HENRY DEEDES'S BLOG
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19 September 2011 11:24 AM
LAST NIGHT'S curtain raiser to the eagerly awaited second series of Downton Abbey contained a poignant exchange between Matthew Crawley, now an army officer on leave from the Somme, and Lady Mary.
‘What’s it like?’ asks Mary. ‘The thing is,' replies Matthew, ‘I just can’t talk about it.’
Such was the horror of life on the front line. But can the nightmare of the trenches ever truly be captured on screen?
With our cosy living standards these days, one near impossible task facing film makers is that actors cannot properly convey the poor diet and malnourishment which troops suffered.
I'm not sure how I would look after two years on a revolting diet of bully beef and dog biscuits, but I doubt it would be as chiselled and handsome as Dan Stevens, pictured,who plays Crawley.
Life expectancy for junior officers was around six weeks. If the bullets didn’t kill you, then disease spread by the foul rats which became the soldiers’ co-habitants almost certainly would.
Urgh, the rats. In Juliet Nicholson’s excellent book ‘The Great Silence’ these rats grew the size of otters from gorging on human flesh. For some reason, they developed a reaction to human flesh which caused their faces to go white and swell up. She writes:
‘Luminous in the darkness of the bottom of the muddy trench, these ghostly creatures would move swiftly towards sleeping men, waking them with a start as they dragged their tails across the men’s faces, constantly searching for another meal.’
I enjoyed the ending of last night’s episode, where Downton’s own vermin-like creature, former footman Thomas, raises his hand up in to no-man’s land to be shot, such is his desperation to be sent home. Falling to the floor and clutching his bleeding mitt, he thanks God for his (he hopes) good fortune despite his agony.
Downton’s Somme is but a microcosm on the true horror of the trenches. All the same, I look forward to returning to them over the weeks ahead.
‘What’s it like?’ asks Mary. ‘The thing is,' replies Matthew, ‘I just can’t talk about it.’
Such was the horror of life on the front line. But can the nightmare of the trenches ever truly be captured on screen? With our cosy living standards these days, one near impossible task facing film makers is that actors cannot properly convey the poor diet and malnourishment which troops suffered.
I'm not sure how I would look after two years on a revolting diet of bully beef and dog biscuits, but I doubt it would be as chiselled and handsome as Dan Stevens, pictured,who plays Crawley.
Life expectancy for junior officers was around six weeks. If the bullets didn’t kill you, then disease spread by the foul rats which became the soldiers’ co-habitants almost certainly would.
Urgh, the rats. In Juliet Nicholson’s excellent book ‘The Great Silence’ these rats grew the size of otters from gorging on human flesh. For some reason, they developed a reaction to human flesh which caused their faces to go white and swell up. She writes:
‘Luminous in the darkness of the bottom of the muddy trench, these ghostly creatures would move swiftly towards sleeping men, waking them with a start as they dragged their tails across the men’s faces, constantly searching for another meal.’
I enjoyed the ending of last night’s episode, where Downton’s own vermin-like creature, former footman Thomas, raises his hand up in to no-man’s land to be shot, such is his desperation to be sent home. Falling to the floor and clutching his bleeding mitt, he thanks God for his (he hopes) good fortune despite his agony. Downton’s Somme is but a microcosm on the true horror of the trenches. All the same, I look forward to returning to them over the weeks ahead.
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