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01:30This pomp and circumstance is the most splendid face of the
01:59infantryman's life. The weapon drills, the gorgeous uniforms, the discipline
02:03formations are now just part of a glittering ceremony. But it wasn't always
02:07so. Once they were essential for victory on the battlefield, and the thin red
02:11lines on parade here are a reminder of the harsh reality of the infantryman's
02:16job. It is he who must go forward to close with and to kill the enemy. It is
02:20he who must seize the ground and hold it. And he must do this on foot, armed only
02:25with what he can carry, at the mercy of the elements and over every sort of
02:29terrain. There's nothing remote about war for the infantryman. For him, war has, and
02:34has always had, a very personal dimension.
02:49The infantryman is the pawn in the game of war. His work is unromantic and
02:55unremitting. He lives on his feet and by his wits, hung about with equipment,
02:59carrying his personal weapon, trying to stay vigilant despite the monotony. For
03:08the British rifleman on patrol in Northern Ireland, there's no prospect of
03:12a set-piece battle, just the constant threat of the sniper's bullet. And the
03:17infantryman's universal experience of having to do his soldiering far from
03:21home.
03:24Hello, what sport are we playing? Skydiving, are we?
03:28They're not mine, they're not mine.
03:30Why's that? Are you guys going to choose around here?
03:33Yeah, but we had to get it done first.
03:35It's still dinner time, is it?
03:37The Roman legionary also knew all about hours of sentry duty in distant
03:54outposts. He had the same concerns as other generations of infantrymen, getting
03:59a hot meal, keeping his kit clean, and going out on patrol.
04:08When the legionary marched out of camp, he carried his world with him. Helmet,
04:20weapons, equipment, rations, about 60 pounds in all, much the same as the
04:25British foot soldier carried on the Somme in 1916. In ancient Rome, the
04:30infantryman was nicknamed Marius' mule. In Vietnam, they called him the grunt.
04:41A grunt is an infantryman who has a couple of hundred pounds of gear on his
04:46back. He hasn't slept regularly, he hasn't eaten regularly, he hasn't washed or
04:53shaved regularly, and he's probably wearing the same clothes for three or
04:56four days. And I think the term grunt evolves from the sounds that you make
04:59once you sit down. If you have a pack on your back that weighs 60 or 80 pounds,
05:03bandoliers of ammunition, and a cartridge belt that's another 80 pounds, when you
05:08get up, you grunt. When you walk, you grunt. Everything becomes an effort. Anytime
05:14there's a firefight, anytime there's any kind of an incident, most of this gear
05:18is dropped. But for the most part, you're trudging through the bush wearing packs,
05:22helmets, in some cases a flak jacket. But in the best cases, armaments, ammunition,
05:31carrying a rifle. You're a bearer. We didn't have pack horses. You were your
05:37own pack horse.
05:40The Napoleonic infantryman shouldered a crushing load. Musket, powder, ball, bayonet,
05:47short sword, water bottle, and pack. In the pack went shirts, socks, washing,
05:53cleaning kit, and great coat. One soldier wrote that many of our infantry sank and
05:59died under the weight of their knapsacks alone. It's a burden that hasn't changed
06:05much down the years. The sheer weight of weapons and equipment still makes the
06:10infantryman's life hard. McGuinness, you keep stopping, you're gonna make me
06:14annoyed, and you'll be going down the hill and up it and down it for the rest
06:18of the day. Now get yourself moving. Get moving. You aren't trying. You're not even
06:24sweating. You're resting every five minutes. Move yourself.
06:29Don't do the rest by yourself. Come on, Stevie. By yourself. Get off your rifle. Get off your rifle.
06:38It's not a walking stick. And get yourself moving.
06:42This looks like old-fashioned training, but it's what modern war was like in the
06:47Falklands. If Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, then Goose Green
06:53was won on the Brecon Beacons. The terrain itself is the major part of the
06:59infantryman's job, because 99.9% of the job is covering the ground. Doesn't matter
07:05whether it's the snows of Norway or the Falklands or the desert. It's
07:09fighting your way through those obstacles, wading the river, getting up
07:14that next hill and the next one and down the other side, fixing the ropes so you
07:18can climb up the cliff and getting down the other side, and fighting your way
07:22through the elements. And then, and only then, do you actually get to grips with
07:30the enemy. Before you can get to grips with the enemy, the infantryman has first
07:36to cross that dangerous space in between. It may be a no-man's land of
07:40shell craters, or the Channel on the way to the Normandy shore.
07:46I don't know how long we were actually in the Channel. Quite some time, it seemed.
07:50We were all issued with brown paper bags to be sick and so on. And the feeling, I think, it
07:56seems to me, was curiously resigned. I can't remember actually feeling
08:02much apprehension.
08:06I know in my case, I kept wondering, really, what was going to happen to me?
08:13Would I ever get back home? You know, I kept thinking of my mother and my
08:17girlfriend, and I just wondered if I would make it, you know?
08:22I think the first time when one really has sort of got a sinking feeling, rather
08:29like a boxer before he goes into a ring, was as one moved towards the shore, when
08:35there was an enormous amount of fire, mostly our own, a great deal of noise.
08:42By the time we got a few hundred yards off the shore, of course, fire was coming in
08:47our direction.
08:59When he finally put the ramp down, I said to myself, how come he's putting it down now?
09:10Why can't we go in further? Because when he dropped us off, we were in water, I'd
09:14say knee-high, but in areas it was up to our neck. And I had come to like the
09:24security of being in that boat.
09:27Such feelings are as old as man. In 55 BC, the Romans were equally reluctant to disembark
09:33and confront British tribesmen on the shore of Kent. Julius Caesar tells how an eagle
09:38bearer gave the lead. He shouted, jump down, soldiers, unless you wish to betray your eagle
09:44to the enemy. It shall be told that I did my duty to my country and my general. He jumped
09:49overboard and began to wade ashore.
10:00Crossing the last few hundred yards is the hardest of all. The enemy is no longer a distant,
10:05impersonal figure. He's close, threatening, and his weapons are deadly. The Greek Xenophon
10:11watched the Persians deploy for the Battle of Cunaxa in 401 BC. When they got nearer,
10:18then suddenly there were flashes of bronze under spear points, and the enemy formations
10:22became visible.
10:32The two lines were hardly 600 or 700 yards apart when the Hellenes began to chant the
10:37battle hymn and moved against the enemy.
11:05When firearms came to dominate the battlefield, the advancing infantry had to run the gauntlet
11:09of musketry and artillery fire. Captain Charles Francois was at Borodino in 1812. Our regiment
11:22was ordered to advance. When we reached the crest of the ravine, we were riddled with
11:28Then came the searing volleys of close-range musketry. As the years went by, firepower
11:40grew in range and accuracy. In the American Civil War, the experience faced by the foot
11:45soldiers as they advanced became grim indeed.
11:52On the 3rd of July, 1863, at the height of the Battle of Gettysburg, 15,000 Confederate
11:58infantry marched up this gentle slope towards the Union lines at the top. Some shells burst
12:03among them long before they neared the crest. But when they were about 200 yards from it,
12:10the defending infantry and artillery opened fire simultaneously. Canister from the guns
12:15plowed through the Confederates, and their ranks were raked with massed rifle fire. The
12:22advancing soldiers were actually hidden under a cloud of dust, with in the air above it
12:26all sorts of debris, muskets, knapsacks, portions of bodies. A Union officer recalled that when
12:34the shot and shells struck the advancing infantry, a moan went up from the field, distinctly
12:39to be heard amid the roar of battle. About half the attacking troops were hit, and one
12:44Confederate later lamented, we gained nothing but glory, and lost our bravest men. Sixty
12:54years later, infantry had a similar problem on the Western Front, as they went forward
12:58across no man's land to attack the trenches opposite. It was often a costly business,
13:06as Charles Carrington learned. I knew it would be a very expensive battle. I went into action
13:13with three officers, myself and two others, under me, 13 NCOs, and 109 men. I came back
13:23with one officer, myself, two NCOs, and with 44 men. Then comes the moment when the infantryman
13:39meets his enemy. For centuries, although battle involved thousands of men, combat was
13:45a series of individual fights, and most of the damage was done within the short radius
13:50of a man's sword arm. Even firearms did not end close combat. In 1689, at Killiecrankie
13:59in Scotland, government troops found their muskets and plug bayonets no answer to charging
14:04Highlanders, flying dirk and broadsword. Even in the 20th century, there are times
14:21when the infantryman finds himself fighting hand-to-hand, man against man. When I went
14:27into hand-to-hand combat with the enemy, I really didn't like that person, whoever he
14:32may be. Consequently, I didn't even think of him as another human being. I just saw
14:38him as an enemy that had to be defeated. And at the time that I sunk my bayonet into his
14:46body, I didn't really give it too much thought then, but when it come time to pull out my
14:52bayonet, I found that it was quite difficult. And so I couldn't do it by just pulling it
14:59out. So I had to fire my rifle into his chest so that at the same time I could pull my round
15:08out. And I think I wasn't satisfied. I used the butt of my rifle and struck him somewhere
15:18on the head, I don't know exactly, to make sure that it was all over. He wasn't coming
15:22back at me. The infantryman has got a peculiar ability which is really not vested in anybody
15:36else. In the middle of a battle, he can take a decision to take cover in a convenient field
15:43in the ground and take no further part in the battle, or he can lie in the bottom of
15:46his slit trench when the enemy artillery is pouring down round about him. Or alternatively,
15:51he can take the opposite decision, which is to throw his all into a single act of great
15:56courage and gallantry. That ability isn't vested with others. If you're in a tank, you
16:01go where your tank goes. If you're with an artillery piece, you go where that goes. But
16:05this particular ability of the infantryman to make his own decision is something which
16:10is peculiar to him. If in some essentials the experience of the infantryman has changed
16:19remarkably little, in one fundamental respect, it has undergone a revolution. The personal
16:25weapon he uses has altered beyond all recognition. It's the capabilities of that weapon that
16:30dictate the sort of battle he faces and fights. Nowadays, he will use and meet something like
16:36this. It's a rifle, of course. It's the Soviet-designed Kalashnikov AK-47, perhaps the most common
16:42of all 20th century infantry weapons. But it's a comparatively recent phenomenon. For
16:48most of war's long history, it was edged weapons that shaped the infantryman's experience.
16:59The Roman legionary relied upon his short sword, the gladius, and spent hours learning
17:05how to use it effectively. The historian Josephus wrote that it would not be wrong to describe
17:10their drills as bloodless battles and their battles as bloody drills. Men sparred with
17:16overweight weapons and wicker shields. It was a rough and bruising business, but it
17:21worked. And training like this went on from one end of the empire to the other. Before
17:33closing in with the sword, the legionary threw his pilum, a wooden spear with a long iron
17:38tip. When it hit a shield, for instance, the pilum penetrated and bent. It was then
17:55impossible for the enemy to pull out the spear. It often weighed them down and they couldn't
18:01throw it back. In the centuries that followed the breakup of the Roman Empire, the infantryman
18:10lost his master of the battlefield. Pride of place went instead to the knight, whose
18:15armored shock was to warfare in the Middle Ages what tank attack was to 20th century
18:20blitzkrieg. He crashed through the pitiful infantry of the age and feared only his own
18:25kind. For sheer weight and hitting power, there was nothing to match him. The English
18:43archer changed all that. His weapon was the longbow, made of yew, often with a draw weight
18:49of over 100 pounds. It took a strong man to use it. His arrows, tipped with an armor-piercing
19:02bodkin point were lethal at 250 yards. A skilled man could fire between 10 and 20 in a minute.
19:14At Crecy in 1346, as at Agincourt 70 years later, the English drew up their army in three
19:20bodies of dismounted men-at-arms and spearmen, each flanked by archers, who strengthened
19:25their position with sharpened stakes. The French knights, eager to ride down the outnumbered
19:48English, surged forward in a charge which seemed irresistible, but they met an immovable
19:53object in the English archers. The chronicler John Fouassart describes what happened then.
20:07The English archers advanced one step forward and shot their arrows with such force and
20:11quickness that it seemed it snowed. Bowmen let fly then at large and did not lose a single
20:20shaft for every arrow tolled on horse or man. So the knights in the first French battle
20:26fell, slain or saw stricken, almost without seeing the men who slew them. It was not only
20:37the bow that brought the foot soldier decisively back into the battlefield. These two weapons
20:43were the other successful challenge to feudal cavalry, the long spear and the halberd,
20:50and it was the Swiss who mastered them. In the 14th and 15th centuries they formed up
20:58in dense masses of spearmen who spitted the cavalry on their pikes. In the centre of this
21:04thicket of spears stood soldiers armed with halberds, two-handed swords or vicious spiked
21:14weapons called lucerne hammers. These men stopped the enemy from penetrating the formation
21:19and then rushed out to attack him when he wavered. The wounds inflicted by their weapons
21:24were horrifying, even by the standards of the day. You can see the effect on this skull
21:30recently dug up from one of the old battlefields. The Swiss gained a sinister reputation for
21:35never giving quarter. With the long spear and the bow, the infantry was able to regain
21:43its vital role in warfare during these centuries. In many essentials, warfare was now little
21:50different from in Greek or Roman times. But a new phenomenon was being introduced that
21:57would soon fundamentally change its nature.
22:00From the 17th century onwards, the infantryman's life has been dominated by the firearm. Ever
22:15since, his tactics have been governed by its changing characteristics, and his training
22:20has revolved around the drills required to master it. On the smoky battlefields of the
22:2570s, the infantryman's firearm was the cumbersome matchlock musket, with an effective range
22:31of perhaps 100 yards and a rate of fire of one or two rounds a minute. The business of
22:40priming, loading and firing was slow and painstaking. The musket was heavy, weighing at least 12
22:46pounds and had to be supported by a forked wrest. The musketeer had to keep his match,
22:51a length of cord soaked in sulpita, alight and trimmed. No easy task in wet or windy
22:57weather. 17th century infantry formations consisted of a mixture of pikemen and musketeers,
23:18and they combined the fire effect of the musket with the physical shock of the pike.
23:44The invention of the socket bayonet made the pike obsolete. It fitted over the musket's
23:49muzzle, leaving the soldier free to load and fire. Bayonet fights were rare because one
23:55side or the other usually ran first, but they certainly happened, as Captain Charles Francois
24:00discovered at Borodino. We dashed towards the redoubt and clambered in through the embrasures.
24:10I went in just after a piece had been discharged. The Russian gunners received us with hand
24:15spikes and rammers, and we fought them hand to hand. During the First World War, few soldiers
24:34were killed or wounded by bayonets, but for the Australians, with their formidable reputation
24:39for toughness, they were a favourite weapon for close combat. When you're in a trench,
24:45you're looking all ways, not knowing which way they're coming. When you're with a bayonet and
24:51you're quick enough, you do quicker than firing. Modern armies still use the bayonet. The bayonet
25:02is designed to kill. When a bayonet is produced in battle, fixed to a rifle, the enemy, my goodness,
25:08it's got a considerable effect on their morale. Now today I'm going to show you how to kill with
25:12a bayonet. What's a bayonet used for? To kill. To kill what? The enemy. With what? A bayonet.
25:18Well done. One thrust at a number of enemy. At the walk, advance. Any questions? What's in
25:38everywhere? What's the aim? To kill. What's the aim? To kill. On guard. Front rank, one thrust at a
25:49number of enemy. At the double this time. Advance. Today there are still moments when soldiers meet
25:56hand to hand. A few Argentinians died on the bayonets in the Falklands. Well done. Bring your
26:02rifle with you, son. Don't let it go. Useful as the bayonet may have been, it was the firearm that
26:09really mattered, and technology has transformed it. It was the Industrial Revolution that changed
26:17the face of warfare out of all recognition, as indeed it changed so much else. The inventions,
26:22the improved technology, and the mass production of the 19th century introduced new, more reliable,
26:28more effective weapons. We can get an idea of the scope and variety of the developments in
26:33firearms from this pattern room. This is the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield in England,
26:42and there are similar establishments in many other countries. Here can be found a prototype,
26:47or an example, of some 4,000 rifles and machine guns from all over the world. For nearly 200
26:56years there had been scarcely any significant developments in weaponry, and now suddenly they
27:01came with a rush. From the flintlock musket to the rifle musket of the American Civil War,
27:07the French Chassepot, the 303 Lee-Enfield, the Vickers medium machine gun, the Bren light
27:20machine gun, the German Schmeisser submachine gun, and the new British SA-80. The flintlock
27:32Brown Bess was the British musket of the Napoleonic period. The involved process of
27:38loading and firing meant the infantrymen fought in line to deliver the maximum firepower.
27:44The thin red line was not just poetic fantasy. The rifled musket of the American Civil War had
27:56a more reliable percussion lock, and fired a conical bullet down a rifled barrel. Yet the
28:02process of loading and firing had changed relatively little, and the infantrymen still
28:07fought standing up in line. This is Saint Privas in northeastern France, the date August the 18th,
28:171870. France and Prussia are at war. Lined in defensive position along this track is the 70th
28:25French regiment. Coming up the slope, the elite Prussian Guard. They are met by withering fire
28:31from the French, and blown away like chaff. Within 20 minutes, 8,000 men lie dead and wounded on that
28:38slope. A revolution has occurred in infantry weaponry, and the revolution is this, used by
28:44the French that day, the Chassepot, named after its inventor. The radical innovation lies here. It's a
28:53breechloader. It means that the soldier using it can fire, reload, fire again, without ever having
28:59to stop or stand up and break cover, as he used to have to do with his old muzzleloader. And the
29:06effect also is that it has more than doubled his rate of fire. Moreover, this is a rifled barrel,
29:12and it's effective at up to 600 meters. It gave an enormous advantage to the defense. The effect
29:21upon soldiers attacking in line abreast was utterly devastating, as the Prussians discovered here,
29:27to their cost. But tragically, for hundreds of thousands of men in the years to come, and
29:33particularly in the First Great War, many commanders failed to learn the lessons of this obscure French
29:40meadow. It was with rifles like this British Lee-Enfield that the armies of 1914 went to war.
29:57Once he had loaded his magazine, the soldier could fire as fast as he could work the bolt.
30:01Some regulars could get off 30 rounds a minute at a massed target. There was a great relief when they
30:09did start attacking, or they started advancing towards us, in absolute crowds, massed together
30:15in crowds. And we opened fire, blazing away at them. Well, it was quite a relief to be able to get some of
30:22our own back. Up to now, we'd always been at the receiving end, and now for a time, we had an
30:28opportunity of getting our own back on them. I used four rifles that morning. I jammed one after
30:36the other with the continuous firing. No aiming, just loading and pulling the trigger, you know.
30:43The Vickers, a medium machine gun solidly mounted on a tripod and fed by a belt of ammunition,
30:50has been called the concentrated essence of infantry. The German equivalent of the Vickers
31:07was the Spandau, and dreaded by the British. You imagine a well-placed machine gun, a line of
31:17soldiers advancing. Well, if the machine gun is to one side and they can shoot straight up the line,
31:25well, one burst of fire might hit a dozen or twenty men. And when you had the German machine gun,
31:33you'd wonder how they missed anybody. Not as they hit, you know, you know, squirming along. We all
31:44hated the damn thing, because they were so desperately efficient. Another threat was the
31:55grenade, an old weapon revived for trench fighting. For the early ones, you had what they called a
32:01fusee. You had a little wick on them, and you lit the end of the fuse like a cracker. And the next
32:08bomb come out, it had on the end of that wick, it had a little vestus top, a match top. And they
32:13gave us a matchbox, side pinned on there or tied on. And you just slapped the bomb head or the
32:21vestus there on it, and it would start to fuse, see? And off she went. But no one held it much
32:29more than, it didn't go four and a half seconds before you got rid of it. Both sides used an
32:34ever-increasing quantity of hand grenades. The German grenade had a stick attached and earned
32:39its nickname from its similarity to an old-fashioned potato masher. Some grenades could be fired from
32:46rifles. Yet more deadly than grenade or machine gun was the towering rage of the artillery. The
32:56sheer weight of fire which bore down upon the infantryman finally drove him underground. Now,
33:02this trench in Sanctuary Wood at Ypres has been patched up rather than preserved, but we can still
33:08see some of the features that gave trench warfare its own distinctive and ghastly character. The
33:15trench was a zigzag. This was partly so that one single shell burst could not devastate a whole
33:21line of trench, and partly so that each bay could be defended if the enemy infiltrated himself into
33:28any part of the system. But struggling around these bays, carrying a wounded man on a stretcher,
33:33was a painful and exhausting business. Men lived in dugouts, entered by steps leading from the
33:45trench. Sometimes these were relatively comfortable, but their occupants had to live with the risk of
33:51being buried alive, either if the entrance was blown in, or if the whole structure collapsed
33:56under a heavy shell. Wooden duckboards covered the bottom of the trench, while pumps tried to
34:04keep them from flooding. All too often, though, the trench was deep in mud, water, and filth, and infested
34:11with ravening rats. Everybody were lousy, and every time you went to the loo, you'd run your thumb up
34:22the seams of your trousers and crack them there. They were going out like a machine gun firing, and
34:27everybody were the same. We had the clothes for over 12 months before we had a change. We had a
34:39change at Popper Inge, easy 12 months after we'd left England. This trench would have been deep
34:47enough for men to have walked along the middle, like this, without being seen. And on the enemy
34:52side ran the fire step, a narrow ridge on which men could stand to fire over the parapet. There's a
35:00ledge behind your back, that's to guard your back, you see, in case a shell falls behind. But actually,
35:09it was your table, it was your dining table, and a little cavity there, you see, you used to build,
35:17make a fire in it, put a slight grid in front, and cook on top of it. And you were actually supplied
35:23with gold and wood to make a fire to cook your food. These rusty fragments are remnants of the
35:34mass of trench stores, rolls of barbed wire, wire pickets, corrugated iron, sandbags, and so on, which
35:40were an essential part of trench warfare. They helped to make life barely tolerable, but they
35:44all had to be carried up from far in the rear by infantrymen, often exhausted, through hundreds of
35:49yards of communication trench. Big battles apart, the infantryman lived in his strangely old-fashioned
35:57troglodyte world. It had much in common with siege operations in previous wars. That hardy annual
36:03body armor reappeared. Steel helmets, some of them with a curiously medieval appearance, were here
36:09to stay. The bright spots in the trenches used to be when it happened to be a lovely fine day, and
36:15you would suddenly see a lark spin up into the sky and sing its heart out, and you'd think, my god,
36:21don't I wish I was you, you know? And then, of course, too, there were long periods of boredom.
36:30World War I was the epitome of the infantryman's war, forcing him to seek safety in trenches.
36:35Since then, the foot soldier has acquired protection of a different sort in the armored
36:42personnel carrier, developed during the Second World War. The APC enables him to keep pace with
36:52armor and protects him against bullets and shell splinters. It also helps keep out gas and even
36:58nuclear fallout. But there comes a moment when the door opens, and the infantryman is on his feet
37:22with his rifle, in the same unforgiving world that his father's knew. He has some new weapons
37:34to help him meet new threats, just as the longbow harassed the medieval knight. So,
37:40infantry anti-tank weapons threatened enemy armored vehicles on the battlefield of the 80s.
37:44Tanks are a formidable enemy to the foot soldier, but infantry are dangerous vermin too, hard to
37:51brush out of the seams of the soil. Indeed, if tanks are to survive in close country or towns,
37:58they need their own infantry to protect them. Flamethrowers first appeared in World War I,
38:08but they have been a conspicuous feature in all the succeeding wars. The Americans,
38:13in particular, used fire to burn out the stubborn Japanese defenders of the Pacific
38:17Islands. And the infantryman has his own artillery, the mortar. It's light enough to
38:25be dismantled and carried by its crew, and fires high angle over obstacles and from behind cover.
38:31Its projectile, arriving with a sinister feathery shuffle, was loathed by soldiers in all armies.
38:37And the infantry rifle itself can lay down a weight of fire that the musketeer would never
38:47have dreamed of. But whatever weapon the infantryman carries, his war retains its own
38:52hard edge. Nothing can free him from his obligation to close and kill. In war,
38:58possession is nine points of the law, and the infantryman are the bailiff's men.
39:03In 1941, on the Eastern Front, the victorious Germans reached Stalingrad.
39:13After a devastating aerial bombardment, it was the task of the infantryman to take the town.
39:24But the Germans had underestimated the resistance of the Russian soldier,
39:29defending his city block by block, street by street, house by house.
39:34Thousands of sorties of our dive bombers, Stuka bombers, bombed the city,
39:39so there was so much rubble, you couldn't even with the tank, you could hardly move.
39:44Therefore, we formed small sections, especially fitted with submachine gun.
39:52Fighting in a street is a very dangerous affair, because behind any door, behind any window,
40:01even from the roof, you get some fire, there are snipers,
40:06and the enemy is in a shelter throwing hand grenades. You have to run very fast,
40:17or you have to creep. You have to depend on your neighbor. We went creeping and running,
40:27and supporting one the other, and we threw hand grenades. We fired our submachine guns.
40:38So this action took weeks and weeks, and therefore our strength, the division faded out, faded out.
40:50The courage and street fighting tactics of the Soviet soldiers finally wore down
40:55the endurance and skill of the world's most professional troops.
40:59The ruins of Stalingrad became the graveyard of the German 6th Army.
41:11In most World War II campaigns, infantry bore the brunt of the fighting.
41:15They formed a quarter of the British Army, but suffered three quarters of the casualties.
41:20The pressure of life in the line was relentless.
41:25In Omar Bradley's famous phrase, behind every river was another hill,
41:29and behind that hill, another river.
41:34Each encounter reduced the rifleman's chance of survival.
41:38Sooner or later, the chase had to end on a stretcher or in the grave.
41:49For the infantryman, the moment came all too often when he had to go forward into the firing line.
41:58May the 23rd was the breakout from Anzio, and a few days before, we were called by the brigadier,
42:05and we sat down, and he was telling us, a wonderful moment has happened.
42:09We're going to break out of here, and your regiment has been chosen.
42:13And then suddenly I found that it was my platoon that was to be the first to have to break out of Anzio.
42:21We had to go up to a river bank and hide there, and one of the men whom I most trusted,
42:29and who was actually our signalsman, he just couldn't bear it any longer.
42:34I was very fond of him, but he shot himself through the foot.
42:37And so I lost him, and I lost our signalsman,
42:41and it was simply a terrible experience that somebody whom one was very fond of,
42:46and who one trusted, should do that, and was betraying us.
42:50But I, luckily, our doctor gave me a benzadrine, and I think I popped that,
43:00and it certainly made an awful lot of difference at the time.
43:04And I filmed, once one actually got going in this final attack, which was a diversionary attack,
43:11actually, and the main attack was made by the Americans further south,
43:16but you had a great sense of elation.
43:18I'm not sure whether it was the benzadrine that gave me that feeling, but certainly I went across.
43:23Then I did this terrible thing.
43:25I led the platoon across the smoking ground,
43:29and did something that was entirely against all the rules that I'd been taught.
43:37And we went round, instead of going behind a German machine gun post, we went round in front,
43:42and of course, they were all mown down, and somehow I escaped.
43:46But it was a thing that weighed on my mind tremendously for years later.
43:56Combat for the infantrymen has always been dangerous and confusing.
44:01Ammunition Hill is on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
44:04In 1967, during the Six-Day War, it was honeycombed with trenches and bunkers,
44:09and resolutely defended by the Jordanians.
44:11The close-range battle to take the hill was a microcosm of infantry combat.
44:17The real problem is to identify where are you, who is shooting at you, from where.
44:26The moment you start to move, you get bullets, or you get a hand grenade.
44:32This is a difficult job.
44:38If you hear shouts of your friends that are trying to identify themselves,
44:44so by shouting to each other, you create communication.
44:48Watch it, I'm here, don't throw a grenade here, let me move forward, cover me, or things of this type.
44:54The whole night of fighting here was in the shade of confusion.
45:00We were moving forward inside the trenches.
45:03Suddenly, you discover that what you thought were friends of you, who were going behind you, were not.
45:13But your enemy that was going behind you, not knowing that actually you are ahead of him.
45:19And the question was, who would use his senses better to find out,
45:26actually in every second and every minute of the fight, what is actually happening around you.
45:34While fighting, you concentrate in what you are doing, you try to survive.
45:42You are so busy doing it, that you don't have anything else in your mind.
45:48There were a few moments that were terrifying.
45:53First moment that actually you see with your own eyes that your close friends got killed.
46:02You see his face, you see his eyes, he's not moving.
46:07It's a terrible experience, terrible.
46:10For all its intensity, battle is a comparatively rare event in the infantryman's life.
46:15Mostly, he must trudge on, weighed down by rifle and pack.
46:21A typical day in the field was usually a hot walk in the sun.
46:25You would go out on what they called an operation.
46:28Combat operation, search and destroy mission, search and destroy.
46:31Search for and destroy the enemy, or search for and destroy the enemy's supplies or his food.
46:36For the most part, you didn't wash, you slept very little on those operations.
46:40You ate C-rations out of a can, unheated, dried food.
46:44And it was always hot, it was blazing hot.
46:47There was a great deal of fear involved.
46:49You never knew when something was going to happen.
46:51The possibility existed that anybody could step on a mine.
46:55You had a certain tour to do.
46:56You had 13 months in Vietnam, the days seemed longer than they were.
47:00The time seemed never to go away, the time seemed never to pass.
47:03And then there would be a firefight.
47:05You could be in a firefight for three or four hours, and it felt like ten minutes.
47:17A tour of duty in Vietnam as an infantryman was hours and hours of boredom,
47:21followed by seconds of sheer terror.
47:26It is a timeless description of the infantryman's experience,
47:30for his essential features remain unchanging.
47:32The weapon, the pack, the helmet,
47:35and the eyes that have seen too much of that old, hard world that he knows so well.
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