The Wipers Times

[emmie]

did anyone watch this programme the other day, featuring amongst others Ben Chaplin. i thought it was wonderful, with excellent performances all round, i hope they repeat it. Based on real events in WW1. This wiki entry gives lots of examples of the type of material the soldiers came up with, wry, witty and often poignant. Considering the dreadful places like Ypres, the Somme, they were in, it's remarkable they retained any sense of humour. Read the whole wiki entry if you have time, some of it's laugh out loud...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wipers_Times

[marje]

Haven't seen it, but have recorded it for OH to watch when he comes back from holiday.

[emmie]

watch it together, it is by far and away the best drama i have seen in yonks.
funny and very droll.

[DJHawkes]

it has often confused me why my mum called it wipers and not eeps, we grew up hearing wipers, ii wonder if her generation and her parents generation only knew it as wipers, my grandad was there and survived.

[marje]

It's not really my sort of thing, but may watch it. Sometimes things which you don't think you'll like are really enjoyable.

[emmie]

Ypres was the centre of intense and sustained battles between German and Allied forces. During the war, because it was hard to pronounce in English, British troops nicknamed the city wipers.

[emmie]

this exceeded my expectations, it wasn't all about soldiers getting blown to pieces, nor the lions led by donkeys thoughts... But it does show that in times of dire adversity, some kept their heads and their sense of humour...

[horseshoes]

Dot, my grandfather was there too, as a runner with the Royal Worcesters. He survived, but lost half his foot and was gassed. I have his "commanding officer's commendation". Sorry Emmie for interrupting; haven't seen it yet. Husband watched it and said it was brilliant.

[emmie]

written by Ian Hislop and Nick Newman, it's a sort of Private Eye, Punch Magazine style wit, dripping with delicious sly digs at the high command, and a very good performance by Michael Palin...

[emmie]

if you read the wiki link it gives a taste of what the soldiers who ran the paper got up to, some of the poems are a hoot, whilst others have the Sassoon/Owen stamp about them.

[DJHawkes]

grandad was in the royal artillery, he looked after the horses pulling the guns. well, he had to shoot them if they were hit and pull them clear of the gear to get a replacement into the team as fast as possible.

[boxtops]

Emmie, it was absolutely brilliant, OH and I both really enjoyed it. The reality of an awful war, with flashes of great squaddie humour. It's a classic, it deserves a wider audience.

[emmie]

absolutely agree, a much wider audience. The two leads deserve whatever passes for tv gold awards, Ben Chaplin however was outstanding...

[emmie]

DJ, you know the rough figures for horses, mules, donkeys killed in WW1, over 7 million, and they didn't ship many home, they were left for the starving French soldiers, and those that did come home like General Jack Seeley's horse Warrior did survive, but even his demise was incredibly sad.

[VHG]

>>>Considering the dreadful places like Ypres, the Somme, they were in,

We all tend to think that life along ALL the trenches was terrible ALL the time.

I watched a documentary about WW1 on TV a few months ago (about 14 parts it was) and it went into the war in a lot of detail.

The trenches were of course very long, stretching from the Swiss border to English channel.

These all had to be manned all the time by soldiers of course, but often the intense battles were going on in one section of the trenches, while the rest of the trenches were fairly quiet.

In fact in a section of the "quiet" trenches a shot may not be fired for days. The soldiers from both sides were scared to fire a shot in case those on the other side started firing back, so both sides kept a sort of quiet truce.

For those soldiers in these sections of trenches life could be very quiet and peaceful, allowing them (in summer) to lie and sunbath in the fields.

The generals got so annoyed that these soldiers were having an "easy" time that they would send them out on missions to try to capture some enemy soldiers from the trenches opposite.

After a while the soldiers pretended to go to the opposite trenches but actually did not, so the generals said they now had to bring back a section of German barbed wire to prove it.

But then the British soldiers found a huge coil of German barbed wire, so they hid it, and they just used to cut of a small section of it to show to the generals and pretend they had brought it back from the German trenches.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying life in the middle of one of the WW1 battles like the Somme was not awful, and it has always made me terribly sad to think of the awful waste of human life.

But fighting was not going on along ALL the trenches ALL the time, so soldiers may have had to time compose a magazine like this in the quieter moments (I know some of the TV program was set in the Somme during the fighting though).

[emmie]

i have studied WW1 at some length, and you are right of course, it wasn't always madness, blood and guts, but it was the scale of the going over the top when they knew it was certain suicide. That we were nowhere near prepared for modern warfare, that indeed men were just as they say cannon fodder.

It must have come as some relief to get magazines like this, and food parcels, alcohol, and the services of local hostelries, brothels.
One book has always stayed in my mind on the savagery and
wastefulness of the war, and that was Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth. She lost her fiancée, brother and most of his friends. for a well brought up, but quite closeted woman she became a fine writer and humanitarian.

[quizzywig]

Enjoyed it very much - well written, well acted and very informative also it had humour. I've said it before, when the BBC tries it can give us wonderful entertainment, unfortunately it does it so rarely being under the impression that celebs have to feature in the majority of its output.

[emmie]

completely agree, they were the benchmark once upon a time, now it's celebrity led and rather than produce more quality drama, plays, they put out dross.

[Supermike]

I agree with the comments on how good this programme was. It was equal to the dark humour in the moving last epesode of Blackadder Goes Forth. I wish their were more programmes of this quality on TV.

[emmie]

so do i, it also rather reminded me of the film Oh What a Lovely War...

[KRUSTYMAN]

They could have made this so bad that it would have been uncomfortable to watch but they did a fantastic job. I know it's a cliché but this programme really did make paying the TV license worthwhile - hats off to everyone involved in this production deserve an award. If you missed it you really have to watch it on iplayer before it's too late!