1917: trenches, trench rats, and modern war w/ Josh

The movie

It was really good! One-shot gimmicks of the past and appreciating the technical complexity of what was done here.

People

The demographic makeup of the British military. Young average infantryman age. “Pals battalions” and serving alongside your friends.

The Great War

The scale of WWI versus what came before. Rising contemporary appreciation for the study of this conflict. How much was the war a “modern war” and how much did it help usher in the modern world? Horses and tanks.

Trench warfare

The shovel as a tool of war for millenia. How do we wind up with stalemate trench warfare? A hint of trench warfare in the American Civil War. Really impressive trench engineering. Tanks, tech, strategy, and the eventual end of trench warfare. Rats - yuck! Rats in the trenches.

Technology

Barbed wire. Mechanized warfare. Horses in WWI and WWII. Tanks! Really slow and not very great tanks. Radio reliability. Hard-line comms. Sending messages by foot, radio, or... dropping it out of a plane? Medical infrastructure and what modern medicine owes to WWI.

1. A Prussian Landwehrmann tanning rat skins in a dugout, WWI: Reddit
2. Josh's show's on LSG Media: The X-Files Podcast (always)Science Fiction Film Podcast (sometimes)
3. Gallipoli: Prime VideoiTunes
4. They Shall Not Grow Old: iTunesAmazonYouTube
5. They Shall Not Grow Old: film restoration, persistance of vision, and vfx: Decipher SciFi

Support the show!