….. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled,
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.

A few thoughts: Even more than the actual shootings, what shook me were the scenes of the open plain with bodies all over it, especially as seen through binoculars.

I am trying to balance my Yankee sympathies to make sure this comment is fair, but the reason the Owen came to mind, that the purpose here was the pity of war itself, was that the film seemed to me not to fully show the outright slaughter of the Union– we can see it on that field or in the number of forces sent forward, but in actual shootings we witness, the Confederates behind the wall fall almost as much as the Union being sent to their nearly inevitable deaths by the blundering command. (And the most sympathetic soldier in the clip is the weeping Confederate who then rallies everyone in that sickly victory cry.)

Thinking about this, I am especially chilled by the repeated phrase “Do your duty, boys!” from the Union commander, who seems to understand fully that their duty is to die.

Being Irish from PA, I am of course also very interested in what is portrayed here as an internal battle between Irish brigades– ones who see the Rebels as misled and ones who can’t understand the Union loyalty to a government that denies states’ rights and that therefore draws to mind the brutally colonizing British, who even in these same years were forcing Irish to convert to Protestantism to get food in soup lines because they were starving on their own tiny plots while the AngloIrish thrived on enormous estates. Funny that the GA Irish don’t then sympathize with the plantation slaves, though we know from the NYC riots that Irish there bitterly resented being conscripted to fight when they thought they were just fighting for African Americans and responded with racist and unchecked violence.

Those riots and this film remind us of something else we like to forget but Whitman does not: wars are fought by the poor, whether those who don’t have the money to pay for someone else to fight in their place (as Emily Dickinson’s brother and many other well-landed men did) or, today, those that live in towns or states with dead economies and no visible educational opportunities.

Owen:

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.