#This goddam letter has been haunting me for the past two days

[luckyreds]

"I wrote to Johnny Martin, He wasn't there when I got hit, and I wanted to tell him what happened, tell him I was alive, and to take care of the men. He wrote me back January 12 1945."

Dear Bill,

I received your letter today … Anything you asked me in the letter I’ll do. You know that. As far as what went on after you left, you’ve probably read it in the papers … it was plenty rough … and I’ll tell you later about who got it and who didn’t. Well, Bill … I’m going to see you whether it be soon or a long time, but I’m going to see you no matter what … Bill, when I got your letter, I was at the Co. CP. Of course, everyone was interested to hear from you. Well they said read it out loud. Well, the Co. and the rest of the company headquarters were there. I got halfway through and started to cry in front of all the guys. I just had to take off, Bill. Boy, I never felt so hollow inside in all my life. From now on when you write, please … leave anything about your leg out of my letters. Just do it as a favor for me. I guess I’m not near as good a man as I thought I was. Boy, for the first time, I never had any control of myself. When I heard you were hurt, I got all the poop I could, but you know where we were, and I couldn’t possibly get to see you. All the guys told me how you took it cooler than anybody yet. Laying there shooting the shit when you were hit like that. Some guys shit when they get nicked with a bullet and you get hit like that and just shoot the shit. Well, I just want to tell you right now, you’re so much better of a man than I am it isn’t even funny. I don't mean only in combat either. You’re better than any officer or EM I’ve ever seen or ever will, You’re the first guy whom I’ve ever met I could hit it with and it’s just because you’re such a swell guy … For God’s sake, Bill, don’t let it get you down … I know you’re the kind of guy who will see it through to the end … I expect to have a lot of fun when we get back to the States. Buddy, we’ll rip her apart when I get back. When I go to bed tonight, I am going to pray that I get a furlough to England. I hear they are going to send them out … Well I suppose you want to know what changes there are in the battalion. Our CO is now Lieutenant Speirs from D Company. I think he’s the best one we’ve had yet. There is a new officer in charge of 2nd Platoon. Welsh is S-3 and we have a new S-2 officer. Nixon is Regiment S-3 … I’ll close now, and if I don’t get a couple of letters a week from you, I’ll be disappointed … So Long for now.

Your pal, ‘Jason’ Martin

-Excerpt from Brothers in Battle, Best of friends.

[softschofield]

i’m so perpetually frustrated with the audience members who criticise 1917 for having “no backstory or development for the characters”

like, yes, it’s subtle. because they’re friends and friends don’t talk to each other like “oh, yes, remember all these details of my life i’m conveniently and clearly reiterating for an omniscient third party?” but fuck dude, if you pay attention and know basic facts about war or do your goddam research, there is SO MUCH DETAIL TO THEIR BACKSTORIES

like, just from one TINY DETAIL, you get so much: schofield’s wounded stripe on the left sleeve of his uniform. to get a wounded stripe in world war 1, you had to be officially listed in dispatches as being a CASUALTY, not just having been in a field hospital, meaning the wound was BAD. but, wait, what kind of wound could be so well-hidden and subtle? it could be a gunshot wound or trenchfoot, but there were also two categories that could earn a soldier the wounded stripe: gas, or shellshock. it’s therefore entirely possible that he was suffering from trauma rather than a physical wound before he met blake. given that 60,000 rounds of field artillery and 45,000 rounds of heavy artillery were fired in the first DAY of fighting, and one german described the experience of the shelling as “the earth shook, the sky seemed like a boiling cauldron [...] the ability to think logically, and the feeling of gravity, both seemed to have been removed”, shellshock is a very plausible diagnosis.

so, we know he fought in the somme, and we know which battle he fought, meaning he had been at the front for at the very LEAST 7 months. SEVEN MONTHS. that is a LONG time to be in the trenches, and it is a STAGGERING amount of time to have withstood the horror and still come out of it soft, gentle, and compassionate - think on THAT when y’all say schofield is a flat character. think about what kind of a person could kill and see people killed and live in the constant, crushing, claustrophobic terror and boredom and nothing of the trenches for most likely LONGER than that and stay kind and quiet. NEED i say any the fuck more, NEXT

just from that, we then know that blake did NOT fight in the somme, meaning he arrived at the front some time after november 1916. and, judging by his excited and fearful reaction to the front line trench before a predicted push, there’s the distinct possibility he had never seen a battle, meaning his arrival can be placed after the 18th of december 1916 and that he was still deeply innocent.

if he arrived in december and the film begins on the 6th of april, that ALSO means that they had known each other at the most for just over 3 months, very possibly less, and that they had formed a very close bond in that time.

which brings me to my next point: where are their other friends? all the other soldiers are shown to have close-knit groups, so where are theirs? why is it only them? why are they even friends in the first place? why is blake, a new recruit who had only just arrived, already the same rank as a veteran who had been there for very possibly up to or more than a year? why is a veteran hanging around with a chattery, bushy-tailed, never-seen-battle replacement? why isn’t he hanging out with his own cohort of soldiers who has been there the same amount of time as him and could much more easily relate to his trauma and exhaustion? WHY is a middle-class-sounding guy even hanging around with a lower-class farmboy in the first place?

the most plausible answer? all of schofield’s friends he went through training with are dead - probably in the somme - and he’s purposefully isolated himself to grieve with his survivor’s guilt. he was most likely wounded, lonely, and agonisingly depressed for months until a cheerful replacement arrived at the front and befriended him. and THAT’S where schofield’s fanatic devotion to him comes from, and THAT’S what “he saved my life” means, more than in the literal sense - he was lost, and broken, and numb, and blake saved him.

furthermore, because boy have i got more, blake’s backstory, in case someone out there has seen this film and still wants to hit me with that fucking “we know nothing about these characters”: we know he has an older brother, we know he has a female dog called myrtle, we know they live with their mum in a farm in the countryside with a cherry orchard, and we know his father isn’t in the picture and that he most likely hasn’t been for a long, long time, judging by blake’s lack of bitterness and daddy issues, his closeness with his mother, and the fact he isn’t in blake’s family photo. we know, from interviews, that he enlisted as soon as he came of age because his brother was an officer and he idolised him, and we know he was barely this side of 18.

another thing? the story about wilko. blake knows stories about men schofield has almost certainly known for far longer - but he didn’t interact and wasn’t told, and blake did, and he was more familiar with all of them and had stories to tell that schofield would have known if he’d been sitting in the same circle when the gossip was told. how’s THAT for subtle characterisation, chumps.

and if you just think about it, there’s so much depth to blake’s overly trusting nature - because he’s still naive, he’s still innocent, he’s still young. schofield tucks the things most special or necessary away in his inside pocket, where’s it most safe, because he’s learned lessons the hard way; blake puts them carelessly in his trouser pockets where they could fall out. schofield keeps his rifle with him even as he’s going to fetch water for the german pilot; blake discards his rifle and leaves himself vulnerable. if you just LOOK, it’s all there!

FURTHERMORE, we know schofield is in his early 20s and older than blake. we know he has a much more refined accent, and we know from interviews that he’s from cookham, berkshire. we know he has two daughters and a wife (or a sister and nieces, it’s open to interpretation, go to town), we know he suffers from shellshock, we know he most likely couldn’t face going home on his last leave and instead stayed in france and gave his medal away to a french captain, we know the subject of home is deeply triggering for him, we know he refuses to talk about his daughters, we know that his family haunts him as much as he longs for it, and we know that he didn’t receive any mail from his wife - interesting, considering blake received a letter just telling him his dog was having puppies.

and don’t even get me started on the “lack of character development”. watch me scream here about that.

also, some more backstory because now i’m on a fucking roll: lance corporals were typically the second-in-commands or heads of sections, of which there were 4 within each platoon, each comprising 12 soldiers, it's likely blake and schofield were in command of different sections in the same platoon. where does that come into play? well, scho seemed to slip very easily into a position of authority when the convoy got stuck in the mud, didn’t he? MOVING ON.

more? i have more. another little tidbit: lieutenant leslie asks schofield and blake if they are his relief, and then asks when the fuck they’re getting there when they say they aren’t. he and his men are exhausted and it was said by another soldier that “they had been blown to hell a few nights ago” - they’ve clearly been at the front a long time, which, again, is interesting, considering front line soldiers were typically rotated back into reserve after 8 days. clearly, it’s been a lot longer than that, meaning order and routine have completely broken down and a new type of despair, hopelessness, and mess has taken root. there, more backstory again. 

“oh, it’s just a shitty saving private ryan” “oh, it’s definitely no all quiet on the western front”. FIRST OF ALL, it fucking IS all quiet on the western front, have you literally even read it? baumer goes to such lengths to hardly ever use the word enemy because he doesn’t view the soldiers in the other trenches as bad, just as other innocents swept up in a war that no one should be fighting. he spends a whole chapter sobbing over the only man he’s ever killed in close combat. it’s a hundred times slower than 1917 and it hasn’t even GOT a plot. what the FUCK are you talking about?

oh, and it’s just saving private ryan? show me WHERE. a bunch of soldiers have to go into enemy territory to rescue a soldier because all his brothers have been killed in action and his family wants him home. two soldiers are sent into enemy territory with a letter to stop an attack. i am LITERALLY struggling to think of any more similarities than that and even THOSE are fucking reaching.

also, it’s literally a different war. who are you and why are you saying these things to me i am BEGGING you to please use your fucking head for just a few seconds and actually THINK

“it was so convenient that the river just happened to take him to the devons” ??? “the river. it goes there” did you just entirely miss everything lauri told him? the river quite literally flows exactly past where he is supposed to go, that’s the entire POINT, that’s WHY he jumped into it, because he KNEW it would take him there, oh my GOD

“if the convoy was going exactly where he needed to go, why didn’t erinmore tell him to meet it?” i know it might be a shocking concept, but even a general may not have known exactly the route a convoy of trucks was going to take, especially in the confused wasteland the germans had left behind in their retreat. in fact, he might not have known about the convoy at all if they were coming from a different sector of the front - WHICH, guess what, THEY WERE. captain smith mentioned they crossed no man’s land just outside bapaume, which was much further south, in the old somme battlefields. scho and blake’s trench was somewhere near boyelles, 11km north of bapaume. 

“it’s unbelievable that scho would just sit quietly and relax in the convoy truck, and then get out to give orders and take command, after what he’d just been through - and, plus, he would have gotten to écoust quicker if he’d just walked” there’s this thing called trauma. shock. dissociating. compartmentalisation. just shutting down in the face of too much grief when you don’t have the time nor capacity to let yourself feel it, acknowledge it, register it. in the script, scho is said to “almost disappear into the noise of the men.” and, honestly, the emotional illusion of regaining a scrap of control over a situation he was utterly out of control of would have been enough to prompt him to get out and give orders - but as it is that wasn’t the only thing driving him: he was desperate, and an NCO, and he needed to go. AND “he would have gotten there quicker if he’d walked”?? ???????? first of all, he didn’t know that? second of all, scho said it would take them nine hours AT THE MOST to get there and, given the fact they weren’t attacking until dawn and it was most likely morning when he and blake set off, he wasn’t in a TERRIBLE rush. THIRD of all, it was a direct order from a captain. FOURTH OF ALL, do you really think he felt like walking all that way when a truck was RIGHT THERE?

“there are too many coincidences” films are built on coincidences. they are conveniently put with a character who will end up being their soulmate at the end of it all. they conveniently uncover information that would take people in real life months to find. coincidences drive stories - one of the greatest tools of screenwriting? “don’t write what would happen, write what could happen.” what could happen is that scho finds a teenage girl and an orphaned baby sheltering in a ruined town - in a war. what could happen is that a convoy of trucks heading north towards the battle of arras logically uses the road running alongside a farmhouse. what could happen is that scho jumps into a river that he knows runs east. i just don’t understand what you’re trying to say

“oooohh for soldiers on a life-or-death mission to save one of their brothers, they sure do take their time to sight-see” they’ve seen absolutely fucking nothing but the walls of a trench and the reserve camp for months. also, it’s pretty much just common sense to clear out a building before you turn your back on it and keep walking. also, they had 8 hours, scho ended up getting there in under two hours, and blake is allowed to feel more than one emotion at a time and to be excited about exploring new places, ESPECIALLY when it’s almost certain that neither he nor schofield had ever even been out of england. war or not, the french countryside was still beautiful and blake is allowed to appreciate that. next question 

“how was there a milk pail full of milk if there was no one around to milk the cow” german soldiers were stationed in the farmhouse before they got the order to move out. “they’re not long gone.” they left an hour before hand, someone probably milked the cow before they knew they were leaving. you don’t have to read the script to have a functioning braincell 

“unbelievable that they weren’t killed by the tripwire explosion” it detonated in the tunnels, not in the bunker. they wanted to collapse the escape routes first and foremost. please, i am begging you, use your head

“why did they pull an enemy out of the plane” basic human decency. i cannot believe i have to explain this concept. soldiers in the first world war were especially conscious of the humanity of the men in the other trench. you say blake had no character and then get mad when he’s shown to be so kind and selfless that he’ll burn himself rescuing a german. i don’t know what you want from me, get out of my kitchen 

“schofield was an idiot for stopping to interact with lauri and the baby” he was concussed. he knew there was somewhere he had to be but he didn’t remember what or where until he heard the church bells. also, for people who criticise the “lack of character development and backstory”, ya hate to see character building moments. it clearly wasn’t the first time he’s recited that poem to a baby. make the connection dipshits 

“the germans shot like fucking stormtroopers, how did they not hit him?” point one: one of them was blind drunk. when muller is ranting while scho is strangling baumer, he says that maybe they should head back and that maybe they won’t realise they’ve been missing. the implication? either they’ve gone AWOL, or they’re stragglers from the retreat back to the new line. either way, at least one, and very possibly all of them are off their fucking faces, considering the one by the burning church tripped over his own goddamn feet chasing scho. point two: not in a thousand years would they have expected a lone english soldier to just pop up out of nowhere in ecoust. it was so unexpected that you really can’t blame them for being flustered and confused.

“how the FUCK did the letter survive the river in one piece?” he put it in his tin. there’s literally an entire 30 seconds of the convoy scene just devoted to showing scho tucking it in there. i don’t understand how i have to say this

“it’s too gruesome” aside from the hand in the corpse and the dead horses, where? where? also, it’s the first world war. i can’t believe what i’m hearing. who are you people

“it’s not exciting enough, it’s slow, it’s dull” IT’S SUPPOSED TO SHOW THE CONSEQUENCES AND AFTERMATH OF WAR INSTED OF THE SHALLOW EXCITEMENT OF IT YOU DUNCE

in conclusion, suck my ASS anyone who says they didn’t have backstory or development or that there are ~raging plot holes~. FUCK

anyone who doesn’t want the actual soft and only good person in the world William Schofield to live a happy life in peace just isn’t valid and that’s all i’ll ever say on the matter you fucking degenerate scum rotten tomato reviewers