MODERN FAMILY

OUR children were safely tucked up in bed when we sat down on Sunday night to watch Peter Jackson’s ground-breaking documentary about life on the frontline during World War One.

We had already been struck by some of the preview images from the Imperial War Museum’s archive of black-and-white film that the Lord of the Rings director took four years to painstakingly turn into colour.

In the lead-up to the 100th anniversary of the war ending, we had heard the heartbreaking stories, both locally and nationally, of families whose loved ones had made the ultimate sacrifice. The families who had lost as many as three sons, the youngsters who had been determined to sign up to fight for their country, but never got to return home to their grieving families.

But we hadn’t been prepared for how much those black-and-white images brought into colour would truly hit home the horror and the futility of it all.

How the accompanying commentary from more than 120 World War I veterans who had been recorded in the 1960s and ’70s made it all the more real.

Jackson talked about reaching through the fog of time and pulling the men into the modern world and bringing them into focus, rather than only seeing them as Charlie Chaplin-type speeded-up figures in the vintage archive films.

The soldiers talked about the smell of death and decaying corpses, the rats that would stalk the trenches and feast on the dead bodies, the never-ending sound of the guns and cannons around them.

Then there were the images of deadly wounds that the fallen suffered, the gangrene and trenchfoot that many suffered from, and the vast muddy battlefield where many of the soldiers drowned.

Upstairs, all warm and cosy in his bed dreaming about his next warm meal, our elder son was only a few months younger than many of the soldiers who were signing up 100 years ago.

One of the veterans told how many 15-year-olds trying to sign up were told to go outside, have a couple of birthdays and then come straight back in.

There were no requests for shoes that have been endorsed by some rapper, during the war it didn’t matter if you were a size seven or 11, it was a case of wearing army-supplied boots, which meant it was one size fits all.

As one viewer said: “I don’t know whether to feel more sorry for those who died, or those who survived and had to live with the memory of it.”

As the final credits rolled, we found ourselves once again realising just how lucky we and our children are.

They Shall Not Grow Old is a familiar tale, but loses none of its poignancy or irony in the retelling.

And it is a story, a reality, that needed to be told again as our children continue to sleep safely in peace in their beds.