They Shall Not Grow Old

By using the testimony of WWI veterans, Jackson pains a harrowing vision of the terrible and noble sacrifices that soldiers must make. As each veteran described their early thoughts about the war, one could hear a youthfulness imbue their words – what a lark it seemed to them in the beginning before they reached combat – and as the documentary reached its end, there was a transition back to their old age, full of reverie and regret. The war may have brought on that transition much quicker than they thought. The first voice of They Shall Not Grow Old says, “I gave every part of my youth to do a job.” Each voice that follows may feel differently about their time in military service, but their ideas about themselves and their countries were irrevocably shaped by the war.

How reprehensible that these youths were sent to war because their rich overlords thought of the whole conflict as a game to be played; like chess, the rich sat far from the field of battle and maneuvered pawns inch by inch, locked in a stalemate that cost them nothing while their men lost everything. Each soldier’s identity was shaped by this war – some lost their lives and became lost to tie, names on markers placed in town squares, while others returned home to find little to no understanding because they were ex-servicemen and the people around them were not. Their very lives were the antes that their leaders placed on the table in order to play at the big table of world power.

They Shall Not Grow Old is worth watching for the moment that the footage springs into color. For a time, the young men that populate the screen are young men, alive and smiling, cracking jokes and hoping for better days, wondering why they are any different than the the men across the battlefield from them and why everything has come to war. The ones that survived ask those questions even still.