As We Come Up To The
World War I Armistice Day That War “To End All War”- Yeah, No Question War Is
Hell-With Peter Weir’s Film “Gallipoli” In Mind
By Film Critic Emeritus
Sam Lowell
As the readers of this
site may know I recently have retired, maybe semi-retired is a better way to
put it, from the day to day, week to week grind of reviewing film old and young
as I just hit my sixty-fifth year. That stepping aside to let Sandy Salmon take
his paces on a regular basis did not mean that I would be going completely
silent as I intended to, and told the site administrator Greg Green as much, to
do an occasional film review and general commentary. This is one of those
general commentary times. What has me exercised is Sandy’s recent review of
Australian director Peter Weir’s World War I classic Gallipoli starring Mark Lee and Mel Gibson. I take no issue with
Sandy since he did a fine job. What caught my attention was Sandy’s comment
about Archie’s, the role played by Mark Lee, fervent desire to join his fellow
Aussies on Gallipoli peninsula as a patriotic duty and a manly adventure. When
I did my own review of the film back in 1981 when the film first came out I
make a number of comments about my own military experiences and those of some
of the guys I hung around with in high school who had to make some decisions
about what to do about the war of our generation, the Vietnam War of the decade
of the 1960s.
While the action of the
Australian young men itching to get into the “action” of World War I preceded
us by fifty years a lot of the same ideas were hanging our old-time working-
class neighborhood in Vietnam War times. (World War I’s ending, “the war that
was to end all wars” which turned out to be terribly off the mark, which by the
way we are commemorating the 100th anniversary of the fourth and
mercifully last year of this year ending with the Armistice on November 11,
1918 at 11:11 AM- how is that for symbolism. Less symbolic is the American turn
of the day into a generic veterans day back in the 1950s which some veterans,
including me, are trying to have returned to the original purpose of the
day-stopping wars in their tracks.) More than a few guys like Jim Leary and
Freddie Lewis from the old Acre neighborhood were like Archie ready, willing
and able to go fight the “red menace,” tip the dominoes our way a big selling
point at the time but totally absurd in the end, do their patriotic duty take
your pick of reasons. Maybe in Freddie’s case to get out of the hostile
household that he grew up in and maybe Jim like Archie for a little for the
adventure, to prove something about the questions he had about his manhood. I
did not pick those two names out accidently for those names now are permanently
etched on that hallowed black granite wall down in Washington that brings tears
to my eyes old as I am every time I go there.
(The most recent time
Memorial Day, 2018 to mark the fiftieth year of mourning for Jim who was one of
the corner boys, was a real piece of work and, take your pick, enlisted
voluntarily or did so under judicial guidance-that being ordered forthwith to
the military or five years jailtime for some armed robbery they grabbed him
on-He told me he would rather take his chances against the “gooks” than be a lifer’s “girlfriend” in stir. Yeah,
that is exactly the way he put it, the way he put his choice. Wrong move but
who is to fault his decision despite 50 years of mourning over his lost
youth-and mine. Freddie was just a quiet kid from my street who had a terrible
home life and no great prospects so he joined up thinking that those lying
bastard recruiting sergeants were for real when they told him he would get
training in electronics which he was interested in-that was the “come on” but in
no front lines Vietnam that turned him into a dog soldier infantryman whatever
else he did-damn the bastards.)
Then there were guys
like me and Jack Callahan, fallen Pete Markin who didn’t want to go into the
military, didn’t want to enlist like Jim and Freddie but who having no real
reason not to go when our local draft boards, our friends and neighbors if you
are old enough to remember, sent “the letter” requesting our services did go
and survived. The main reason that we did not want to go, at least at the time,
not later when we got a serious idea of what war was about, was that doing
military duty kind of cramped our style, would put a crimp in our drinking,
doping, and grabbing every girl who was not nailed down. Later Pete and I got
religion, realized that the other options like draft refusal which might have
meant jail or fleeing to Canada were probably better options. But we were like
Archie and Frank in Gallipoli working
class kids even though we had all been college students as well. (Markin, hell,
the Scribe which is what we all called him from about junior high school once
our leader Frankie Riley dubbed him with that moniker after having spewed out a
ton of words of praise on Frankie’s behalf, had made his own fatal decision
when he dropped out of Boston University in his sophomore year to pursue the
dream inherent the Summer of Love, 1967. That in those hellish man-eating days
in Vietnam made him prime “cannon-fodder” a word we did not know then but damn
well learned later. When the Scribe finished his Vietnam duty he decided not to
return to school since ‘Nam had taught him all he needed to know. Again, who
was to fault his judgment then-even though he would too soon fall down to drugs
and his own hubris and an early grave-a still mourned early grave.)
When in our past was
there even a notion of not going when the military called, of abandoning the
old life in America for who knows what in Canada. We did what we did with what
made sense to us at the time even if we were dead-ass wrong.
And then of course there
is a story like Frank Jackman’s who grew up in a neighborhood even down lower
on the social scale than ours, grew up in “the projects,” the notorious
projects which our parents would threaten us with if we didn’t stop being a
serious drain on the family’s resources. Frank somehow was a college guy too
and like us “accepted” induction although he had more qualms about what the
heck was going on in Vietnam and about being a soldier. But like us he also
accepted induction because he could see no other road out. This is where the
story changes up though. Frank almost immediately upon getting to basic
training knew that he had made a mistake-had no business in a uniform. And by
hook or by crook he did something about it, especially once he got orders for
Vietnam. The “hook” part was that through a serious of actions which I don’t
need to detail here he wound up doing a little over a year in an Army stockade
for refusing to go to Vietnam. Brave man.
The “crook” part was also through a series of actions which need not
detain us now, mostly through the civilian courts, he was discharged,
discharged from the stockade, honorably discharged as a conscientious
objector.
Archie, Frank and their
Aussie comrades only started to get an idea, a real idea about the horrors of
war when they were in the trenches in front of the Turks also entrenched on
Gallipoli peninsula and being mowed down like some many blades of grass. Archie
and most of the crew that joined up with him were among those blades of grass.
It was at the point where Archie was steeling himself to go over the top of the
trenches after two previous waved had been mowed down and then being cut down
by the Turkish machine-gun firing that I realized how brave Frank Jackman’s
actions were in retrospect.
