing and clubbing. Applying violence is literally written in our bone stucture. One can imagine how our brains evolved in accord.
@@Loromir17 that could also be because of the use of tools, not necessarily weapons
@@rinzlr3554 that was the initial assumption, of course, but pinpointing those tools were indeed weapons is the subject of the study in question. There's no way to summarize it really, so if you're interested I suggest reading "Evolution of the human hand: the role of throwing and clubbing" in full.
I think a good depiction of soldiers cheering during a battle is the scene in Barry where he kills "something" with a sniper rifle in Afghanistan. In the acting class people clearly see how awful it is he had to do something like this and how it weighs on him but at the time everyone in his unit was celebrating and cheering him on.
It's also a dark comedy so that will happen great show though
General Sherman once said, "War is cruelty, and you can't define it. It's glory, all moonshine".
Gallipoli was the war film that changed my point of view of battle. What I find interesting, was that the film started out as an adventure, as Archie and Frank travel to Perth, so Archie could enlist in the Australian light horse, and it was here you get glimpse of the believes that was prevalent in 1900s British empire. Frank wanted nothing to do with the war, but Archie was motivated by patriotism and adventure, to him war was seen as excitement, Archie and Frank even meet a family, lavishing Archie with praise, effectively becoming enablers telling him it was all going to be glorious. Once they actually get to Gallipoli, the reality of war begins to tear down all of the fantasy, the trenches are cramped and squalid, it's noisy with shot and shell, and it was boring as the soldiers were pinned down, and had to await for orders to go over the top. It was Frank who was the first to realise war is tragedy, one of his friends was killed in action, despite seeing grief on his face, Archie is still motivated to fight, and tells his CO to use Frank as a runner. The movie peaks with the Battle of the Nek, waves of Australian soldiers are ordered to charge with empty rifles, it was a bayonet charge, once the attack begins the soldiers are cutdown by Ottoman machine guns, as Frank runs to the general and tells Frank that the attack is cancelled, Archie and his mates make the charge, just as Frank returned to the position, and the movie ends with Archie shot and killed by a machine gun. Archie, like other people went to war thinking it was going to be fun, they get to look posh in their uniforms, and with courage they will be victorious against Johnny Turk, and capture Constantinople taking the Ottoman empire out of the first world war, however, Gallipoli was a disaster, none of the allied objectives were met, and left behind hundreds of thousands of their youth.
The bloke that wrote the book that the movie was based on was at Gallipoli for a little while but not at the landing, a lot of what he wrote was information he gathered from other soldiers and then put into his book. The campaign was effectively over by smoko time on the day of the landing due to the commander of 3rd brigade who made the covering force dig in instead of what they were supposed to do. As well as sending units in opposite directions to where they were originally planned to attack. They had a small window of 2 hrs in which they might have captured the high ground on the left , which was missed due to Sinclair maclagan making bad command decisions .
That was a good film, saw it in the original release, oh so many years ago.
It doesn't matter how many times you watch that film. The moment you see Archie shot down you just freeze, and it breaks your heart all over again.
I watched that film in Anzac House in Cannakale, the evening before my group went to visit the battlefield. When you actually see The Nek, you're left dumbfounded; however could that many dead fit into such a small place?
Part of the reason I was able to appreciate visiting that awful battlefield was the bitter realism of this movie.
"This Republic of Suffering" is good. We read it in my Civil War historiography seminar.
A few other recommendations:
"The Women's Fight" by Thavolia Glymph
"Confederates in the Attic" by Tony Horowitz
"The Three Cornered War" by Megan Kate Nelson
Facing battle, about union soldiers experiences in all aspects of combat is fantastic
@@cliftonsutherland1406 Thanks for the recommendation.
This is my favorite video in the series. Great job! I am a veteran of two of the bloodiest battles in Iraq. It was all horror. I won’t forget any of it, but the horror I see in my sleep is my best friend sat against a wall. His eyes were open and the dust had settled on his eyeballs. It was collecting and I was wishing, willing him to blink. He never would. And I can see that every hour of the day. War is hell, and horror.
I also think that taking the "Madness" out of a scene, those parts of men laughing, jeering, swearing at the enemy, playing sport, defiles the experience entirely. The Madness is very much part of the horror. When I reenact I try to add that, laughing while shooting at a retreating soldier, telling someone to shoot a wounded enemy so we can take his stuff. It ruffles many feathers from other reenactors that want to make war look all glorified and heroic. Heroism earns medals because it's rare. To portray every single soldier on a battlefield as a hero does a disservice to the actual heroes.
This is why I love Brandon, he is nuanced and to the point. Love your explanations!
I'll accept 'nuanced' graciously, but nobody can ever claim I am "to the point," sir!
The opening of Glory is very good at well, the cannon ball ripping straight through the officers head as the very first causality is terrifying. The hospital scene where Robert is only being treated for a slight scratch as everyone around him is dying and the casual conversation he has with the doctor while a soldier is screaming during an amputation is a great juxtaposition. Fort Wagner scene is pretty decent as well along with the bloated body and mass graves. Glory is still the best civil war film ever made and possibly the most underrated in my opinion and shows how terrible every aspect of warefare is especially as a colored regiment.
I think it meets, or comes close to meeting, the balance between cinematographic dramatic flare, and depicting how horrible everything was. Yes we get the swelling music as they charge the ramparts and as Col. Shaw dies, but we also see the unit slowly get chipped apart in horrible hand to hand combat. Then we end on all those men being blown away and thrown into a mass grave so carelessly. The only problem is that they spared us the depiction of what the rebels really did with Shaw’s body before burying it, which is sickening in and of itself.
@@Zarastro54 They cut him open, right?
At a reenactment this past weekend we fielded our first attempt at a field hospital, to show spectators the horror of war. We were overrun by wounded and the spectators got a taste of something they'd never seen before.
Great idea. What event was it?
@@Jason32Bourne Prairie Grove, Arkansas
@@lordexmouth1217 Thanks.
I'd like to refer you to the Battle of the Crater scene in Cold Mountain. Thtat was one of the war scenes that really just hit different for me. The whole thing felt hectic and dirty, the chaos was real. The almost apocalyptic hellscape of the explosion aftermath. The visuals of men being trampled by their comrades and drowned in the mud. The opening line of "Idumea" (And am I born to die?) as a cannon shreds through the tightly-packed men at point-blank range.
Idumea, the song used in that scene, I believe subverts the "epic soundtrack" trope which you were talking about. The raw, primal sound of Sacred Harp singing really adds to the moment, and the lyrical content of the song is heavily focused on death.
Of course, the scene has been Hollywood-ized in a couple ways, but in my opinion it is a very real view at what the Civil War really was like.
As a Vet I REALLY appreciate this video and the sentiment behind it Brandon. While I Do still enjoy some other war films that may be more on the side of "adventure", such as Gettysburg, it *is* refreshing when others embrace the reality of what war is. Thank you for this video.
Thanks, Ethan! I'm glad you enjoyed it. I think there's definitely a 'happy medium' to be found with war films between the constant doom-and-gloom feeling this scene has, and the overly-heroic rendition in Gettysburg.
Brandon, I tell this "war is hell" message to my college history students every year. To portray war to an audience of any age as anything short of deeply horrifying is - to the extent I believe in such a thing - a terrible sin. Thank you for doing the good work, sir. (Found your channel through Atun-Shei and am slowly working through your past videos. Loved your evisceration of The Patriot. Also, thanks for disabusing me of the notion that the Revolution was over the British making Americans repay French and Indian War debts. I'd taught that error in years past, but won't make the same mistake again, thanks to you.) - Best, a history professor from Chicago
Thanks so much! I'm glad you've been enjoying my backlog of videos- there's definitely a lot of ranting and rambling to be found there!
I decided to re-listen to Dan Carlin's WWI series after talking to a coworker last week. Warmed up with the non-historian approach. Now im hungry for a proper history series and you all are delivering. Great video, great series. Sub to everyone in the Playlist people, protect history on UA-cam!
I know that this video was deep this time, but...
Dang Brandon's suit looking fine today.
I thought it was a bit of a risk, black-on-grey, but I really like the look
I'm really glad Brandon made a video talking about all 3 good minutes of The Free State of Jones lol
LMAO XD
The area around my house I considered to be one enormous Battlefield. During the civil war, a coastal city was captured by the Union and was used by the Union to launch raids and attacks on the interior where my hometown is. Almost every little town and crossroads has a small battlefield where union raiders and locals fought. Union raiders burned down my great great great great great grandfather mill and fought in the local Infantry Regiment during the last days of the war. That one thing that many people forget about the average person is the war is hell, and you can easily lose everything to a Horseman's torch as a rifleman's bullet. My family didn't recover from the civil war until the 1960s. The horror can last centuries.
I swear to the gods, this channel is the only one where I can actually sit through and listen to the entire thing without skipping through it. My ADHD bends to knee only to one man, and one man only.
Thank you, Brandon. Your videos are immaculate, enjoyable, and an insight into a period of time that I did not know much about before I first subscribed.
Gonna be honest this was the best out of all the other videos you describe things and put things into perspective a lot better than the others
I think war movies have often talked about or explored either horror or adventure but one that rarely gets looked at is boredom. I think catch 22 is a great film when you look at it as the ravings of a man who’s boredom invites vivid imagination
I disagree with the Catch-22 film being good, I remember really disliking it in relation to the book at least, but absolutely!
@@BrandonF Unfortunatley haven’t had time to read the book but years ago when I happened to watch it on tv during a sick day home from school I thought it was weird. Asked my history teacher about it next day and though I can’t remember everything he said about the differences between the movie and the book the salient point I remember was it having to do with a soldiers boredom.
I wouldn't be shocked if a lot of the lack of gore you mentioned is simply due to budget constraints. They can afford some gore for the officer's death (seriously, it looks like they actually shot a watermelon and photoshopped it in lol) but all the props and special effects to have tons of gore for every dead soldier would cost a fortune
A few years back I read a couple books about the Korean war my father had. He was a veteran of that war and wanted to know more about what the front line men faced. In one of the books there was an account of several soldiers who had a small skirmish with some North Koreans. One of the enemy managed to get away. He was wounded and his trail was easy to follow in the snow. They pursued him. At one point they found a spot where the man had stopped to vacate his bowels. They found intestinal worms in his stool. A half mile or so away they found him, dead of blood loss. That was the hellish war they experienced that day.
My personal favorite portrayal of War is All Quiet on the Western Front. It has its flaws, but they show the collecting of the dead dog tags, the horror of trach war fare and its evolution. It's the only movie to have made my stomach lurch the smallest bit at some of the scenes
The old one or the new that just came out.
@@ktheterkuceder6825 He talks about the new one.
@@karlwilhelmmeinert7592 Well both are good.
There are three All Quiet on the Western Front films.
The original.
The 70s remake.
And the new Netflix version.
Can't go wrong with any of them but the Original is hard to beat.
@@redclayscholar620thenew one beat it easily because they showed Paul and Kat on their shit buckets like in the books.
Quite an impressive amount of uploads this month.
One of my favorite quotes from media: "War isn't hell. War is war, and hell is hell, and of the two, war is a lot worse." Cpt. Hawkeye Pierce, MASH
I get it but realistically hell is a whole lot worse...
Christ is King
@@landsknecht8654 to continue the quote: Who goes to hell?
@@ktinga1 That's God's choice not mine...buuut if I had to take a good guess welp 99% of Drag Queens probably will...most hard core atheist probably will...most "woke" people who hate God probably will...but they can repent and not probably not go there.
Why you ask?
BTW how things are looking the future is going to look more like Ghost In The Shell/Blade Runner 2049 and or Dune.
@@landsknecht8654 Sinners. Sinners go to hell, by any definition. Which means there are no innocent bystanders. War is full of innocent bystanders; women, children, non-combatants. It could be argued that aside from a few of the top brass, everyone is an innocent bystander.
"War is war, and hell is hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse."
@@ktinga1 Perfect response.
Brandon, I've watched almost all of the videos of this collaboration. I figured to save my final comment, but I find that this video has been perhaps the most deeply affecting video I have ever watched(outside of some regrettable videos of combat footage in Syria and the Gaza Strip). I started following sometime around 35k. I've watched just about every video you've put out. This one hits the hardest. This ranks among the best collaborations ever made on UA-cam. It is this kind of history that ought to be told. Thanks for putting it out.
"Oh, the friends you had by your side during the war. There was Sean, the optimistic irishman so eager to see a battle in person. There's Andrew, the middle aged drunkard with nothing bad to say about you, you weren't sure how he got into the military, but were so glad he was there if only to see his gleaming smile and hear his tall tales. And who could forget James? The rugged boy with a huge family that loved to invite you over when you were young. Where you first met his brothers, the twins Marty and Millard who always wanted you to see the little wooden marble slides they had built in the yard."
"All of these men are dead. You remember it like it was just last month. Marty screaming out on the ground, clutching his bleeding chest. Andrew's face looking back at you after a stray shot blew off a third of it, what would his daughters think of this? Sean's decaying corpse you found long after the battle, you could swear you heard him faintly breathing, not that the birds cared. You recall the very night you fell asleep beside James, only for not a trace of him to be found in the morning. You never saw him again. None of these deaths you could have prevented and you know this. Only you and poor Millard survived the war, though he was missing an arm afterwards. You found him hanging from a noose in his bedroom later the same year you both were discharged, unable to deal with the loss of his brothers. Both of family, and in arms."
Where's this from?
Wrote it myself, I don't remember why I added the quotation marks.
Powerful. Gripping. Poignant. One of your best videos. An amazing collab #warishell
I think part of the reason violence and injuries in war movies aren't depicted properly, especially in modern war, is because of the military industrial complex. In terms of recruitment, it is very much in their interest to make sure that kids think its either a victory or quick and glorious death. And it goes for every country with voluntary military service that has direct or indirect control of funding movies.
Box office has more to do with it than the military-industrial complex. It's been a given for decades if you do a war movie you can't go TOO far, you'll gross-out the audience and in addition you'll lose business when they tell their friends how nasty the movie is.
I had a friend ask me if I'd seen "Saving Private Ryan" and (referring to the first 20 minutes) he asked me if it was as "bad" as everyone was saying it was. What I told him was this:
"Look, if you've seen 'blood & guts' movies and I'm sure you have you're not going to see anything you haven't seen before. I suppose what everyone's freaking out over is 'Saving Private Ryan' is based on a REAL event, it's not 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' or 'Halloween' or 'Nightmare on Elm Street." I don't know if he went to see "Ryan," he never said.
No, it isn't the "military-industrial complex". It's the box office. Hollywood loves to romanticize things, since showing them realistically would either be boring or disturbing and very few people would watch it.
That's why guns are portrayed the way they are in movies, that's why war is portrayed the way it is, that's why drama always seems to happen, it's why people make choices in movies that they would not make in life, its the reason for a lot of things in movies.
This movie is iffy on that, because you know these confederates deserved their fates
The scene from that film where the dying Union soldier is shot through the head while attempting to raise his rifle was one of the most brutal things I've seen in a film.
Whenever I hear the phrase "war is hell," I just can't help but think of M*A*S*H. One of the best exchanges in TV (personal opinion) is as follows.
Hawkeye : War isn't Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse.
Father Mulcahy : How do you figure, Hawkeye?
Hawkeye : Easy, Father. Tell me, who goes to Hell?
Father Mulcahy : Sinners, I believe.
Hawkeye : Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them - little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.
--M*A*S*H Season 5 Episode 20: "The General's Practitioner"
It's disappointing how few accurate, horrific depictions of war in film on the period of your specialization - the long 18th century. Waterloo seems more just based on the spectacle of thousands of Soviet extras, Sharpe is obviously glorified and inaccurate, the Patriot is obviously the Patriot, and so many more are just bad. "Culloden" is just amazing and really shows the terror and brutality, but there are not many films as good as that for the period (that I've seen or heard about at least).
I hope one of these days to help correct that, in whatever small way I can
As always, you treat this topic with exactly the thoroughness and severity it needs, and I want to thank you for that.
Este es, seguramente, uno de tus mejores videos, conmovedor. Saludos.
I've watched everything you've published, Brandon. This is by far and away the most important piece you've recorded to date, and is both moving and to my mind-- necessary. Well done.
I think the whole ‘war is hell’ thing is still mostly a modern thing. It’s notable that writings around the time of WWI note how soldiers were seeing that war was not as the romanticized writings made it out to bed. There was no dashing gallantry, no brave stands, no splendid elan. Only pain, suffering, privation, and death. It isn’t until the horrors of war cannot be disguised and covered by the romanticism of battle that we start to see the shift away from depicting it as such. The charge of the light brigade wasn’t some tragically heroic and poetic moment it was probably horrific to the men at that moment as their chance at glory was cut down and turned into a charnel field of bodies and blood. But we don’t see that because we don’t have documents in the public consciousness of the horror itself, or the aftermath and the effect on survivors. No letters from women to their families about how their husbands and fiancés are different now after getting back from war. We need more of those to cut past this romanticism that still pervades depictions of older war.
Reynolds’s death really is framed like one of those old paintings of 18th century battles like those of John Trumbull. Complete with everyone stopping what they are doing in the middle of the battle to gaze in a semicircle around the fallen general as he lays “sleeping” on the lap of his aid.
Actually, Reynold's death scene is literally a recreation of a Julian Scott painting entitled "The Death of Sedgwick." John Sedgwick is the Union general who famously said when his men were taking fire:
"Don't worry boys! They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist..."
By the way, Tom Chamberlain's meeting with the Confederate POW's is a recreation of a Winslow Homer painting of a Union officer doing the same.
Honestly, I liked "Gettysburg," good old-fashioned film-making. OK, there's some things I didn't like such as Martin Sheen's forced southern accent as Lee (I thought Sheen was miscast to begin with) and some rather chubby Confederates on screen, but I enjoyed the film just the same.
@@wayneantoniazzi2706 I think Gettysburg isn't a bad film, but it should be watched with more realistic portrayals of the Civil War - you have the Civil War of the paintings taken to film, and then you have the Civil War your ancestors probably went througb
I said this in your last video, but you should check out Danger Close. I think it hits on exactly what you're talking about. The look in the eyes of the Australian soldiers when they're waiting for a helicopter to take them back to base after the battle reminded me of that one famous picture of a German soldier late in WW2. Also, throughout the entire movie, there's barely any music. Just the soldiers' voices and the gunfire. Most importantly, though, death is never shown with some grand melodramatic scene. It's short, violent, and brutal. The movie was screened to the surviving veterans of Long Tan, and they loved the depiction
Which picture do you mean?
Incredible., I wasn't even aware the Ozzies were in Vietnam, thanks for the info, much appreciated.
@@VileCAESARB Many Asian and Australasian Allies were in Vietnam at one point or the other, such as the South Koreans, Aussies, and if I recall correctly Filipinos
@@karlwilhelmmeinert7592 It's an Australian movie called Danger Close about an Aussie battalion in Vietnam. Good film, on Netflix.
@@garylancaster8612 Thanks, but I was not asking for the name of the motion picture. Instead i asked about the picture of a german soldier at the end of world war two that you mentioned.
One thing I’ve noticed in regards to my own field of reenactment (early Medieval and medieval/renaissance) is how sanitized they are, and how they try to hide that behind shaky cam, black leather, and mud and grime, and one on one duels; warfare of the time was a methodical, brutal, and cruel affair, with massed formation of men marching and killing each other in an efficient and organized process, all decked out in bright clothes with some of the most brutal and lethal weapons humanity has devised; spears would run an unarmored (and most men would have at best padded cloth armor, and many would be completely unarmored) through, spilling his innards on the ground; halberds and bills would hack through flesh and bone, spraying blood on those next to the slain man, and swords for those whose had them, butchered those struck, taking limbs off and putting mangled holes through men, and maxes and hammers splatter heads and shatter bone even through armor, as wealthy and powerful men slaughter those they see as have and will only see as their inferiors, fit to toil or die for them and their peers, all done in neat and ordered rows and blocks. The orderly carnage of it all is brushed over by movies and shows in favor of generic fantasy warriors dueling in mass, with arrows, bolts, sling stones, and javelins, which formed a deadly rain that could nail a man’s shield to his body for what would be left of his life, and puncture organs shown to be little more than mere tooth picks, and the bloody spray and disgusting and guy wrenching horror of a man’s organs spilled out in front of his friends and those who have to look him in the face and know that did that to him is brushed over in favor of “Gritty heroics”; you can’t show your heroes engaging in the cruelty of taking out their violence on their enemy’s women, children, infirm, and those otherwise unable to fight back against men pillaging, looting, raping, and butchering people they viewed as being deserving of the suffering they would inflict; we can say it was the custom of the time, but we need to acknowledge it as the horror it was, the way people normalized and rationalized the savagery they inflicted on themselves. On Screen fantasy heroics become nightmare material when we see the reality of it, and it is perhaps best to face the reality of what and why our ancestors did and when we remember these people we our direct progenitors, our own relatives, our own flesh and blood being splattered across wheat fields. We may dress up in our armor and wallop each other with blunted spears and rounded swords, and make good fun of it, but we should remember no matter how much ale and mead we drink, we’re not Viking warriors or knights of old, and not would we want to be
"It's no wonder that the stretcher-bearer here has such a crazed look in his eyes" I get your meaning, but that's just Matthew McConaughey
Okay I take your point
Dont have much to say, but rest in eternal peace to all those who passed during conflicts from all eras, also hi brandon.
hi
@@BrandonF hi
Why? Fuck em
@@mauddib696 no, they fought for their nation and lost their lives so that civilians could be safe and not have to do the same, its an extremely honorable thing.
@@GorillaWithACellphone not if they fought for the confederates
It'd be really interesting to see a long 18th century film tier list video (if you haven't already done that)
Brilliant, brilliant video, nuanced, detailed, and factual. Appreciated.
That movie The Free State of Jones was interesting movie. And I've read about the event that the movie is based off of. I know there was pockets of pro-union sentiment throughout the Appalachians. Particularly in places like East Tennessee and western Virginia soon to be admitted to the Union as the state of West Virginia.
Not entirely pro-union, more like ambivalence. These parts of the State's where slavery is a large economic power was essentially far weaker, further, culturally excluded. This would get worse as Confederate drafting occurred and those neutral became more willing to fight for the Union cause. Pockets of Union were however present but smaller initially.
@@dakotah7683 I mean there was a fine line where that sentimental was at its strongest and weakened again. Iooking at volunteer numbers from northern states compared to those drafted is hard at times since some states like Kentucky and Maryland had never had a proper number or estimation until after the war. During the war a few people could count but it wouldn't be official. That's why those states aren't really talked about during the war they're such a morally greyzone when it came to the war and at times felt like they were sympathetic to one side or the other. Or just straight up neutral
Truth be told the most heartfelt moment I saw in TV wasn't historical film but Nog's "I'm scared" in DS9.
And also last moments of Blackadder goes forth
I've seen the last episode of "Blackadder Goes Forth" and you're right, it's heartbreaking. VERY unusual ending for a comedy series to say the least!
But did you notice? For all the various characters quirks and foibles when the call goes to go "Over the top" they all go. No one stays behind or shirks his duty. Not one.
So, when you get stuck in a fight, you don't really connect the dots until after. Once you're out of harm's way, you're more capable of reflecting on everything.
Though, fun fact: if you have the good fortune to have video footage from a high octane sort of event, you'll remember details a bit differently from what's shown. It's weird. :0
Hi Brandon, thanks for the video, you have a true talent at story giving and pedagogy, and you make an unusual and needed effort in carefully choosing your speech and your words while using silences and avoiding common word fillers that make it a pleasure to listen to you.
20:57 This reminds me of an account I read in Iron Kingdom of three brothers who were officers in Frederick the Great's army during the Seven Years War. The three officers were leading their companies against an Austrian position, and as they advanced they were trading jokes and quips at each others expense, trading brandy and snuff back and forth, and even sharing a laugh, until the youngest one's head was blown open by a musket ball, spraying brains over his brothers' faces.
I think a possible reason for the limited blood and gore in Gettysburg was it was originally shot for TV. It was going to be a multi part TV movie and at the time, I believe TV had restrictions on what could be shown.
5:41 which is actually inaccurate of the film. Speeches and encouragement were happening ALL the time during these battles. This was an era of romanticism. Even WW1 tried maintaining the same military traditions for the first year or so. We even have last words of many generals, like "What, men dodging for single bullets? I'm ashamed...they couldn't hit an elephant from this dista..."
Speeches and entreaties can work well (even here, we have the officer shouting things like "come on boys, just over the hill" or somesuch) but I think it's a fine line in how it happens. Sort of like using music, it's very easy to over-indulge.
@@BrandonF True. Movies like Gettysburg did have an overdone hackneyed soundtrack.
@@scottanos9981 Nonsense. The soundtrack of Gettysburg is gorgeous. It just doesn’t always fit the events of the film its built for.
Thank you for such great reporting - i so sick of piss poor distorted YT vids! You are a servant of humanity.
How about depicting the violence of war, but also looking like a good film and being coherent?
while also making soldiers march in a good formation. imagine....
"Culloden" is what you want
Erich Maria Remarque summed it up nicely in his preface to All Quiet on the Western Front:
"This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand fact to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war."
I once read a letter from an officer who survived a late XIX century naval battle to his father. He described how he left a sailor in charge of a cannon, and how he could still hear his patriotic cheering as he went somewhere else in the ship. When he went back to the cannon, the same sailor lied dead with his head shattered into pieces. It changed my view on warfare forever.
The young son of a cousin on my wife's side confided to me about his notions of military service. I gave him a book that went through the history of the USS Houston, and the rest of the ABDA fleet in the months after Pearl Harbor. I thought he should understand that sometimes your side isn't automatically on
The reason why Warfare was more romanticize in the Western civilization in the past is because the casualty rates were extremely low most of the time. It's very rare when you have an army to get annihilated, and warfare was in general less dangerous at least in Europe with all the good armors they had as well as how Warfare was practice. Warfare in the past wasn't about how many enemies you killed but how you got them to flee the battlefield.
Also Warfare outside of the West I can't 100% speak but it seems like they're casualty rates are extremely high, in many parts of the world they did not glorify Warfare for this reason. Military class in India and China weren't as respected either and the soldiers morale tends to be lower.
One reason for the high casualty rates in the East and other parts of the world has to do with they did not have as good armors as the Europeans. The other reason is I think the East and other parts of the world had a lack of rules of War and often killed prisoners, often killed people, and such... The other parts of the world didn't have the Roman Catholic or Orthodox Church stopping them from massacres of breaking World of War.
Back to Europe, war wasn't usually hell back then it was more like a bloody sport but sometimes it can be hell. I would say as gunpowder weapons got more powerful that ruined Warfare forever. You no longer have courageous charges, morale became much less important to perform in the battlefield, armor became way less effective, and battlefields became too dangerous for leaders to lead their men but now have the rise of out of touch cowardly leaders leading from the back.
I've been reenacting the ACW for 30 years or more. This video is spot on. I've several living histories where they show a medical demonstration. Got made up myself in one of them and had a friend when they saw me almost throw up. I had blood all over my face along with a bandage attempting to stay. But it was perfect. This was the side of war folks never saw at a reenactment. Though a "Lost Cause" movie Gone with the Wind has the hospital scene in Atlanta when Scarlett is trying to find Dr Meade. Very effective showing the aftermath of the battles around Atlanta. Nothing honorable or glorious there at all.
Brilliant presentation Brandon, my compliments! There's nothing I can add that you haven't said so well.
I appreciate it, thank you!
@@BrandonF You're very welcome!
Solche Beiträge sind unglaublich wichtig! Sehr gute Arbeit, Brandon!👍
I honestly love this specific part of war and it’s history. It’s something that’s always in the back my mind whenever I draw people in these uniforms or reenact or whatever I’m doin. It’s just that fascinating to me and I feel a sense of moral obligation of depicting it as accurately as possible. I like how Atun-Shei put it as “putting the ‘acting’ in reenacting” cuz that’s exactly what I wanna do.
I’m not much of a horror movie enjoyer but whenever I’m watching a movie like this or Saving Private Ryan, I can be immersed into the movie just by watching the soldiers in the background just much as my immersion with the main characters. They just seem like just another soldier in an army, another gear in the machine. Other movies, however, are a bit different.
I recently got done watching Gettysburg and when I saw the “Pickett’s Charge” scene, I couldn’t help but not care. A) because the movie was already super slow and I wanted to just get it over with and B) because the score and the background characters were just so immersion breaking. If I ever wasted $5 renting something, that would be it…
I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one that sees war in a similar light. Plus, I’m excited to see the entire project come to light.
Cya on the battlefield. O7
Thank you for putting words to the horror of taking pleasure in violence. Its key to understanding why humans keep fighting, and why war is destructive and cannot be constructive (nation building.)
Exactly! My main issue with the epic film Gettysburg is the godawful use of soaring music near every damn scene. I've even scoured the internet thinking I can't be alone in thinking this and that there is surely a fan edit without the damn music but no. A very good war film but semi crippled for me by that near constant, ever present waaaa daa da daaaaa.
Honestly that scene is amazing when it's just the rolling drums and cheering soldiers- it feels very real. But then you get the complete silence as General Ambrose(?) is praying, and during the speeches, and then that theme kicks in and it's just so painful.
Even a film like Glory has an AMAZING start to its last battle, but then at the last second they throw in the 'epic' soundtrack and it just kind of ruins it for me. Before the music hits, it's perfect.
@@BrandonF 100%
Brandon thank you for making this video, the truth matters and is so often brushed under the rug in our society
Brandon F can you do video on the achievements of Queen Victoria during the Victorian Era of The Uk and The British Empire.
I have to thank you for putting that parental advisory at the start. The sad part is how few parents will listen to it.
The young kids that it is for. Most of them won't even stop consider it, they will just keep watching.
I tried to approach war in an angle similar to that in my books. A fantasy setting where the protagonist suffers from intense ptsd.
Generation Kill is a series that show both the horrors and levity of war
I thought that atun was doing a civil war video . But brandon ? World is strange
Outstanding, well done. I was in the Navy, and think about trapped men drowning in panic.
I was a Marine, and I think the same thing. Every once in a while I'll catch one of those battleship "shoot-em-up" video games on UA-cam and all I can think about is those poor guys trapped below decks when the ship goes down.
You get a brief demonstration of that in that great film "Sink The Bismarck!" when the Bismarcks magazines are being flooded and you see the panic rising in the men trapped below.
I shudder every time I see it.
One of my favorite anti-war shows was Generation Kill, as it all just makes sense. In a lot of these movies they make their soldiers into superheroes and the generals into smart good thinking decision makers. In Generation Kill the officers have no clue what they’re doing most of the time so they end up bumbling their way through Iraq(which makes sense they are a small cog in a big ass complicated war with a million parts), the soldiers are mostly edgy teenagers(because why wouldn’t they be, most joined up out of high school). The last scene too really struck me.
Most importantly, you really understand why Iraq went as bad as it did, as much of it was just a lack of intelligence or tools, or sometimes common sense. Which is pretty common in all wars, but never talked about that much unless the whole attack was a blunder, like McClellan for example.
In fact I was listening to a soldier talking about Ukraine, about how they would send entire units in trucks with the lights on, and how certain officers were just complete idiots. And these are guys that are close to winning a war against a much more powerful enemy.
Officers being idiots is just a norm in all wars
Any good anti-sar movie is also an anti-gun movie
_“The sweetest music I ever heard,”_ Stonewall Jackson had called what the Federals themselves variously referred to as _“that hellish yell,”_ scarcely human either in pitch or duration, apparently with no hint of brain behind it, and _“nothing like a hurrah, but rather a regular wildcat screech.”_
A Wisconsin soldier put it best, perhaps, without even trying for a description. _“There is nothing like it this side of the infernal region,”_ he declared, _“and the peculiar corkscrew sensation that it sends down your backbone under these circumstances can never be told. You have to feel it, and if you say you did not feel it, and heard the yell, then you have never been there.”_
They heard it now, through the mist ahead, and for them too, as the cavalry scuttled rearward and sideways, the effect was one of a curtain parting on dread. There stood the butternut infantry, full in front, their regiments so diminished by attrition that their flags took the breeze not in intersticed rows, as in the old days, but in clusters of red, as if poppies or roses had suddenly burst into crowded bloom amid the smoke of their rapid-firing batteries. _“We grew tired and prostrated,”_ a blue veteran said of the hard six-day pursuit, _“but we wanted to be there when the rebels found the last ditch of which they had talked so much.”_
Now here it was, directly before them, and they were not so sure. Persuaded last night to press on westward out the railroad for the sake of getting a hot breakfast at Appomattox Station, they instead found graybacks in their front, scarecrow thin and scarecrow ragged, but still about as dangerous, pound for pound, as so many half-starved wolves or panthers. It might be the end, as some were saying, yet nobody wanted to be the last man to fall.
_“We were angry at ourselves,”_ one candidate for that distinction later wrote, _“to think that for the sake of drawing rations we had been foolish enough to keep up and, by doing so, get in such a scrape.”_ It was not so much the booming guns they minded, he explained; _“We dreaded the moment when the infantry should open on us.”_
*'The Civil War: A Narrative'* - Shelby Foote
The "Rebel Yell." I've heard it from Southern boys during war games when I was in the Marines, and always delivered during the final assault, never before. There's variations on it depending on where that Southern boy came from but let me tell you, that Wisconsin veteran was telling the truth! "Damn!" I thought to myself every time I heard it, "I'm glad they're on OUR side!"
@@wayneantoniazzi2706 We will become less of a people when that sound fades from existence.
ive turned 20 this year, and ive been learning about the civil war my whole life. im pretty sure i learned about field hospitals and medical practices long before i started middle school
how did i go my whole life without encountering ONE(1) mention of WILD HOGS FEEDING UPON THE DEAD AND DYING
It's not a particularly fun little detail, but there it is.
@@BrandonF I didn't mean for some of them to be eaten by the pigs. When the hikers came by, I offered them a place to stay.... My winter cabin, most cozy of places, joy and laughing, now they're carcases. My cabin: a foundation of bodies, corpse construction, skeletal framework - fly trap. Man and woman, not above 25, time of life to be alive, active sex drive, then a screwdriver nosedive. Me, a fiend, the man's castration, my flirtation, the woman's gestation, satiated my starvation. Grind bone, heads chopped off, so I am not alone. Each ear, ravioli, I naw on, slowly. Body parts missing, you got to be kidding, my mind slipping, I get to sniffing. The foul stench, my teeth clench, disgusting pigs by the fence. My heads, my only friends, torn apart in the pig pen. Again, killing, pigs kicking, spitting, in their flesh, bellies a knife swimming. My heads, still intact, penis protracts, now a sex act. The cabin, cleaned up, time passes, the pigs fatten, again time of year for hookups. When the hikers came by, I offered them a place to stay.
Thank you for taking the time to make this video and address this aspect.
I loved that movie though from what I've heard it was kind of a hit or miss among many people
I enjoyed it but he subplot involving Newton Knight's descendant felt unnecessary.
The game "valiant hearts" was very strong with impressions of how cruel and dark but necessary war can be.
On the subject of the film, one thing I REALLY appreciated was the set design, with craters in the ground and trees turn to standing matchsticks or burnt. Not like other movies that had perfectly manicured lawns and orderly copses of trees scattered about or untouched fields of corn. Even when you see a cannonball blast a chunk of earth high into the air you’ll never see so much as a divot later.
Nor do we ever get to see how solid round shot from a cannon worked...ie: bowling and bouncing through ranks of men ..not the stupid explosions we always get
The way you describe the scenes actually remind me less of a "horror" movie and more of a now rarely seen sort of movie, that being a disaster movie. Movies where people are in shipwrecks or plane crashes or earthquakes or near volcanoes or storms and hurricanes. There are still sometimes scenes like that but this reminds me of the scenes during the event where the chaotic panic takes place and the soundtrack fades away to the sounds of rumbling and crashing and the confusion and panic of the people involved as they try to make sense of what is going on and escape from it.
The real feeling most get is the opposite of empowerment, in fact the feeling is incredible disempowerment and general helplessness to do anything but what is directly in front of you and needed to be done to survive. Some might have been in positions to rack up points and kills, but most involved in a battlefield are people trying to survive through what is basically a natural disaster, though this one is not natural but man-made. It turns it into true tragedy in retrospect, but in the moment, the poetics of it all fade away as the base survival instinct takes over.