RN Documentary: Soldiering On

Summary:

A soldier’s experience of battle.

Website:

http://www.rnw.nl/special/en/html/040504doc.html

Timely on:

May 01: Timed for Memorial/Armistice/D-Day Landings, etc.

Tones:

Contemplative, Delicate, Disturbing

Language:

English

Description:

"Throughout the history of warfare technology changes rapidly. In the space of twenty years you can have a revolution in technology but the human emotions of those involved in a battle remain the same. Earliest surviving accounts can identify the same underlying emotions as those who fought in Vietnam. Fear and euphoria . . . they don't change."
 
Warfare is used by nations as a way to control and determine events. Leaders and demagogues have used it since the birth of civilisation to enhance their powers and destroy others. It causes death, destruction and mayhem on an almost unimaginable scale and yet it is resorted to so frequently to resolve disputes that it has become almost second nature to the human species.

But what of the soldiers who must fight those wars? Their individual stories are all too easily forgotten in the greater picture and the distanced recounting of historical events. Millions of men have lost their lives and endured appalling hardships in battle. In ‘Soldiering On’ two veterans of the Second World War tell their stories. Accounts which can be seen as a history of the common soldier through the ages.

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