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(narrator) Down this road,
on a summer day in 1944,

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00:00:18,309 --> 00:00:20,686
the soldiers came.

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00:00:22,230 --> 00:00:24,523
Nobody lives here now.

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00:00:30,655 --> 00:00:33,949
They stayed only a few hours.

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00:00:34,034 --> 00:00:35,659
When they had gone,

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00:00:35,744 --> 00:00:40,247
a community which had lived
for a thousand years... was dead.

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00:00:43,168 --> 00:00:48,005
This is Oradour-sur-Glane in France.

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00:00:49,049 --> 00:00:51,258
The day the soldiers came,

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00:00:51,342 --> 00:00:54,219
the people were gathered together.

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00:00:54,304 --> 00:00:58,015
The men were taken
to garages and barns.

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The women and children
were led down this road...

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00:01:03,563 --> 00:01:07,024
and they were driven into this church.

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Here, they heard the firing
as their men were shot.

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Then they were killed too.

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A few weeks later,

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many of those who had done
the killing were themselves dead -

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in battle.

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00:01:29,923 --> 00:01:31,965
They never rebuilt Oradour.

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00:01:32,050 --> 00:01:34,551
lts ruins are a memorial.

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lts martyrdom stands for thousand
upon thousand of other martyrdoms

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in Poland, in Russia,

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in Burma, in China,

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in a world at war.

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(cannon fires)

25
00:02:58,094 --> 00:03:00,179
(bell tolls)

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Remember the dead.

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00:03:52,315 --> 00:03:58,695
ln the Second World War, Britain
and her Commonwealth lost 480,000 dead.

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00:04:02,533 --> 00:04:06,328
120,000 of them
were from the Commonwealth.

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00:04:10,833 --> 00:04:15,754
60,000 were civilians -
men, women and children -

30
00:04:15,838 --> 00:04:18,382
killed in air raids on Britain.

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Compared to the slaughter of the
First World War, the total is not great.

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00:04:27,433 --> 00:04:29,142
But remember the dead,

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each one a son, father, husband,

34
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lover... brother.

35
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(man) We had a telegram to say
that he was missing on operations.

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And it reads:

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"Regret to inform
you that your husband,

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Squadron Leader
Thomas Henry Desmond Drinkwater

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is missing as the result
of air operations

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00:04:59,132 --> 00:05:04,094
on Thursday the 18th of May, 1944."

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00:05:04,178 --> 00:05:07,097
"Letter follows.
Any further information received

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00:05:07,181 --> 00:05:11,727
will be immediately
communicated to you."

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00:05:11,811 --> 00:05:16,815
"Pending receipt of written
notification from the Air Ministry,

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no information should be given
to the press."

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00:05:19,652 --> 00:05:22,154
(bugles play the Last Post)

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00:05:55,813 --> 00:05:59,775
(man) lt's very funny, a battlefield.
The other day l watched a duck shoot.

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00:05:59,859 --> 00:06:03,320
The actual area extended
to about four square miles,

48
00:06:03,404 --> 00:06:05,405
of which a fifth was in action.

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00:06:05,490 --> 00:06:08,575
All the rest was waiting.
And a battlefield is like that.

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00:06:08,659 --> 00:06:11,912
lt's extraordinary
how inanimate the whole thing seems.

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00:06:11,996 --> 00:06:15,415
There's a bit of an action
going on in the right-hand corner.

52
00:06:15,500 --> 00:06:18,543
For the rest,
there are people lying about, smoking.

53
00:06:18,628 --> 00:06:21,338
(narrator) And waiting, and sleeping...

54
00:06:22,507 --> 00:06:24,883
and waiting,

55
00:06:25,093 --> 00:06:26,885
and waiting.

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00:06:29,597 --> 00:06:33,350
(man) lt's one of the things
that films and books don't bring out -

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00:06:33,434 --> 00:06:35,602
Tolstoy, perhaps, is the exception -

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00:06:35,686 --> 00:06:38,939
a battlefield
where nothing seems to be happening.

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00:06:39,023 --> 00:06:41,983
The action is always over a hedge
somewhere else,

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00:06:42,068 --> 00:06:44,027
and it's the decisive thing.

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And then they ask you if you
were there. Well, you weren't.

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00:06:48,533 --> 00:06:51,201
(narrator) Paris. June, 1940.

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They were there all right.

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00:07:03,589 --> 00:07:08,093
But for these soldiers,
no parade, no triumph.

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00:07:08,177 --> 00:07:11,430
Not the way we're used to seeing it
on the newsreels.

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00:07:19,397 --> 00:07:21,815
All rather quiet, really.

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00:07:21,899 --> 00:07:25,193
Nothing much to write home about.

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00:07:25,278 --> 00:07:29,781
Or perhaps this actually was
the scene that would stay with them,

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00:07:29,866 --> 00:07:33,702
the moment the soldiers
would always remember.

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00:07:46,632 --> 00:07:50,760
Looking back, you know,
it's even 28 years now.

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l can hear it and l can see it,

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l can smell it.

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And l think anybody who was there
must have exactly the same impression,

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00:08:02,482 --> 00:08:07,402
that, you know, it is something
that they will always remember.

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00:08:09,322 --> 00:08:12,991
(narrator) There's much soldiers
don't want to forget.

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00:08:13,075 --> 00:08:15,452
(♪ band plays military march)

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At Mainz in West Germany, veterans
of the Deutsches Afrikakorps meet,

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as they do every couple of years,
to relive the past.

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There are wives and camp followers

80
00:08:36,265 --> 00:08:40,852
and guests from Australia,
from Britain, from ltaly.

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Old comrades, old enemies,

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old memories,

83
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and plenty of beer.

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(man) lt's a funny thing about marines,

85
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or maybe a funny thing
about fighting men of all kinds,

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their minds have a tendency
to cloud out all of the unhappy things

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and you think only of the happy things.

88
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When l'm with other marines
and we talk about the war,

89
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we talk about some of the funny things.

90
00:09:08,506 --> 00:09:11,341
We never really dwell
on the unhappy ones.

91
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And l think that would be true
of fighting men all over the world.

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(man #2) One of the things
about being in a tank battalion

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was that you lived completely
with the crew of your tank

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and completely with your troop.

95
00:09:34,407 --> 00:09:38,618
And so, at night, for example,
when one came in to laager,

96
00:09:38,703 --> 00:09:41,037
one would dig a hole
and drive the tank over it

97
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and you ate, slept
and did everything with your crew,

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so that one got enormously fond of them

99
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and one got to know each other
extremely well.

100
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You knew they were making the right
decisions and you just drove on.

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Apart from the fact you were young and
daft and would have gone anywhere.

102
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We didn't really find time to, um,

103
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well, have the sort of conversation
that we might have now sitting here.

104
00:10:07,565 --> 00:10:13,069
l certainly never remember discussing,
well, the outcome of the war,

105
00:10:13,195 --> 00:10:18,491
or whether the Germans were right
or we were right or anything like that.

106
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lt was just day to day,
honest-to-goodness living together,

107
00:10:23,748 --> 00:10:25,582
and very pleasant it was.

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(moos)

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We had a chap who was an
experienced butcher as the co-driver,

110
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and he always arranged that there
should be two jerry cans of water

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behind where the exhaust pipes
came out.

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They'd be constantly
more or less on the boil.

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And if, it seemed to me,
in the middle of a battle,

114
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whatever was happening,
and he spied a pig,

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he would leap out, unscrew the great
hammer you have for breaking tracks,

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and rush oft,
bash this pig on the head,

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drag it back, bring it in through
the side pannier door, um,

118
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and get hold of these two cans of water
and light up the stove,

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00:12:05,975 --> 00:12:08,226
and boil the water and scrape the pig.

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00:12:08,310 --> 00:12:12,731
We'd have delicious pork chops any
time day or night and lived very well.

121
00:12:12,815 --> 00:12:17,944
And it was partly the sort of...
the sort of scavenging of the crews

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and the finding of the wine and the jam
and the eggs and all the other things,

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00:12:22,908 --> 00:12:27,912
which helped make the comradeship
one of the things that made it such fun.

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(narrator) Fun. And fear.

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(man) l don't think l was frightened.
l was scared.

126
00:12:41,635 --> 00:12:44,304
You know, when you're scared,
you're more alert.

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lt's like you're playing a game
with somebody through the woods.

128
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You've got a gun, he's got a gun. Who's
gonna shoot first? lt's like a duel.

129
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Who's gonna turn
and pull the trigger first?

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(narrator) Fear and fun.

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Moments, even, of beauty.

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(man) Well, l speak of the
"lust of the eye", a biblical phrase,

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because much of the appeal of battle

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is simply this attraction of the, uh,

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outlandish, the strange.

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But there is, of course,
an element of beauty in this,

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and l must say that this is surely,
from ancient times,

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one of the most enduring
appeals of battle.

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One could be drawn into,
absorbed, by the spectacle.

140
00:14:00,923 --> 00:14:06,803
l think especially of southern France,
the terrific bombardment of our planes

141
00:14:06,887 --> 00:14:09,097
coming over the southern coast
of France.

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00:14:09,181 --> 00:14:12,976
l literally expected the coast
to detach itself

143
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and... and go into the ocean.

144
00:14:16,480 --> 00:14:21,150
But, uh, to watch this
was to forget that you had to...

145
00:14:21,235 --> 00:14:25,905
When it stopped,
you had to get into landing boats

146
00:14:25,990 --> 00:14:28,157
and make oft for the shore.

147
00:14:28,242 --> 00:14:30,743
lt was, uh, just at dawn,

148
00:14:30,828 --> 00:14:33,997
and a terrific spectacle
in which l think everybody,

149
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including, of course, myself,
was drawn into it,

150
00:14:38,252 --> 00:14:41,713
so that we forgot all about ourselves.

151
00:15:00,107 --> 00:15:02,317
(narrator) A city falls.

152
00:15:02,401 --> 00:15:06,029
ln an hour, a soldier,
senses quickened, time speeded up,

153
00:15:06,113 --> 00:15:09,991
might kill and make love
and face death again.

154
00:15:10,075 --> 00:15:15,038
One room had a piano and l was sitting
at the piano playing with one finger.

155
00:15:15,122 --> 00:15:18,207
This British soldier, a real, uh...

156
00:15:18,292 --> 00:15:22,629
You couldn't have made a better cartoon
of a typical British infantryman.

157
00:15:22,755 --> 00:15:26,841
He was grimy, he was dirty,
he had his helmet on,

158
00:15:26,926 --> 00:15:29,010
he had his Enfield rifle,

159
00:15:29,094 --> 00:15:31,846
he had grenades festooned on him,

160
00:15:31,931 --> 00:15:35,183
and he had this young
15-year-old ltalian chick with him,

161
00:15:35,267 --> 00:15:41,773
a very buxom young lass who did not
look inexperienced in spite of her age.

162
00:15:41,899 --> 00:15:46,194
And he nodded very politely to me
and then ignored me totally

163
00:15:46,278 --> 00:15:49,739
and went to a cupboard over
in the corner and found some, uh,

164
00:15:49,823 --> 00:15:52,659
nice, uh...

165
00:15:53,786 --> 00:15:55,912
lace, uh,

166
00:15:56,038 --> 00:15:58,873
table napery or nappery. Whatever.

167
00:15:58,958 --> 00:16:02,460
He found a, uh, doily,
which he placed on the floor.

168
00:16:02,544 --> 00:16:06,714
He was very delicate, because
the room was full of plaster dust

169
00:16:06,799 --> 00:16:10,802
and proceeded to cohabit with this girl
on the doily.

170
00:16:10,886 --> 00:16:13,429
lt was very delicate of him, you know.

171
00:16:13,514 --> 00:16:16,975
And l'm sitting there picking out
a tune on the piano watching...

172
00:16:17,059 --> 00:16:20,520
The whole thing was a weird scene.

173
00:16:20,604 --> 00:16:23,773
And l felt,
"Would it be better if l left?"

174
00:16:23,857 --> 00:16:27,193
Then l felt, "lt would be too..."
l was trying to do the polite thing.

175
00:16:27,319 --> 00:16:29,904
l was trying to, uh...

176
00:16:29,989 --> 00:16:33,449
They never, in a sense,
gave me a chance to leave, really.

177
00:16:33,534 --> 00:16:36,077
And so, they left.

178
00:16:36,161 --> 00:16:40,498
The girl smiled over her shoulder at me
and the soldier said, "So long, Yank,"

179
00:16:40,582 --> 00:16:45,545
or something like that,
went back out and back to battle.

180
00:16:46,588 --> 00:16:50,216
lt was a weird sort of a...
Probably, in many ways,

181
00:16:50,300 --> 00:16:54,137
probably the weirdest and strangest
and most sort of dreamlike thing

182
00:16:54,221 --> 00:16:56,222
l can remember out of the whole war,

183
00:16:56,306 --> 00:16:59,434
this little episode
which lasted about five minutes.

184
00:17:06,734 --> 00:17:09,569
(narrator)
Good to remember the good days.

185
00:17:14,783 --> 00:17:19,037
The soldiers were welcome.
Everyone was happy.

186
00:17:19,121 --> 00:17:21,247
The wine was red.

187
00:17:24,877 --> 00:17:26,586
Wynford Vaughan-Thomas

188
00:17:26,670 --> 00:17:30,298
remembers the liberation
of the Burgundy vineyards.

189
00:17:31,383 --> 00:17:33,634
(Vaughan-Thomas)
The French army paused.

190
00:17:33,719 --> 00:17:36,012
The Americans couldn't understand it.

191
00:17:36,096 --> 00:17:39,307
They were in the mountains.
l remember General Patch saying,

192
00:17:39,391 --> 00:17:42,351
"You know about the French.
Why aren't they advancing?"

193
00:17:42,436 --> 00:17:45,271
"They're at this place, Châlons."
l looked at the map.

194
00:17:45,355 --> 00:17:47,023
There's a Châlons sur Saóne

195
00:17:47,107 --> 00:17:49,692
at the beginning
of the Burgundy vineyard country.

196
00:17:49,777 --> 00:17:52,945
l go across and there was
de Lattre de Tassigny,

197
00:17:53,072 --> 00:17:56,115
Monsalbert and their staft
looking at the problem.

198
00:17:56,200 --> 00:17:59,744
They had Larmat's Atlas Vinicoie
de la France in front of them.

199
00:17:59,828 --> 00:18:02,747
And they were studying it
because it would be tragic

200
00:18:02,831 --> 00:18:06,250
if they fought through
Beaune and Nuits St George

201
00:18:06,335 --> 00:18:09,796
and the great vineyards of Burgundy.

202
00:18:09,880 --> 00:18:13,257
France would never forgive them.
And they were paused.

203
00:18:13,342 --> 00:18:15,593
A young sous-lieutenant said:

204
00:18:15,677 --> 00:18:19,514
"Courage, my generals, l've found
the weak spot of the German defences."

205
00:18:19,598 --> 00:18:23,559
"Every one is on a vineyard
of inferior quality."

206
00:18:23,644 --> 00:18:26,187
De Lattre made his decision,
"J'attaque."

207
00:18:26,313 --> 00:18:30,983
And for three days,
we fought our way through the cellars.

208
00:18:31,068 --> 00:18:35,404
And on the third day l emerged
bewildered, looking towards Dijon

209
00:18:35,489 --> 00:18:37,949
and l realised we'd liberated Burgundy.

210
00:18:45,666 --> 00:18:49,043
(narrator)
The poets saw beneath the skin.

211
00:18:49,128 --> 00:18:52,213
Vergissmeinnicht - Forget me not.

212
00:18:54,133 --> 00:18:57,260
"Three weeks gone
and the combatants gone

213
00:18:57,344 --> 00:19:01,055
returning over the nightmare ground
we found the place again,

214
00:19:01,140 --> 00:19:04,475
and found the soldier
sprawling in the sun.

215
00:19:06,019 --> 00:19:08,855
The frowning barrel of his gun
overshadowing.

216
00:19:08,939 --> 00:19:12,483
As we came on that day,
he hit my tank with one

217
00:19:12,568 --> 00:19:15,444
like the entry of a demon.

218
00:19:15,529 --> 00:19:20,575
Look. Here in the gunpit spoil the
dishonoured picture of his girl

219
00:19:20,659 --> 00:19:26,706
who has put: Steffi. Vergissmeinnicht.
in a copybook gothic script.

220
00:19:28,041 --> 00:19:35,590
We see him almost with content, abased,
and seeming to have paid and mocked at

221
00:19:35,674 --> 00:19:40,011
by his own equipment
that's hard and good when he's decayed.

222
00:19:41,597 --> 00:19:46,684
But she would weep to see today
how on his skin the swart flies move;

223
00:19:46,768 --> 00:19:49,187
the dust upon the paper eye

224
00:19:49,271 --> 00:19:52,773
and the burst stomach like a cave.

225
00:19:52,858 --> 00:19:55,526
For here the lover and killer are
mingled

226
00:19:55,611 --> 00:19:58,404
who had one body and one heart.

227
00:19:58,488 --> 00:20:04,368
And death who had the soldier singled
has done the lover mortal hurt.

228
00:20:08,332 --> 00:20:11,792
Remember the war poet, Keith Douglas,

229
00:20:11,877 --> 00:20:14,754
killed in Normandy in 1944.

230
00:20:19,718 --> 00:20:22,511
Away from the front, beyond the battle,

231
00:20:22,596 --> 00:20:26,390
the soldiers came and went as strangers.

232
00:20:26,475 --> 00:20:29,435
(Gray) After a few weeks in the line,

233
00:20:29,519 --> 00:20:33,898
l got away one afternoon
and climbed up into the Apennines

234
00:20:33,982 --> 00:20:36,901
and met the old hermit.

235
00:20:36,985 --> 00:20:39,153
We sat down and began to talk,

236
00:20:39,279 --> 00:20:43,574
and of course the artillery
in the valley below opened up

237
00:20:43,659 --> 00:20:46,619
and he began to ask me questions
about the war.

238
00:20:46,703 --> 00:20:51,207
And l gradually became aware
that he didn't know what was going on.

239
00:20:51,291 --> 00:20:54,877
My attempts to explain
what was going on faltered,

240
00:20:54,962 --> 00:20:59,966
not only because of my...
rather poor ltalian,

241
00:21:00,050 --> 00:21:05,471
but because l suddenly realised that
l couldn't possibly explain to him...

242
00:21:06,640 --> 00:21:12,478
why Americans, Britishers,
were fighting in ltaly against Germans

243
00:21:12,604 --> 00:21:14,855
with ltalians on both sides.

244
00:21:14,940 --> 00:21:17,566
lt seemed an impossible task.

245
00:21:17,693 --> 00:21:20,987
Even had he been speaking
my own language,

246
00:21:21,071 --> 00:21:26,534
l wouldn't have been able to tell him
what the war was about,

247
00:21:26,618 --> 00:21:29,203
because l didn't really know myself,

248
00:21:29,288 --> 00:21:32,665
in any deeper sense,
what the war was about.

249
00:21:40,257 --> 00:21:46,512
ln a sense, the people l fought with
in the war were, in my view, all heroes,

250
00:21:46,596 --> 00:21:49,098
in the sense that they were...

251
00:21:49,182 --> 00:21:52,601
tremendous believers
in what we were trying to do.

252
00:21:52,686 --> 00:21:57,273
There was an amazing spirit
of dedication to the task in hand.

253
00:21:57,357 --> 00:22:02,361
This was very moving,
and a tremendous inspiration.

254
00:22:02,446 --> 00:22:05,865
Whose idea it was, of course,
you can never trace,

255
00:22:05,949 --> 00:22:07,658
but it was a sort of infection.

256
00:22:07,743 --> 00:22:10,286
This applied to people
from all over the world,

257
00:22:10,370 --> 00:22:15,207
and Bomber Command was an
extraordinarily cosmopolitan command.

258
00:22:15,292 --> 00:22:17,376
l think, by the time l was in it,

259
00:22:17,461 --> 00:22:20,963
about 40% of it came from overseas,

260
00:22:21,048 --> 00:22:23,716
mostly from New Zealand,
Australia, Canada,

261
00:22:23,800 --> 00:22:27,762
but also from many other countries
and not all, by any means, British.

262
00:22:27,846 --> 00:22:32,224
l mean, there were lots of Czechs
and Poles serVing in Bomber Command.

263
00:22:32,309 --> 00:22:35,853
And the spirit of dedication was,
as l say, moving.

264
00:22:35,937 --> 00:22:39,690
But where it really came from
is something l've never understood.

265
00:22:39,775 --> 00:22:42,193
The task in hand inspired the idea.

266
00:22:42,277 --> 00:22:45,237
ln that sense,
l think this was a heroic idea.

267
00:22:53,580 --> 00:22:56,582
lt's just now and again
the nightmare in the night,

268
00:22:56,666 --> 00:22:58,751
where you just remember somebody who...

269
00:22:58,835 --> 00:23:01,295
You turn around
on the deck of a destroyer

270
00:23:01,380 --> 00:23:03,881
and next minute he wasn't there.

271
00:23:03,965 --> 00:23:06,425
You know, he'd gone, swept away.

272
00:23:14,851 --> 00:23:16,560
Casualties were bad at any time,

273
00:23:16,645 --> 00:23:19,855
but particularly in the last two months
of the war.

274
00:23:19,940 --> 00:23:24,443
There were men you'd been with for five
years. They were not just colleagues.

275
00:23:24,528 --> 00:23:26,904
You were close.
You knew all about them,

276
00:23:26,988 --> 00:23:31,283
and you saw them getting knocked oft
in the last few days, particularly sad.

277
00:23:46,341 --> 00:23:51,762
"l am commanded by the Air Council to
state that in view of the lapse of time

278
00:23:51,847 --> 00:23:55,891
and the absence of any further news
regarding your husband,

279
00:23:56,017 --> 00:23:59,979
Acting Squadron Leader
THD Drinkwater DFC,

280
00:24:00,063 --> 00:24:02,898
since the date on which
he was reported missing,

281
00:24:02,983 --> 00:24:07,027
they must regretfully conclude
that he has lost his life

282
00:24:07,154 --> 00:24:11,699
and his death had now been presumed
for ofticial purposes

283
00:24:11,783 --> 00:24:17,204
to have occurred
on the 18th of May, 1944."

284
00:24:24,212 --> 00:24:26,589
l don't think any of us were, you know,

285
00:24:26,673 --> 00:24:28,424
patriotic men in the sense

286
00:24:28,508 --> 00:24:32,887
that we would stand rigidly
to attention and wave flags.

287
00:24:35,140 --> 00:24:40,019
We were just glad to be alive
and, in some way, you know,

288
00:24:40,103 --> 00:24:44,648
we were rather proud that this kind
of army we'd been in for so long,

289
00:24:44,733 --> 00:24:49,195
which had done so many daft things and
where we'd been bellowed and shouted at

290
00:24:49,279 --> 00:24:52,781
and, uh, generally mucked around

291
00:24:52,866 --> 00:24:55,493
and spent thousands of hours
on exercises

292
00:24:55,619 --> 00:24:59,246
and standing about in the rain
and the mud and the snow,

293
00:24:59,331 --> 00:25:03,751
had finally managed to bring oft what,

294
00:25:03,835 --> 00:25:08,422
when you look at it in fairly cold
light, was a pretty big adventure.

295
00:25:08,507 --> 00:25:11,550
(band plays
"It's A Long Way To Tipperary")

296
00:25:26,942 --> 00:25:31,487
(Vaughan-Thomas) l couldn't understand
why people went to Cenotaph ceremonies.

297
00:25:31,571 --> 00:25:36,617
l go now, and l'm proud to go, because l
remember the people who didn't come back

298
00:25:36,701 --> 00:25:39,620
and out of it comes
this terrible feeling in my mind

299
00:25:39,704 --> 00:25:44,250
of waste and yet of proud comradeship.

300
00:25:57,889 --> 00:26:01,225
You're lying in a trench
and the shells come down.

301
00:26:01,309 --> 00:26:04,144
You're frightened to death.
The chap next to you says:

302
00:26:04,271 --> 00:26:07,106
"Have a cigarette, mate.
lt'll go. lt's like rain."

303
00:26:07,232 --> 00:26:09,316
You realise he's a better man than you.

304
00:26:09,401 --> 00:26:11,402
He's given you the strength to go on,

305
00:26:11,486 --> 00:26:14,321
and that is what you remember
out of the war.

306
00:26:14,406 --> 00:26:16,991
lt's the comradeship.

307
00:26:40,974 --> 00:26:43,392
(narrator) Remember the comradeship,

308
00:26:43,476 --> 00:26:46,228
and remember the suftering.

309
00:26:49,024 --> 00:26:52,401
Another road, another village -

310
00:26:52,485 --> 00:26:54,570
same orders.

311
00:26:59,284 --> 00:27:01,327
Soldiers.

312
00:27:01,411 --> 00:27:04,413
Some seeing, not feeling,

313
00:27:04,497 --> 00:27:06,999
others enjoying their work.

314
00:27:16,051 --> 00:27:19,094
(Gray) lt's one of the
melancholy aspects of human nature.

315
00:27:19,179 --> 00:27:25,684
You notice it with boys who love to
break windows to hear the glass tinkle,

316
00:27:25,769 --> 00:27:30,105
but there are a great many soldiers

317
00:27:30,190 --> 00:27:33,025
who take a great pleasure

318
00:27:33,109 --> 00:27:35,861
in destroying people,

319
00:27:35,987 --> 00:27:38,072
wasting things.

320
00:27:46,665 --> 00:27:52,586
l find this aspect of human nature
not discussed enough,

321
00:27:52,671 --> 00:27:56,465
but it is surely one
of the causes of warfare.

322
00:28:22,075 --> 00:28:24,201
Remember the dead.

323
00:28:26,204 --> 00:28:31,208
ln the Second World War she started,
Germany lost nearly five million dead.

324
00:28:31,292 --> 00:28:33,961
Two and a half million
were killed in action,

325
00:28:34,045 --> 00:28:37,506
one and a half million
died in Russian prison camps.

326
00:28:37,590 --> 00:28:42,052
Half a million German civilians
died in Allied bombing raids,

327
00:28:42,137 --> 00:28:45,556
another half million at the war's end.

328
00:28:46,933 --> 00:28:51,270
Remember the dead
and the scarred surVivors.

329
00:28:57,152 --> 00:29:00,195
(Frankland) The effect of war
on people who take part in it

330
00:29:00,280 --> 00:29:03,031
is, of course, extremely various.

331
00:29:03,116 --> 00:29:07,870
Lots of people are maimed, completely,
either mentally or physically.

332
00:29:07,954 --> 00:29:12,791
But l suppose the majority of those
who surVive, surVive apparently intact.

333
00:29:12,876 --> 00:29:14,835
But there must be marked eftects,

334
00:29:14,919 --> 00:29:17,713
and in some ways the eftects
are very good on people,

335
00:29:17,839 --> 00:29:21,717
because they feel that
they've been able to fulfil themselves.

336
00:29:21,843 --> 00:29:26,555
A lot of people go through life without
ever feeling a sense of fulfilment,

337
00:29:26,639 --> 00:29:30,142
but those who take part
in hectic war operations

338
00:29:30,226 --> 00:29:32,227
usually get a sense of fulfilment,

339
00:29:32,312 --> 00:29:36,064
to some extent, especially if they
believe in what they're trying to do,

340
00:29:36,149 --> 00:29:40,402
which l think in war
people tend to do very readily.

341
00:29:40,487 --> 00:29:44,823
On the other hand, l think there are
very bad eftects, obvious bad eftects.

342
00:29:44,908 --> 00:29:47,284
Perhaps one of the less obvious ones

343
00:29:47,368 --> 00:29:49,870
is that people who undertake
these operations

344
00:29:49,954 --> 00:29:52,915
l think have a tendency
to feel afterwards

345
00:29:52,999 --> 00:29:56,710
that society owes them
something very special.

346
00:29:56,795 --> 00:30:01,423
And when the war is over, they tend to
go home or back to where they came from

347
00:30:01,508 --> 00:30:04,635
and expect people to look up to them
and to look after them,

348
00:30:04,719 --> 00:30:09,348
which is not what people are going to
do at all, nor what people ought to do.

349
00:30:17,649 --> 00:30:19,733
Remember the mud.

350
00:30:19,818 --> 00:30:22,694
You get used to it, of course.

351
00:30:22,779 --> 00:30:25,280
You get used to anything...

352
00:30:27,742 --> 00:30:30,202
easily hardened to other suftering.

353
00:30:32,705 --> 00:30:35,916
(man) lt's a curious thing.
You could equate it to television

354
00:30:36,000 --> 00:30:38,377
and what it's done to us, in many ways.

355
00:30:38,461 --> 00:30:40,796
The realities of the situation

356
00:30:40,880 --> 00:30:43,632
people are still wanting
to sweep under the carpet.

357
00:30:43,716 --> 00:30:47,678
l turned round to my kids during the
napalm bombing in Vietnam and l said:

358
00:30:47,762 --> 00:30:49,137
"Just don't sit there.

359
00:30:49,222 --> 00:30:53,308
"That is a real child, that burning
torch running across a field."

360
00:30:53,393 --> 00:30:56,061
But it means nothing to them.

361
00:30:57,105 --> 00:31:02,192
(narrator) That is a real man scrambling
for a potato, soon to starVe to death.

362
00:31:17,041 --> 00:31:19,167
Remember the dead.

363
00:31:20,295 --> 00:31:23,797
ln the Second World War,
two and half million Japanese died.

364
00:31:23,882 --> 00:31:26,550
Among them, half a million civilians.

365
00:31:30,763 --> 00:31:33,140
Japanese fighting men
fought to the death.

366
00:31:33,224 --> 00:31:38,687
Nearly 20 Japanese soldiers were killed
for every one wounded or maimed.

367
00:31:40,106 --> 00:31:46,028
We had this orthopod,
or orthopaedic surgeon, from Baltimore,

368
00:31:46,112 --> 00:31:52,075
and, uh... he gave me the definition
that l've used all these many years

369
00:31:52,201 --> 00:31:56,330
of sympathy for the disability.

370
00:31:56,414 --> 00:31:58,957
He said, "Son, you know
where you find sympathy?"

371
00:31:59,042 --> 00:32:03,629
He said, "You find it in the dictionary
between 'Shit' and 'Syphilis'."

372
00:32:03,713 --> 00:32:06,590
And l've remembered that
all these many years.

373
00:32:17,977 --> 00:32:20,729
Remember the civilians
who got in the way.

374
00:32:21,981 --> 00:32:25,233
You could miss seeing them
from a bomber,

375
00:32:25,318 --> 00:32:28,445
but on the ground the soldiers knew.

376
00:32:31,449 --> 00:32:36,495
(Gray) One of the things that seemed to
me to cause most guilt in World War ll

377
00:32:36,579 --> 00:32:41,875
was this failure to discriminate between
combatants and non-combatants.

378
00:32:41,960 --> 00:32:46,672
l felt, even then,
as many other soldiers did,

379
00:32:46,756 --> 00:32:52,177
that we were guilty of
indiscriminate terroristic bombing.

380
00:32:52,261 --> 00:32:58,225
Many soldiers had to kill innocent
women and children, non-combatants.

381
00:33:03,606 --> 00:33:06,692
ln this sense, there is such a thing
as collective guilt

382
00:33:06,776 --> 00:33:11,321
insofar as this decision
was made at the highest levels

383
00:33:11,406 --> 00:33:14,408
and approved by many people,

384
00:33:14,492 --> 00:33:17,661
both soldiers and... and civilians.

385
00:33:27,880 --> 00:33:30,507
(narrator) Remember the dead.

386
00:33:30,591 --> 00:33:35,220
ln the Second World War, America
was not invaded or even bombed,

387
00:33:35,304 --> 00:33:38,932
but the United States
lost 300,000 fighting men,

388
00:33:39,058 --> 00:33:42,769
killed in action far from home.

389
00:33:45,273 --> 00:33:47,733
Well, what l found when l came home,

390
00:33:47,817 --> 00:33:51,278
and l've been rather disgusted
with myself ever since,

391
00:33:51,362 --> 00:33:53,905
was that, uh...

392
00:33:54,991 --> 00:33:58,493
the readjustment to their kind of life,

393
00:33:58,578 --> 00:34:02,122
the life that l led before myself,

394
00:34:02,248 --> 00:34:04,416
was virtually impossible,

395
00:34:04,500 --> 00:34:09,296
because however much you hate
being in a war,

396
00:34:09,380 --> 00:34:12,382
the things that you come back to
seem very, very trivial.

397
00:34:12,467 --> 00:34:16,762
Reporting the council talking about
a new gents' lavatory, things like this,

398
00:34:16,846 --> 00:34:19,181
don't seem to matter at all.

399
00:34:19,265 --> 00:34:22,476
And, of course, these things matter
to the people around you.

400
00:34:22,560 --> 00:34:26,688
And l shut up, l shut myself in,
for about a year.

401
00:34:26,773 --> 00:34:30,067
l must have behaved extremely badly,
l'm well aware of it.

402
00:34:30,151 --> 00:34:33,862
And l've never forgotten it, and
l've never ceased to feel sorry for it,

403
00:34:33,946 --> 00:34:38,033
because it must have made life pretty
intolerable for the people around me.

404
00:34:38,117 --> 00:34:42,329
But it was just that l couldn't...
l couldn't... communicate.

405
00:34:42,413 --> 00:34:44,831
l had lost my sense of communication

406
00:34:44,916 --> 00:34:48,043
with the people that l had known
for all those years,

407
00:34:51,005 --> 00:34:56,760
because l had begun to understand
an entirely new breed of people

408
00:34:56,844 --> 00:35:00,764
who were all thrown together, um...

409
00:35:00,848 --> 00:35:02,766
in a common thing. l think that was it.

410
00:35:07,480 --> 00:35:10,774
(narrator) More roads to more villages.

411
00:35:10,858 --> 00:35:13,443
More orders to obey.

412
00:35:18,157 --> 00:35:22,119
"Corporal, take two men
and clear the village."

413
00:35:22,203 --> 00:35:25,497
"Leave the men behind for now."

414
00:35:25,581 --> 00:35:28,625
"Move the women and children."

415
00:35:28,709 --> 00:35:33,505
"Corporal, hurry the goodbyes up,
will you?"

416
00:36:21,304 --> 00:36:24,764
(Gray) l think it has taught me,
all the rest of my life,

417
00:36:24,849 --> 00:36:30,020
that there is a line
which a man dare not cross,

418
00:36:30,104 --> 00:36:36,109
a line which separates
the reasonably just and human

419
00:36:36,194 --> 00:36:39,070
from the mere functionary.

420
00:37:06,098 --> 00:37:11,394
(narrator) The corporal and the soldiers
have wives and children too.

421
00:37:29,872 --> 00:37:33,250
Remember the Russian dead.

422
00:37:33,334 --> 00:37:36,836
ln the Second World War, the
Soviet Union, already bled by Stalin,

423
00:37:36,921 --> 00:37:39,839
lost... 20 million dead.

424
00:37:39,924 --> 00:37:43,218
Millions in action on Russian soil -

425
00:37:43,302 --> 00:37:45,762
the bloody defeats of '41 and '42,

426
00:37:45,846 --> 00:37:49,349
the bloody victories of '43 and '45.

427
00:37:51,936 --> 00:37:54,854
And millions of prisoners of war
died in German hands,

428
00:37:54,939 --> 00:37:58,900
deprived of food, clothing, shelter.

429
00:37:58,985 --> 00:38:02,696
For these prisoners, no escape.

430
00:38:02,780 --> 00:38:04,781
About a million were shot.

431
00:38:04,865 --> 00:38:09,619
And millions of Russian civilians
died from shooting, bombing, shelling,

432
00:38:09,704 --> 00:38:14,291
forced winter marches,
engineered starVation.

433
00:38:14,417 --> 00:38:16,710
20th-century total war.

434
00:38:38,107 --> 00:38:40,400
Remember the Russian dead...

435
00:38:41,444 --> 00:38:43,570
the 20 million.

436
00:38:54,540 --> 00:38:57,542
Soldiers, remember the dead.

437
00:38:58,669 --> 00:39:00,795
Remember all the others.

438
00:39:03,007 --> 00:39:08,720
15 million Chinese died in the
Second World War, most from starVation.

439
00:39:08,804 --> 00:39:13,266
And in occupied Europe, more than
a million and a half Yugoslavs died

440
00:39:13,351 --> 00:39:16,561
for a country
that never stopped fighting.

441
00:39:16,645 --> 00:39:21,983
And three million Poles
and more than five million Jews.

442
00:39:22,068 --> 00:39:26,738
And over half a million Frenchmen
and women, many in the Resistance.

443
00:39:26,822 --> 00:39:32,869
And brave men and women in Norway
and Holland and Denmark and Belgium.

444
00:39:32,953 --> 00:39:35,622
And hundreds of thousands
in Czechoslovakia,

445
00:39:35,706 --> 00:39:39,042
Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary.

446
00:39:39,168 --> 00:39:41,711
And over 300,000 Greeks.

447
00:39:41,796 --> 00:39:43,505
And half a million ltalians

448
00:39:43,589 --> 00:39:47,926
in a country that was fought over
and fought on both sides.

449
00:39:48,010 --> 00:39:52,389
And Spaniards in Russia
and lndians in Burma.

450
00:39:52,473 --> 00:39:55,308
Remember them all.

451
00:39:55,393 --> 00:39:58,895
55 million dead.

452
00:40:03,818 --> 00:40:07,904
"l did not know death
had undone so many."

453
00:40:09,990 --> 00:40:12,075
Mothers and daughters,

454
00:40:12,159 --> 00:40:14,786
fathers and sons.

455
00:40:44,775 --> 00:40:48,486
The young are too young to remember,

456
00:40:48,571 --> 00:40:51,448
perhaps too young to understand.

457
00:40:53,325 --> 00:40:57,912
(Frankland) One of the great effects
of war upon people who take part in it

458
00:40:57,997 --> 00:41:00,623
is the extent to which it tends
to cut them oft

459
00:41:00,708 --> 00:41:04,794
from both their elders
and their own children.

460
00:41:04,879 --> 00:41:08,423
And, um, the same thing applies,
in a difterent way,

461
00:41:08,507 --> 00:41:10,508
as between a father and a son.

462
00:41:10,593 --> 00:41:15,430
l mean, l feel this myself
in my own relationship with my parents

463
00:41:15,514 --> 00:41:18,308
at the time of the war
and with my children today,

464
00:41:18,392 --> 00:41:22,937
that, in a sense,
they neither can nor wish to envisage

465
00:41:23,022 --> 00:41:25,607
the circumstances
in which we lived in the war.

466
00:41:25,691 --> 00:41:30,653
And we have a rather arrogant feeling
that they ought to wish to understand

467
00:41:30,738 --> 00:41:33,698
these dreadful things that happened,
but they don't.

468
00:41:33,782 --> 00:41:37,494
And this cuts one oft both from
the older and the younger generation.

469
00:41:37,578 --> 00:41:40,705
People are, in any case,
cut oft from these generations.

470
00:41:40,789 --> 00:41:44,167
There is a generation gap
under any circumstances,

471
00:41:44,251 --> 00:41:47,921
but l think war,
as in so many other aspects of life,

472
00:41:48,005 --> 00:41:51,549
tends to emphasise
those sort of considerations,

473
00:41:51,634 --> 00:41:56,596
and very much so in creating
and nourishing a generation gap.

474
00:41:56,680 --> 00:41:58,765
(♪ fairground music)

475
00:42:11,862 --> 00:42:13,947
(narrator) Nuremberg.

476
00:42:14,698 --> 00:42:20,036
Here on this ground, Adolf Hitler
spoke to the National Socialist Party

477
00:42:20,120 --> 00:42:23,122
and to the German nation, 40 years ago.

478
00:42:29,880 --> 00:42:33,299
40 years on, West Germany's chancellor,

479
00:42:33,384 --> 00:42:37,387
twice elected by popular vote,
is Willy Brandt.

480
00:42:39,014 --> 00:42:42,642
Brandt was a traitor
to Hitler's Germany.

481
00:42:42,726 --> 00:42:46,062
He fought in the Norwegian Resistance.

482
00:42:47,064 --> 00:42:50,858
ln Warsaw, as in Jerusalem,

483
00:42:50,943 --> 00:42:52,986
he remembers the dead.

484
00:42:58,325 --> 00:43:00,910
Of all Germans alive today,

485
00:43:00,995 --> 00:43:05,665
half were not born
when the Second World War began.

486
00:43:11,422 --> 00:43:14,257
(Drinkwater)
We have things to remember him by.

487
00:43:14,341 --> 00:43:17,927
We've got one here
from Buckingham Palace.

488
00:43:18,012 --> 00:43:23,933
"The Queen and l ofter you our heartfelt
sympathy in your great sorrow."

489
00:43:24,018 --> 00:43:28,438
"We pray that your country's gratitude
for a life so nobly given

490
00:43:28,522 --> 00:43:33,443
in its serVice may bring you
some measure of consolation."

491
00:43:42,953 --> 00:43:46,623
(man reads roll of honour) 1939-45.

492
00:43:46,707 --> 00:43:50,418
E Bickerstone, J Curtis,

493
00:43:50,502 --> 00:43:54,255
E Fraser, L Humphrey,

494
00:43:54,340 --> 00:43:57,800
G Nixon, A Schofield,

495
00:43:57,885 --> 00:44:01,721
L Chandler, A Flower,

496
00:44:01,805 --> 00:44:05,558
S Horan, C Nixon...

497
00:44:13,233 --> 00:44:15,568
(bugle plays the Last Post)

498
00:45:11,041 --> 00:45:14,168
(narrator) They were very young.

499
00:45:14,253 --> 00:45:17,130
They did not ask to die as heroes.

500
00:45:20,843 --> 00:45:25,012
They would rather have lived
for those that loved them,

501
00:45:25,097 --> 00:45:27,390
those they loved.

502
00:45:57,796 --> 00:46:01,382
(Drinkwater) And this was the last
letter he ever wrote to his wife...

503
00:46:01,467 --> 00:46:04,844
"Darling, let me tell you again
l love you."

504
00:46:04,928 --> 00:46:11,058
"This past weekend has made me
so pleased that you are my wife

505
00:46:11,143 --> 00:46:14,020
because l am so in love with you

506
00:46:14,104 --> 00:46:17,648
and l know l shall love you
for the rest of my life."

507
00:46:17,733 --> 00:46:21,360
"And darling, thank you for loving me."

508
00:46:21,445 --> 00:46:26,032
"My sweet, l am sure you have
got something belonging to me

509
00:46:26,116 --> 00:46:30,912
because l am always so happy
when l am with you,

510
00:46:30,996 --> 00:46:36,083
but as soon as we are apart,
l just go as flat as can be."

511
00:46:36,168 --> 00:46:41,547
"l am like a man with no brain,
but only a memory for you."

512
00:46:41,632 --> 00:46:44,759
"Oh, darling, it is terrible."

513
00:46:44,843 --> 00:46:48,179
"Please don't think
l am sloppy or stupid,

514
00:46:48,263 --> 00:46:52,391
though l may be,
but l just can't get over it."

515
00:46:52,476 --> 00:46:55,561
"Perhaps l am a bit tired tonight,

516
00:46:55,687 --> 00:46:59,232
and after a night's rest
l shall be better

517
00:46:59,316 --> 00:47:03,277
and able to write you a nice letter."

518
00:47:03,362 --> 00:47:06,364
"Anyway, l'll see."

519
00:47:06,448 --> 00:47:11,244
"l'm afraid, darling, my operational
flying days are nearly over."

520
00:47:11,328 --> 00:47:15,706
"The wing commander
has told me twice already this evening

521
00:47:15,791 --> 00:47:19,752
that l can't go on so many shows
in future,

522
00:47:19,837 --> 00:47:22,839
and he is very concerned about it."

523
00:47:22,965 --> 00:47:27,468
"He said, 'Out of fairness
to you and your wife,

524
00:47:27,553 --> 00:47:34,308
l don't intend for you to stay on ops
much longer, even if you want to."'

525
00:47:34,393 --> 00:47:38,187
"You see, there was something
in what l said."

526
00:47:38,272 --> 00:47:41,107
"But, hell,
l am going to miss this life."

527
00:47:41,191 --> 00:47:43,651
"l have had over three years of it

528
00:47:43,735 --> 00:47:47,530
and the trouble is now
that l know nothing else."

529
00:47:49,366 --> 00:47:52,827
"My sweet, l must oft to bed now."

530
00:47:52,911 --> 00:47:56,122
"l can hardly see what l'm writing."

531
00:47:56,248 --> 00:47:59,500
"l love you, my own precious darling,

532
00:47:59,585 --> 00:48:03,337
more than anything else in this world."

533
00:48:03,422 --> 00:48:05,840
"Yours forever, Tom."

534
00:48:51,094 --> 00:48:54,805
(narrator)
At the village of Oradour-sur-Glane,

535
00:48:54,890 --> 00:48:57,350
the day the soldiers came,

536
00:48:57,434 --> 00:49:02,605
They killed more than
600 men, women and children.

537
00:49:05,817 --> 00:49:07,902
Remember.