RDQ - greatest documentary/series?

Cloning Stormtroopers produced an army of uniform combatants that acted as a a cohesive unit and in large set piece battles triumphed over Rebel forces. Once the struggle descended into asymmetrical warfare the Empire realised that it needed to introduce an element of individuality, troopers who could think outside the box, and match their opponents so they moved to an army of orphans and forced conscripts, raised to be Stormtroopers. 

Of course. That makes absolute sense.

More of a Trekkie but I actually prefer the modern take on the series. No idea if the rumour of more coming is evidence but I hope it happens.

I was talking about factual programming!

I watched the whole series of 'The Vietnam War' on Netflix.
It was very good and in depth and came across as unbiased while reviewing the reasons the Yanks got involved and stayed in.
The final episode was hard to watch in places as they were talking to veterans and people who had lost family.
The Vietnamese communists they had interviewed throughout were quite blunt about the disappointment of the aftermath too.

One thing to remember about WW1 soldiers was that even compared to their WW2 counterparts their life at home was such utter shite that being housed, fed and watered in the trenches was in many cases better than whatever hovel they lived in at home. The fighting and seeing gore stuff was the bit that tempered that but then there was free medical care for horrible injuries, which if happened in a mine or factory was not as readily available. Let us not forget that the poets and diary keepers that recorded much of our common knowledge of WW1 had been privileged in their home life to the extent that they could read and write - one suspects that many from the rat holes of the UK weren't in a mad rush to go back.

You have to remember that in WW1 actual fighting the enemy was the exception, not the norm. British soldiers were rotated regularly, spent about 5-8 days at the front before dropping back into the reserve trenches for  few days and then back for R&R for a couple of weeks. They'd then move back to the reserve trenches for a few days before returning to the front to take over from battalions moving back. This was necessary to preserve moral and maintain fighting fitness. 

If you were a miner from the North East, someone who had probably never been no more than 25-50 miles from home and spent 6 days a week lying on your side in an 18" seam with a pickaxe, being paid on what you actually dug out, then army life, rations, and camaraderie of fighting for a common cause would seem not too bad. It's maybe why Newcastle raised more battalions than any other city outside London (19 of over 1000 men each). Your chances of becoming a casualty (killed, missing or wounded) were 10% each year, so 90% returned home relatively unscathed. I say relatively as I had relatives that suffered the rest of their lives with what we would now call PTSD. A walk around any graveyard near here will yield reminders of pit disasters that occurred with monotonous regularity through the early part of the 20th century. 

I don't think anyone denies that battles like Wipers [sic] were terrible but whilst there were 130,000 allied casualties at the first battle there were over five million men that weren't killed or injured but still being fed, clothed and housed over the same time period.

As to miners in WW1: there were a lot of them because (a) they could dig and (b) they "didn't mind" (or were used to) crawling through a tunnel and laying explosives under the enemy lines.

I'd rather be out of work than gassed, shelled etc!

To be honest, the notion of people looking forward to it and appreciating what they were going to be gaining is exactly the mindset described in new arrivals at the front. It's marked how often the series comments on how shocked they were by the state of those who'd been there a while. As the series had just covered that again (at Passchendaele they lost 3,000 a day in fatalities alone) and given testimony of two soldiers who'd got to the end of their ability to cope, to then throw in the line about 'best days of your lives' seemed improbable, to say the least. Come to think of it, they'd also done desertion, courts martial and shooting those who wouldn't advance too.

Many lines from that series have sprung to mind whilst watching the TGW!

200 Generals were killed or wounded in WW1, with most visiting their troops every day.

10 Myths about WW1 debunked:


www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25776836

The last time I watched Star Wars was on VHS when I was a kid! Just started watching them now on Disney+ to see what the fuss is about. Don't think I've seen The World At War either.