Summary
Arras, 1917: a scarred chessboard of chalk and blood where the British Expeditionary Force, weary yet wired on ration-tea and grim resolve, pries open the Hindenburg Line’s iron jaw. Over nine reels of brittle nitrate, the camera—part witness, part war-grave pilgrim—glides from dripping dug-outs to signal-lamp constellations, from mule-trains hauling wire to night-sky barrages that bloom like sulphurous chrysanthemums. We see chalky tunnels snuff out candle by candle; we see telegraph boys sprint across cratered boulevards once lined with lace-curtained patisseries. Between freeze-frame artillery blinks, Tommies smoke, write, shave, scratch limericks onto shell casings, while behind them engineers splice rails through the morass, turning Flanders clay into a logistical artery that will eventually pump half a million men eastward. There is no protagonist save the collective breath of a battalion, no antagonist beyond the invisible calculus of range-finders and hunger. Triumph here is measured in the slow receding of German footprints from stolen French parlours, in the creak of field-guns yanked backwards through the mist, in the sudden hush when the guns stop and skylarks reclaim the air. Yet the film refuses trumpet calls: cadavers lie unglorified, nurses count severed limbs like loose change, and every yard of liberated pavement is paid for with a silence that settles on the faces of survivors like plaster dust.
Documentary, one of a series, showing Great Britain's participation in the First World War. This entry depicts the fighting, waiting, labor, and logistics of the successful British effort to push back the German army at Arras.
