Rent or Buy The Oxford Times
26.11.09
Armistice Day had a special poignancy this year, as it was the first since the passing of the last three resident British survivors of the Great War (why does the media always ignore Claude Choles,
who was born in the Worcestershire village of Wyre Piddle in 1901, but emigrated to Australia in 1926?). With the majority of schools now marking the Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the
Eleventh Month with a two-minute silence, there will almost certainly have been curious kids coming home to ask what prompted this pause in their usually hectic lives. Well, you can now explain
everything by sitting them down in front of Dave Unwin's 2001 animated adaptation of Michael Foreman's moving novel, War Game.
The action centres on friends Will, Freddie, Billy and Lacey, who are playing football when news breaks that Britain has declared war on Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany. Determined not to miss out on an
adventure, the boys volunteer for duty and are encouraged to play the game by a singing King George V. However, Will and Lacey's mother (voiced by Kate Winslet) is heartbroken by the news and
informs them that war isn't about fun and glory, but death and destruction.
Undeterred, the pals head for the Western Front. But they are soon enduring the harsh reality of the trenches and the war that would supposedly be over by Christmas is still raging when dawn breaks
on 25 December. However, much to the surprise of the tommies, the guns fall silent and they hear German voices singing carols. Slowly, figures appear in No Man's Land and soldiers who had been
implacable enemies just moments before begin fraternising and exchanging gifts. A game of football even breaks out, with Will, Freddie, Billy and Lacey at its heart.
But this return to sanity proves to be all too transient, as the officers recall their troops and prepare them for an evening assault. The closing sequence, in which a badly wounded Will finds
himself in a shell crater and trades photographs with a dying Hun in defiance of George V's musical admonition to play up for his team will do more to teach kids about the pitiless brutality of war
than any history book.
Source: