.... because the opening title sequence is very bland . Compare it to the shocking title sequence of the 1960s BBC documentary THE GREAT WAR . As the film goes on we`re introduced to the characters and I couldn`t help noticing that one is Southern English , a couple are Northern English , a couple are Jocks , a couple are Irish while the sarge is a scouser . I`m sorry but I was convinced that British army infantry regiments of the period were composed of " Pals battalions " , that is battalions composed entirely of men from the same home town . Take for instance the 16th battalion of The Royal Scots which was formed in one week and was called " The Hearts battalion " because it was composed mainly of supporters of Hearts football club . The 16th Royal Scots even had 16 Hearts players in its ranks so I don`t believe for a moment that any British army infantry platoon was as regionally mixed as the one here
The more THE TRENCH goes on the more I found myself questioning the accuracy of the movie especially its mood and its sense of time and place . A British made trench in France in 1916 . Since when did the Brits build trenches like the one seen here ? It even has a concrete floor that the Germans would have been proud of which seems to go against I`ve seen in photographic evidence . The film also has an anachronistic cynical air , what on the eve of the Somme ? The British troops had witnessed day upon day of hellish bombardment of the German positions and a lot of British soldiers had begun to feel rather sorry for Jerry , and no one but no one in the British lines had any reason to doubt anything less than a swift , spectacular British victory . Of course one day and 20,000 dead British soldiers later changed these thoughts , in fact some historians describe the date 1st of July 1916 " The day British idealism died " . One final point - As at least one other commentator mentioned THE TRENCH contains a large amount of swear words . It has been documented that one criticism by the real life survivors of BAND OF BROTHERS was that the HBO/BBC drama contained too much swearing and that people in the 1940s used far less profane words than people use nowadays . I`m inclined to believe them and I`m also inclined to believe people in 1916 probably swore less than people in the 1940s so I doubt if the men in the trenches used the " F " word in every sentence
Unfortunately who German bullets didn`t claim on that grim day have been killed by the passing of time so the chances of someone who was there writing into this site and telling us their opinion of THE TRENCH are very remote . A pity because I`d be very interested what they thought of it . As for myself I found the ending moving ( How could it not be ? ) but the rest is rather poor history and a rather poor film that seems to have homo erotic undertones
