My wife's dad was late to fatherhood after serving in World War One and much of his life he struggled with after-effects of poison gas exposure in the trenches. So she was particularly interested to see this film as soon as it was available to us, and I was starkly impressed with its sources and the effort to colorize and present the material so it would register with current viewers. Various aspects still echo in my head, one of which was the reaction of front line troops to the armistice. Rather than feel elation and celebration, many felt a strange sense of letdown and purposelessness, they had been so psyched and ready to give their all. It's an amazing documentary and well worth seeing from time to time. We saw this after seeing an excellent WWI exhibition at N.C. Museum of History, with recordings, a facsimile of a trench line, arrays of weapons and equipment from various nations on both sides, really a spectacular effort to remember that war. There are many wonderful stories of my wife's dad Charlie, called Happy as a boy, and remarkably upbeat all sixty-some years of his life despite his war disabilities. After the war he was in a works project program for vets and won a pancake eating contest that was in the news nationally. At Vets Hospitals he met and spent time with Bess Truman and Abbott and Costello. When in service, he met General Pershing who greeted him as a fellow Missourian. Charlie had quite a life with such a difficult start.
