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== Ripped & corrected by Kaitian ==
== for www.addic7ed.com ==

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

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the soldiers came.

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Nobody lives here now.

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They stayed only a few hours.

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When they had gone,

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a community which had lived
for a thousand years... was dead.

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This is Oradour-sur-Glane in France.

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The day the soldiers came,

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the people were gathered together.

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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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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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They never rebuilt Oradour.

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Its ruins are a memorial.

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Its 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)

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(bell tolls)

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Remember the dead.

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In the Second World War, Britain
and her Commonwealth lost 480,000 dead.

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1 20,000 of them
were from the Commonwealth.

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60,000 were civilians -
men, women and children -

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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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00:04:08,486 --> 00:04:10,133
But remember the dead,

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each one a son, father, husband,

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lover... brother.

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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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on Thursday the 18th of May, 1944."

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"Letter follows.
Any further information received

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will be immediately
communicated to you."

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"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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(bugles play the Last Post)

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(man) It's very funny, a battlefield.
The other day I watched a duck shoot.

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The actual area extended
to about four square miles,

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of which a fifth was in action.

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All the rest was waiting.
And a battlefield is like that.

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It's extraordinary
how inanimate the whole thing seems.

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There's a bit of an action
going on in the right-hand corner.

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For the rest,
there are people lying about, smoking.

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(narrator) And waiting, and sleeping...

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and waiting,

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and waiting.

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(man) It's one of the things
that films and books don't bring out -

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Tolstoy, perhaps, is the exception -

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a battlefield
where nothing seems to be happening.

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The action is always over a hedge
somewhere else,

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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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(narrator) Paris. June, 1940.

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They were there all right.

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But for these soldiers,
no parade, no triumph.

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Not the way we're used to seeing it
on the newsreels.

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All rather quiet, really.

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Nothing much to write home about.

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Or perhaps this actually was
the scene that would stay with them,

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the moment the soldiers
would always remember.

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Looking back, you know,
it's even 28 years now.

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I can hear it and I can see it,

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I can smell it.

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

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that, you know, it is something
that they will always remember.

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(narrator) There's much soldiers
don't want to forget.

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(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

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and guests from Australia,
from Britain, from Italy.

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Old comrades, old enemies,

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old memories,

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and plenty of beer.

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

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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.

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

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we talk about some of the funny things.

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We never really dwell
on the unhappy ones.

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And I 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.

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And so, at night, for example,
when one came in to laager,

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one would dig a hole
and drive the tank over it

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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

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and one got to know each other
extremely well.

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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.

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We didn't really find time to, um,

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

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I certainly never remember discussing,
well, the outcome of the war,

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or whether the Germans were right
or we were right or anything like that.

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It was just day to day,
honest-to-goodness living together,

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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,

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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,

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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 off,
bash this pig on the head,

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

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

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and boil the water and scrape the pig.

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We'd have delicious pork chops any
time day or night and lived very well.

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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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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) I don't think I was frightened.
I was scared.

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You know, when you're scared,
you're more alert.

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

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

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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, I 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 I 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.

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00:13:18,476 --> 00:13:24,105
I think especially of southern France,
the terrific bombardment of our planes

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coming over the southern coast
of France.

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I literally expected the coast
to detach itself

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and... and go into the ocean.

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But, uh, to watch this
was to forget that you had to...

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When it stopped,
you had to get into landing boats

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and make off for the shore.

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It was, uh, just at dawn,

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and a terrific spectacle
in which I think everybody,

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

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so that we forgot all about ourselves.

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(narrator) A city falls.

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In an hour, a soldier,
senses quickened, time speeded up,

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might kill and make love
and face death again.

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One room had a piano and I was sitting
at the piano playing with one finger.

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00:14:29,637 --> 00:14:32,583
This British soldier, a real, uh...

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You couldn't have made a better cartoon
of a typical British infantryman.

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He was grimy, he was dirty,
he had his helmet on,

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he had his Enfield rifle,

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he had grenades festooned on him,

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and he had this young
1 5-year-old Italian chick with him,

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a very buxom young lass who did not
look inexperienced in spite of her age.

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And he nodded very politely to me
and then ignored me totally

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00:14:59,520 --> 00:15:02,848
and went to a cupboard over
in the corner and found some, uh,

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00:15:02,935 --> 00:15:05,652
nice, uh...

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lace, uh,

167
00:15:08,881 --> 00:15:11,598
table napery or nappery. Whatever.

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00:15:11,681 --> 00:15:15,052
He found a, uh, doily,
which he placed on the floor.

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He was very delicate, because
the room was full of plaster dust

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00:15:19,200 --> 00:15:23,029
and proceeded to cohabit with this girl
on the doily.

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00:15:23,113 --> 00:15:25,568
It was very delicate of him, you know.

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00:15:25,645 --> 00:15:28,940
And I'm sitting there picking out
a tune on the piano watching...

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The whole thing was a weird scene.

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And I felt,
"Would it be better if I left?"

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Then I felt, "It would be too..."
I was trying to do the polite thing.

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I was trying to, uh...

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They never, in a sense,
gave me a chance to leave, really.

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And so, they left.

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The girl smiled over her shoulder at me
and the soldier said, "So long, Yank,"

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00:15:51,615 --> 00:15:56,362
or something like that,
went back out and back to battle.

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It was a weird sort of a...
Probably, in many ways,

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probably the weirdest and strangest
and most sort of dreamlike thing

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00:16:04,697 --> 00:16:06,606
I can remember out of the whole war,

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this little episode
which lasted about five minutes.

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00:16:16,666 --> 00:16:19,383
(narrator)
Good to remember the good days.

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00:16:24,415 --> 00:16:28,473
The soldiers were welcome.
Everyone was happy.

187
00:16:28,558 --> 00:16:30,587
The wine was red.

188
00:16:34,082 --> 00:16:35,729
Wynford Vaughan-Thomas

189
00:16:35,808 --> 00:16:39,256
remembers the liberation
of the Burgundy vineyards.

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00:16:40,335 --> 00:16:42,473
(K Vaughan-Thomas)
The French army paused.

191
00:16:42,560 --> 00:16:44,741
The Americans couldn't understand it.

192
00:16:44,823 --> 00:16:47,922
They were in the mountains.
I remember General Patch saying,

193
00:16:48,007 --> 00:16:50,844
"You know about the French.
Why aren't they advancing?"

194
00:16:50,922 --> 00:16:53,639
"They're at this place, Châlons."
I looked at the map.

195
00:16:53,723 --> 00:16:55,326
There's a Châlons sur Saône

196
00:16:55,411 --> 00:16:57,866
at the beginning
of the Burgundy vineyard country.

197
00:16:57,943 --> 00:17:01,009
I go across and there was
de Lattre de Tassigny,

198
00:17:01,127 --> 00:17:04,039
Monsalbert and their staff
looking at the problem.

199
00:17:04,119 --> 00:17:07,522
They had Larmat's Atlas Vinicole
de la France in front of them.

200
00:17:07,610 --> 00:17:10,402
And they were studying it
because it would be tragic

201
00:17:10,487 --> 00:17:13,738
if they fought through
Beaune and Nuits St George

202
00:17:13,824 --> 00:17:17,152
and the great vineyards of Burgundy.

203
00:17:17,239 --> 00:17:20,457
France would never forgive them.
And they were paused.

204
00:17:20,576 --> 00:17:22,715
A young sous-lieutenant said:

205
00:17:22,801 --> 00:17:26,478
"Courage, my generals, I've found
the weak spot of the German defences."

206
00:17:26,560 --> 00:17:30,357
"Every one is on a vineyard
of inferior quality."

207
00:17:30,435 --> 00:17:32,890
De Lattre made his decision,
"J'attaque."

208
00:17:33,005 --> 00:17:37,490
And for three days,
we fought our way through the cellars.

209
00:17:37,570 --> 00:17:41,706
And on the third day I emerged
bewildered, looking towards Dijon

210
00:17:41,790 --> 00:17:44,157
and I realised we'd liberated Burgundy.

211
00:17:51,572 --> 00:17:54,791
(narrator)
The poets saw beneath the skin.

212
00:17:54,871 --> 00:17:57,817
Vergissmeinnicht - Forget me not.

213
00:17:59,666 --> 00:18:02,688
"Three weeks gone
and the combatants gone

214
00:18:02,774 --> 00:18:06,298
returning over the nightmare ground
we found the place again,

215
00:18:06,418 --> 00:18:09,593
and found the soldier
sprawling in the sun.

216
00:18:11,098 --> 00:18:13,782
The frowning barrel of his gun
overshadowing.

217
00:18:13,860 --> 00:18:17,264
As we came on that day,
he hit my tank with one

218
00:18:17,351 --> 00:18:20,111
Iike the entry of a demon.

219
00:18:20,190 --> 00:18:25,012
Look. Here in the gunpit spoil the
dishonoured picture of his girl

220
00:18:25,139 --> 00:18:30,922
who has put: Steffi. Vergissmeinnicht.
in a copybook gothic script.

221
00:18:32,197 --> 00:18:39,442
We see him almost with content, abased,
and seeming to have paid and mocked at

222
00:18:39,524 --> 00:18:43,660
by his own equipment
that's hard and good when he's decayed.

223
00:18:45,202 --> 00:18:50,068
But she would weep to see today
how on his skin the swart flies move;

224
00:18:50,150 --> 00:18:52,485
the dust upon the paper eye

225
00:18:52,567 --> 00:18:55,895
and the burst stomach like a cave.

226
00:18:55,981 --> 00:18:58,545
For here the lover and killer are
mingled

227
00:18:58,628 --> 00:19:01,312
who had one body and one heart.

228
00:19:01,390 --> 00:19:07,020
And death who had the soldier singled
has done the lover mortal hurt.

229
00:19:10,827 --> 00:19:14,155
Remember the war poet, Keith Douglas,

230
00:19:14,241 --> 00:19:17,002
killed in Normandy in 1944.

231
00:19:21,760 --> 00:19:24,444
Away from the front, beyond the battle,

232
00:19:24,522 --> 00:19:28,155
the soldiers came and went as strangers.

233
00:19:28,243 --> 00:19:31,080
(Gray) After a few weeks in the line,

234
00:19:31,159 --> 00:19:35,337
I got away one afternoon
and climbed up into the Apennines

235
00:19:35,455 --> 00:19:38,248
and met the old hermit.

236
00:19:38,332 --> 00:19:40,394
We sat down and began to talk,

237
00:19:40,519 --> 00:19:44,622
and of course the artillery
in the valley below opened up

238
00:19:44,701 --> 00:19:47,570
and he began to ask me questions
about the war.

239
00:19:47,654 --> 00:19:51,942
And I gradually became aware
that he didn't know what was going on.

240
00:19:52,028 --> 00:19:55,475
My attempts to explain
what was going on faltered,

241
00:19:55,557 --> 00:20:00,346
not only because of my...
rather poor Italian,

242
00:20:00,429 --> 00:20:05,644
but because I suddenly realised that
I couldn't possibly explain to him...

243
00:20:06,758 --> 00:20:12,355
why Americans, Britishers,
were fighting in Italy against Germans

244
00:20:12,474 --> 00:20:14,613
with Italians on both sides.

245
00:20:14,738 --> 00:20:17,225
It seemed an impossible task.

246
00:20:17,346 --> 00:20:20,521
Even had he been speaking
my own language,

247
00:20:20,607 --> 00:20:25,822
I wouldn't have been able to tell him
what the war was about,

248
00:20:25,901 --> 00:20:28,389
because I didn't really know myself,

249
00:20:28,471 --> 00:20:31,722
in any deeper sense,
what the war was about.

250
00:20:38,982 --> 00:20:44,994
In a sense, the people I fought with
in the war were, in my view, all heroes,

251
00:20:45,082 --> 00:20:47,449
in the sense that they were...

252
00:20:47,575 --> 00:20:50,826
tremendous believers
in what we were trying to do.

253
00:20:50,913 --> 00:20:55,320
There was an amazing spirit
of dedication to the task in hand.

254
00:20:55,401 --> 00:21:00,190
This was very moving,
and a tremendous inspiration.

255
00:21:00,273 --> 00:21:03,568
Whose idea it was, of course,
you can never trace,

256
00:21:03,649 --> 00:21:05,296
but it was a sort of infection.

257
00:21:05,375 --> 00:21:07,786
This applied to people
from all over the world,

258
00:21:07,868 --> 00:21:12,505
and Bomber Command was an
extraordinarily cosmopolitan command.

259
00:21:12,587 --> 00:21:14,572
I think, by the time I was in it,

260
00:21:14,697 --> 00:21:18,025
about 40% of it came from overseas,

261
00:21:18,111 --> 00:21:20,675
mostly from New Zealand,
Australia, Canada,

262
00:21:20,758 --> 00:21:24,555
but also from many other countries
and not all, by any means, British.

263
00:21:24,632 --> 00:21:28,844
I mean, there were lots of Czechs
and Poles serving in Bomber Command.

264
00:21:28,929 --> 00:21:32,300
And the spirit of dedication was,
as I say, moving.

265
00:21:32,382 --> 00:21:35,982
But where it really came from
is something I've never understood.

266
00:21:36,064 --> 00:21:38,399
The task in hand inspired the idea.

267
00:21:38,481 --> 00:21:41,318
In that sense,
I think this was a heroic idea.

268
00:21:49,337 --> 00:21:52,207
It's just now and again
the nightmare in the night,

269
00:21:52,291 --> 00:21:54,276
where you just remember somebody who...

270
00:21:54,363 --> 00:21:56,697
You turn around
on the deck of a destroyer

271
00:21:56,818 --> 00:21:59,185
and next minute he wasn't there.

272
00:21:59,273 --> 00:22:01,640
You know, he'd gone, swept away.

273
00:22:09,707 --> 00:22:11,355
Casualties were bad at any time,

274
00:22:11,434 --> 00:22:14,500
but particularly in the last two months
of the war.

275
00:22:14,618 --> 00:22:18,906
There were men you'd been with for five
years. They were not just colleagues.

276
00:22:18,991 --> 00:22:21,282
You were close.
You knew all about them,

277
00:22:21,369 --> 00:22:25,472
and you saw them getting knocked off
in the last few days, particularly sad.

278
00:22:39,936 --> 00:22:45,108
"I am commanded by the Air Council to
state that in view of the lapse of time

279
00:22:45,192 --> 00:22:49,065
and the absence of any further news
regarding your husband,

280
00:22:49,181 --> 00:22:53,011
Acting Squadron Leader
THD Drinkwater DFC,

281
00:22:53,094 --> 00:22:55,811
since the date on which
he was reported missing,

282
00:22:55,895 --> 00:22:59,768
they must regretfully conclude
that he has lost his life

283
00:22:59,884 --> 00:23:04,249
and his death had now been presumed
for official purposes

284
00:23:04,334 --> 00:23:09,506
to have occurred
on the 18th of May, 1944."

285
00:23:16,226 --> 00:23:18,518
I don't think any of us were, you know,

286
00:23:18,605 --> 00:23:20,285
patriotic men in the sense

287
00:23:20,369 --> 00:23:24,548
that we would stand rigidly
to attention and wave flags.

288
00:23:26,737 --> 00:23:31,407
We were just glad to be alive
and, in some way, you know,

289
00:23:31,494 --> 00:23:35,825
we were rather proud that this kind
of army we'd been in for so long,

290
00:23:35,906 --> 00:23:40,194
which had done so many daft things and
where we'd been bellowed and shouted at

291
00:23:40,279 --> 00:23:43,650
and, uh, generally mucked around

292
00:23:43,732 --> 00:23:46,219
and spent thousands of hours
on exercises

293
00:23:46,340 --> 00:23:49,821
and standing about in the rain
and the mud and the snow,

294
00:23:49,908 --> 00:23:54,163
had finally managed to bring off what,

295
00:23:54,243 --> 00:23:58,650
when you look at it in fairly cold
light, was a pretty big adventure.

296
00:23:58,731 --> 00:24:01,644
(band plays
"It's A Long Way To Tipperary")

297
00:24:16,416 --> 00:24:20,747
(Vaughan-Thomas) I couldn't understand
why people went to Cenotaph ceremonies.

298
00:24:20,827 --> 00:24:25,649
I go now, and I'm proud to go, because I
remember the people who didn't come back

299
00:24:25,776 --> 00:24:28,569
and out of it comes
this terrible feeling in my mind

300
00:24:28,653 --> 00:24:32,984
of waste and yet of proud comradeship.

301
00:24:46,069 --> 00:24:49,288
You're lying in a trench
and the shells come down.

302
00:24:49,368 --> 00:24:52,085
You're frightened to death.
The chap next to you says:

303
00:24:52,207 --> 00:24:54,924
"Have a cigarette, mate.
It'll go. It's like rain."

304
00:24:55,046 --> 00:24:57,031
You realise he's a better man than you.

305
00:24:57,117 --> 00:24:59,027
He's given you the strength to go on,

306
00:24:59,112 --> 00:25:01,829
and that is what you remember
out of the war.

307
00:25:01,913 --> 00:25:04,400
It's the comradeship.

308
00:25:27,385 --> 00:25:29,719
(narrator) Remember the comradeship,

309
00:25:29,801 --> 00:25:32,442
and remember the suffering.

310
00:25:35,134 --> 00:25:38,352
Another road, another village -

311
00:25:38,433 --> 00:25:40,418
same orders.

312
00:25:44,954 --> 00:25:46,907
Soldiers.

313
00:25:46,987 --> 00:25:49,857
Some seeing, not feeling,

314
00:25:49,941 --> 00:25:52,352
others enjoying their work.

315
00:26:01,028 --> 00:26:03,940
(Gray) It's one of the
melancholy aspects of human nature.

316
00:26:04,020 --> 00:26:10,272
You notice it with boys who love to
break windows to hear the glass tinkle,

317
00:26:10,350 --> 00:26:14,528
but there are a great many soldiers

318
00:26:14,608 --> 00:26:17,325
who take a great pleasure

319
00:26:17,408 --> 00:26:20,048
in destroying people,

320
00:26:20,170 --> 00:26:22,155
wasting things.

321
00:26:30,413 --> 00:26:36,086
I find this aspect of human nature
not discussed enough,

322
00:26:36,167 --> 00:26:39,800
but it is surely one
of the causes of warfare.

323
00:27:04,363 --> 00:27:06,392
Remember the dead.

324
00:27:08,314 --> 00:27:13,103
In the Second World War she started,
Germany lost nearly five million dead.

325
00:27:13,186 --> 00:27:15,749
Two and a half million
were killed in action,

326
00:27:15,833 --> 00:27:19,161
one and a half million
died in Russian prison camps.

327
00:27:19,247 --> 00:27:23,502
Half a million German civilians
died in Allied bombing raids,

328
00:27:23,582 --> 00:27:26,877
another half million at the war's end.

329
00:27:28,185 --> 00:27:32,364
Remember the dead
and the scarred survivors.

330
00:27:38,006 --> 00:27:40,919
(Frankland) The effect of war
on people who take part in it

331
00:27:40,998 --> 00:27:43,638
is, of course, extremely various.

332
00:27:43,722 --> 00:27:48,282
Lots of people are maimed, completely,
either mentally or physically.

333
00:27:48,364 --> 00:27:53,001
But I suppose the majority of those
who survive, survive apparently intact.

334
00:27:53,082 --> 00:27:54,958
But there must be marked effects,

335
00:27:55,038 --> 00:27:57,722
and in some ways the effects
are very good on people,

336
00:27:57,839 --> 00:28:01,559
because they feel that
they've been able to fulfil themselves.

337
00:28:01,675 --> 00:28:06,192
A lot of people go through life without
ever feeling a sense of fulfilment,

338
00:28:06,278 --> 00:28:09,649
but those who take part
in hectic war operations

339
00:28:09,731 --> 00:28:11,640
usually get a sense of fulfilment,

340
00:28:11,726 --> 00:28:15,326
to some extent, especially if they
believe in what they're trying to do,

341
00:28:15,408 --> 00:28:19,467
which I think in war
people tend to do very readily.

342
00:28:19,552 --> 00:28:23,730
On the other hand, I think there are
very bad effects, obvious bad effects.

343
00:28:23,810 --> 00:28:26,068
Perhaps one of the less obvious ones

344
00:28:26,150 --> 00:28:28,561
is that people who undertake
these operations

345
00:28:28,643 --> 00:28:31,480
I think have a tendency
to feel afterwards

346
00:28:31,559 --> 00:28:35,116
that society owes them
something very special.

347
00:28:35,203 --> 00:28:39,643
And when the war is over, they tend to
go home or back to where they came from

348
00:28:39,730 --> 00:28:42,719
and expect people to look up to them
and to look after them,

349
00:28:42,799 --> 00:28:47,239
which is not what people are going to
do at all, nor what people ought to do.

350
00:28:55,189 --> 00:28:57,175
Remember the mud.

351
00:28:57,261 --> 00:29:00,021
You get used to it, of course.

352
00:29:00,100 --> 00:29:02,511
You get used to anything...

353
00:29:04,895 --> 00:29:07,229
easily hardened to other suffering.

354
00:29:09,652 --> 00:29:12,718
(man) It's a curious thing.
You could equate it to television

355
00:29:12,797 --> 00:29:15,056
and what it's done to us, in many ways.

356
00:29:15,176 --> 00:29:17,390
The realities of the situation

357
00:29:17,478 --> 00:29:20,118
people are still wanting
to sweep under the carpet.

358
00:29:20,201 --> 00:29:23,998
I turned round to my kids during the
napalm bombing in Vietnam and I said:

359
00:29:24,076 --> 00:29:25,373
"Just don't sit there.

360
00:29:25,495 --> 00:29:29,401
"That is a real child, that burning
torch running across a field."

361
00:29:29,485 --> 00:29:32,048
But it means nothing to them.

362
00:29:33,052 --> 00:29:37,919
(narrator) That is a real man scrambling
for a potato, soon to starve to death.

363
00:29:52,156 --> 00:29:54,186
Remember the dead.

364
00:29:55,264 --> 00:29:58,635
In the Second World War,
two and half million Japanese died.

365
00:29:58,716 --> 00:30:01,280
Among them, half a million civilians.

366
00:30:05,314 --> 00:30:07,606
Japanese fighting men
fought to the death.

367
00:30:07,693 --> 00:30:12,908
Nearly 20 Japanese soldiers were killed
for every one wounded or maimed.

368
00:30:14,291 --> 00:30:19,965
We had this orthopod,
or orthopaedic surgeon, from Baltimore,

369
00:30:20,045 --> 00:30:25,752
and, uh... he gave me the definition
that I've used all these many years

370
00:30:25,876 --> 00:30:29,826
of sympathy for the disability.

371
00:30:29,904 --> 00:30:32,359
He said, "Son, you know
where you find sympathy?"

372
00:30:32,436 --> 00:30:36,844
He said, "You find it in the dictionary
between 'Shit' and 'Syphilis'."

373
00:30:36,924 --> 00:30:39,685
And I've remembered that
all these many years.

374
00:30:50,581 --> 00:30:53,221
Remember the civilians
who got in the way.

375
00:30:54,456 --> 00:30:57,554
You could miss seeing them
from a bomber,

376
00:30:57,640 --> 00:31:00,629
but on the ground the soldiers knew.

377
00:31:03,509 --> 00:31:08,331
(Gray) One of the things that seemed to
me to cause most guilt in World War II

378
00:31:08,458 --> 00:31:13,520
was this failure to discriminate between
combatants and non-combatants.

379
00:31:13,598 --> 00:31:18,115
I felt, even then,
as many other soldiers did,

380
00:31:18,202 --> 00:31:23,374
that we were guilty of
indiscriminate terroristic bombing.

381
00:31:23,495 --> 00:31:29,202
Many soldiers had to kill innocent
women and children, non-combatants.

382
00:31:34,352 --> 00:31:37,298
In this sense, there is such a thing
as collective guilt

383
00:31:37,382 --> 00:31:41,747
insofar as this decision
was made at the highest levels

384
00:31:41,832 --> 00:31:44,702
and approved by many people,

385
00:31:44,786 --> 00:31:47,852
both soldiers and... and civilians.

386
00:31:57,637 --> 00:32:00,168
(narrator) Remember the dead.

387
00:32:00,246 --> 00:32:04,686
In the Second World War, America
was not invaded or even bombed,

388
00:32:04,772 --> 00:32:08,220
but the United States
lost 300,000 fighting men,

389
00:32:08,340 --> 00:32:11,897
killed in action far from home.

390
00:32:14,325 --> 00:32:16,659
Well, what I found when I came home,

391
00:32:16,741 --> 00:32:20,069
and I've been rather disgusted
with myself ever since,

392
00:32:20,155 --> 00:32:22,611
was that, uh...

393
00:32:23,646 --> 00:32:26,974
the readjustment to their kind of life,

394
00:32:27,061 --> 00:32:30,464
the life that I led before myself,

395
00:32:30,590 --> 00:32:32,652
was virtually impossible,

396
00:32:32,776 --> 00:32:37,337
because however much you hate
being in a war,

397
00:32:37,457 --> 00:32:40,326
the things that you come back to
seem very, very trivial.

398
00:32:40,410 --> 00:32:44,513
Reporting the council talking about
a new gents' lavatory, things like this,

399
00:32:44,592 --> 00:32:46,850
don't seem to matter at all.

400
00:32:46,932 --> 00:32:49,998
And, of course, these things matter
to the people around you.

401
00:32:50,078 --> 00:32:54,027
And I shut up, I shut myself in,
for about a year.

402
00:32:54,106 --> 00:32:57,280
I must have behaved extremely badly,
I'm well aware of it.

403
00:32:57,366 --> 00:33:00,923
And I've never forgotten it, and
I've never ceased to feel sorry for it,

404
00:33:01,011 --> 00:33:04,917
because it must have made life pretty
intolerable for the people around me.

405
00:33:05,000 --> 00:33:09,026
But it was just that I couldn't...
I couldn't... communicate.

406
00:33:09,105 --> 00:33:11,439
I had lost my sense of communication

407
00:33:11,522 --> 00:33:14,511
with the people that I had known
for all those years,

408
00:33:17,353 --> 00:33:22,874
because I had begun to understand
an entirely new breed of people

409
00:33:22,953 --> 00:33:26,706
who were all thrown together, um...

410
00:33:26,790 --> 00:33:28,622
in a common thing. I think that was it.

411
00:33:33,158 --> 00:33:36,299
(narrator) More roads to more villages.

412
00:33:36,380 --> 00:33:38,868
More orders to obey.

413
00:33:43,400 --> 00:33:47,197
"Corporal, take two men
and clear the village."

414
00:33:47,275 --> 00:33:50,417
"Leave the men behind for now."

415
00:33:50,535 --> 00:33:53,448
"Move the women and children."

416
00:33:53,528 --> 00:33:58,121
"Corporal, hurry the goodbyes up,
will you?"

417
00:34:43,973 --> 00:34:47,268
(Gray) I think it has taught me,
all the rest of my life,

418
00:34:47,349 --> 00:34:52,335
that there is a line
which a man dare not cross,

419
00:34:52,413 --> 00:34:58,163
a line which separates
the reasonably just and human

420
00:34:58,244 --> 00:35:01,004
from the mere functionary.

421
00:35:26,900 --> 00:35:31,995
(narrator) The corporal and the soldiers
have wives and children too.

422
00:35:49,725 --> 00:35:52,943
Remember the Russian dead.

423
00:35:53,024 --> 00:35:56,395
In the Second World War, the
Soviet Union, already bled by Stalin,

424
00:35:56,477 --> 00:35:59,269
lost... 20 million dead.

425
00:35:59,354 --> 00:36:02,495
Millions in action on Russian soil -

426
00:36:02,614 --> 00:36:04,949
the bloody defeats of '41 and '42,

427
00:36:05,031 --> 00:36:08,402
the bloody victories of '43 and '45.

428
00:36:10,862 --> 00:36:13,655
And millions of prisoners of war
died in German hands,

429
00:36:13,739 --> 00:36:17,569
deprived of food, clothing, shelter.

430
00:36:17,652 --> 00:36:21,177
For these prisoners, no escape.

431
00:36:21,297 --> 00:36:23,206
About a million were shot.

432
00:36:23,291 --> 00:36:27,852
And millions of Russian civilians
died from shooting, bombing, shelling,

433
00:36:27,933 --> 00:36:32,298
forced winter marches,
engineered starvation.

434
00:36:32,421 --> 00:36:34,636
20th-century total war.

435
00:36:55,170 --> 00:36:57,352
Remember the Russian dead...

436
00:36:58,354 --> 00:37:00,383
the 20 million.

437
00:37:10,936 --> 00:37:13,806
Soldiers, remember the dead.

438
00:37:14,888 --> 00:37:16,917
Remember all the others.

439
00:37:19,031 --> 00:37:24,508
1 5 million Chinese died in the
Second World War, most from starvation.

440
00:37:24,593 --> 00:37:28,881
And in occupied Europe, more than
a million and a half Yugoslavs died

441
00:37:28,966 --> 00:37:32,032
for a country
that never stopped fighting.

442
00:37:32,112 --> 00:37:37,251
And three million Poles
and more than five million Jews.

443
00:37:37,329 --> 00:37:41,770
And over half a million Frenchmen
and women, many in the Resistance.

444
00:37:41,894 --> 00:37:47,677
And brave men and women in Norway
and Holland and Denmark and Belgium.

445
00:37:47,764 --> 00:37:50,327
And hundreds of thousands
in Czechoslovakia,

446
00:37:50,411 --> 00:37:53,585
Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary.

447
00:37:53,710 --> 00:37:56,165
And over 300,000 Greeks.

448
00:37:56,241 --> 00:37:57,889
And half a million Italians

449
00:37:57,968 --> 00:38:02,103
in a country that was fought over
and fought on both sides.

450
00:38:02,188 --> 00:38:06,399
And Spaniards in Russia
and Indians in Burma.

451
00:38:06,484 --> 00:38:09,201
Remember them all.

452
00:38:09,284 --> 00:38:12,612
55 million dead.

453
00:38:17,340 --> 00:38:21,290
"I did not know death
had undone so many."

454
00:38:23,286 --> 00:38:25,272
Mothers and daughters,

455
00:38:25,358 --> 00:38:27,889
fathers and sons.

456
00:38:56,623 --> 00:39:00,180
The young are too young to remember,

457
00:39:00,267 --> 00:39:03,027
perhaps too young to understand.

458
00:39:04,832 --> 00:39:09,240
(Frankland) One of the great effects
of war upon people who take part in it

459
00:39:09,320 --> 00:39:11,851
is the extent to which it tends
to cut them off

460
00:39:11,929 --> 00:39:15,835
from both their elders
and their own children.

461
00:39:15,919 --> 00:39:19,322
And, um, the same thing applies,
in a different way,

462
00:39:19,409 --> 00:39:21,319
as between a father and a son.

463
00:39:21,404 --> 00:39:26,041
I mean, I feel this myself
in my own relationship with my parents

464
00:39:26,123 --> 00:39:28,806
at the time of the war
and with my children today,

465
00:39:28,885 --> 00:39:33,216
that, in a sense,
they neither can nor wish to envisage

466
00:39:33,335 --> 00:39:35,790
the circumstances
in which we lived in the war.

467
00:39:35,867 --> 00:39:40,613
And we have a rather arrogant feeling
that they ought to wish to understand

468
00:39:40,700 --> 00:39:43,570
these dreadful things that happened,
but they don't.

469
00:39:43,654 --> 00:39:47,178
And this cuts one off both from
the older and the younger generation.

470
00:39:47,260 --> 00:39:50,282
People are, in any case,
cut off from these generations.

471
00:39:50,367 --> 00:39:53,586
There is a generation gap
under any circumstances,

472
00:39:53,666 --> 00:39:57,191
but I think war,
as in so many other aspects of life,

473
00:39:57,272 --> 00:40:00,676
tends to emphasise
those sort of considerations,

474
00:40:00,763 --> 00:40:05,510
and very much so in creating
and nourishing a generation gap.

475
00:40:05,597 --> 00:40:07,582
(fairground music)

476
00:40:20,174 --> 00:40:22,159
(narrator) Nuremberg.

477
00:40:22,860 --> 00:40:27,998
Here on this ground, Adolf Hitler
spoke to the National Socialist Party

478
00:40:28,077 --> 00:40:30,946
and to the German nation, 40 years ago.

479
00:40:37,437 --> 00:40:40,732
40 years on, West Germany's chancellor,

480
00:40:40,813 --> 00:40:44,642
twice elected by popular vote,
is Willy Brandt.

481
00:40:46,183 --> 00:40:49,664
Brandt was a traitor
to Hitler's Germany.

482
00:40:49,751 --> 00:40:52,970
He fought in the Norwegian Resistance.

483
00:40:53,932 --> 00:40:57,565
In Warsaw, as in Jerusalem,

484
00:40:57,653 --> 00:40:59,606
he remembers the dead.

485
00:41:04,712 --> 00:41:07,200
Of all Germans alive today,

486
00:41:07,282 --> 00:41:11,767
half were not born
when the Second World War began.

487
00:41:17,295 --> 00:41:19,978
(Drinkwater)
We have things to remember him by.

488
00:41:20,095 --> 00:41:23,499
We've got one here
from Buckingham Palace.

489
00:41:23,586 --> 00:41:29,260
"The Queen and I offer you our heartfelt
sympathy in your great sorrow."

490
00:41:29,340 --> 00:41:33,595
"We pray that your country's gratitude
for a life so nobly given

491
00:41:33,675 --> 00:41:38,389
in its service may bring you
some measure of consolation."

492
00:41:47,524 --> 00:41:51,048
(man reads roll of honour) 1939-45.

493
00:41:51,130 --> 00:41:54,654
E Bickerstone, J Curtis,

494
00:41:54,774 --> 00:41:58,331
E Fraser, K Humphrey,

495
00:41:58,457 --> 00:42:01,752
G Nixon, A Schofield,

496
00:42:01,832 --> 00:42:05,509
L Chandler, A Flower,

497
00:42:05,592 --> 00:42:09,192
S Horan, C Nixon...

498
00:42:16,563 --> 00:42:18,778
(bugle plays the Last Post)

499
00:43:11,996 --> 00:43:14,985
(narrator) They were very young.

500
00:43:15,065 --> 00:43:17,825
They did not ask to die as heroes.

501
00:43:21,394 --> 00:43:25,376
They would rather have lived
for those that loved them,

502
00:43:25,461 --> 00:43:27,675
those they loved.

503
00:43:56,841 --> 00:44:00,288
(K Drinkwater) And this was the last
letter he ever wrote to his wife...

504
00:44:00,370 --> 00:44:03,588
"Darling, let me tell you again
I love you."

505
00:44:03,669 --> 00:44:09,572
"This past weekend has made me
so pleased that you are my wife

506
00:44:09,653 --> 00:44:12,413
because I am so in love with you

507
00:44:12,492 --> 00:44:15,863
and I know I shall love you
for the rest of my life."

508
00:44:15,945 --> 00:44:19,425
"And darling, thank you for loving me."

509
00:44:19,512 --> 00:44:23,920
"My sweet, I am sure you have
got something belonging to me

510
00:44:24,001 --> 00:44:28,594
because I am always so happy
when I am with you,

511
00:44:28,681 --> 00:44:33,547
but as soon as we are apart,
I just go as flat as can be."

512
00:44:33,629 --> 00:44:38,801
"I am like a man with no brain,
but only a memory for you."

513
00:44:38,885 --> 00:44:41,874
"Oh, darling, it is terrible."

514
00:44:41,954 --> 00:44:45,172
"Please don't think
I am sloppy or stupid,

515
00:44:45,253 --> 00:44:49,202
though I may be,
but I just can't get over it."

516
00:44:49,281 --> 00:44:52,227
"Perhaps I am a bit tired tonight,

517
00:44:52,350 --> 00:44:55,753
and after a night's rest
I shall be better

518
00:44:55,841 --> 00:44:59,637
and able to write you a nice letter."

519
00:44:59,715 --> 00:45:02,585
"Anyway, I'll see."

520
00:45:02,669 --> 00:45:07,263
"I'm afraid, darling, my operational
flying days are nearly over."

521
00:45:07,349 --> 00:45:11,560
"The wing commander
has told me twice already this evening

522
00:45:11,646 --> 00:45:15,442
that I can't go on so many shows
in future,

523
00:45:15,520 --> 00:45:18,390
and he is very concerned about it."

524
00:45:18,512 --> 00:45:22,843
"He said, 'Out of fairness
to you and your wife,

525
00:45:22,924 --> 00:45:29,405
I don't intend for you to stay on ops
much longer, even if you want to.'"

526
00:45:29,484 --> 00:45:33,117
"You see, there was something
in what I said."

527
00:45:33,205 --> 00:45:35,922
"But, hell,
I am going to miss this life."

528
00:45:36,005 --> 00:45:38,340
"I have had over three years of it

529
00:45:38,422 --> 00:45:42,055
and the trouble is now
that I know nothing else."

530
00:45:43,831 --> 00:45:47,159
"My sweet, I must off to bed now."

531
00:45:47,245 --> 00:45:50,311
"I can hardly see what I'm writing."

532
00:45:50,429 --> 00:45:53,571
"I love you, my own precious darling,

533
00:45:53,652 --> 00:45:57,209
more than anything else in this world."

534
00:45:57,334 --> 00:45:59,625
"Yours forever, Tom."

535
00:46:43,023 --> 00:46:46,580
(narrator)
At the village of Oradour-sur-Glane,

536
00:46:46,667 --> 00:46:49,034
the day the soldiers came,

537
00:46:49,122 --> 00:46:54,065
They killed more than
600 men, women and children.

538
00:46:57,140 --> 00:46:59,169
Remember.