WARNING: Contains some distressing stereotypes that some may recognise. Also contains a significant chunk of British military history…
Nothing can ruin a movie quicker than a lazy script using the same old tired clichés that have been repeated many times over. Military themed films can easily fall into this trap, but just because it is a cliché doesn’t mean it isn’t true. In this series of articles we explore the stories behind the stories, the worst offenders in the movie world and those rare examples where the trend has been bucked.
This is the second in the series of ‘Military Movie Clichés’ and was the most suggested topic for scrutiny…oddly enough by army officers! Many military films have the archetypal character of a useless officer with little experience. They normally make terrible decisions to the detriment of the lead character, and almost always die badly. Where has this stereotype come from, and is it fair? To find out, we’ll need to delve a little into the process of becoming an officer and some history.
The Army Officer
To become an officer in the British Army, you have to pass a long and rigorous selection process, and then complete 44 gruelling weeks at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst before ‘commissioning’ as a junior officer. After RMAS, the young officers then complete a further training course to prepare them for their chosen speciality. Infantry platoon commander, tank troop leader and attack helicopter pilot are the possible combat courses, but there are many other support roles. 15-20 months (longer in the case of pilots) of intensive military training is meant to produce some of the best officers in the world, but this hasn’t always been the case.
During the reign of Charles II, the practice of purchasing a commission started for a number of reasons. It was meant to preserve the social exclusivity of the officer class by ensuring that only the rich could become officers by buying their entry into the military. This had the secondary effect of ensuring that the officers would be much less likely to engage in looting or pillaging or any kind of profiteering as they didn’t need to. It also acted as a retirement fund for the officer. When they wanted to leave, they would sell their rank to an officer of the rank below. This was often by means of an auction, so more desirable regiments commanded higher prices.. If the officer was killed in action, his commission would be awarded to someone else for free, but they wouldn’t be able to sell it on and profit without serving a further three years.
The commanding officer of a regiment could refuse the purchase of a commission by someone who had the money, but not the social background to his liking. All of this ensured that the richest officers progressed, not necessarily the best, and resulted in incompetent leadership throughout the officer class. This was partly mitigated by long periods of combat such as the Napoleonic Wars, which caused heavy casualties amongst the senior ranks and persuaded the less committed aristocrats (of which there were many who obtained a commission purely for social reasons) to retire early to avoid active service. This meant that there were many more available commissions which therefore drove the price down and allowed those more professional, but less affluent individuals into the officer ranks.
Unfortunately the 30 years of relative peace after the Napoleonic wars allowed this process to be reversed in the run up to the Crimean War, which was significant in contributing to military blunders such as the Charge of the Light Brigade lead by Lord Cardigan.
Cardigan purchased his commission and subsequent command appointments. Whilst he was supposedly brave and kind to the men under his command, he was severely incompetent and caused a large amount of resentment between him and the professional officers who served him. He is considered by many to be the worst example of the problems caused by the commissioning purchasing system, and his part in the events of the Crimean War kick-started an inquiry into the practice which was abolished in 1871.
Despite this, The Great War (or The First World War) produced yet more stories of incompetence. Examples of regiments of brave ‘Tommies’ being sent to their deaths by indifferent generals pervaded throughout the culture of the time and the years that followed until World War Two. The phrase ‘Lions led by Donkeys’ was coined to describe the situation and generals such as Field Marshall Douglas Haig took most of the blame for the huge casualties of the war, but was it really his fault?
The main cause of the devastating statistics during the first few years of the war was the onset of new technologies that simply had not existed before. Almost overnight, the tactics that had developed over the last century became irrelevant. Inventions such as automatic weapons and poisonous gases, meant that the knowledge and experience of career soldiers such as Haig was rendered obsolete. It took both sides a significant amount of time to develop further technologies (such as the tank) and tactics to combat the resulting trench warfare stalemate, and during that time many people lost their lives. Generals such as Haig took the blame, but probably unfairly.
Today the ‘officer class’ is a myth. Officers are selected purely on potential and merit, and definitely not on their finances or background. Anyone can be an officer if they have the correct qualities, most important of which is intelligence and ability to learn. Despite this, tales of incompetence still pervade modern cinema. It’s another easy script shortcut to show the officer as clean-cut, inexperienced and out of his (almost always male) depth. Here are the worst examples and a couple that buck the trend.
‘Fury’: As I promised in the previous article, ‘Fury’ is making another appearance and it won’t be the last in this series. Lieutenant Parker has the difficult job of commanding three older, more experienced, battle hardened sergeants. From the very start he is singled out as being somewhat different and also weaker than his subordinates. The picture below shows you everything you need to know in a snapshot.
Firstly Parker is too clean. He is clean shaven and wearing fresh clothes. Everything is regulation despite being in the middle of a war. The way he speaks, the lack of confidence in which he carries himself and the looks that the sergeants give him suggest that he is fighting a losing battle when it comes to gaining their respect. Compare him to Bradd Pitt’s ‘Wardaddy’ and you can see why he isn’t going to survive the first scene, let alone to get to tea and medals at the end of the film. As the tank troop move off, we see the officer standing out the top of his turret in a vulnerable position. Again, compare this to the other commanders who are correctly hunkered down, with as little of their bodies outside the tanks as possible. Moments later his tank is hit by a panzerfaust (rocket launcher), setting him on fire as the fuel ignites inside the vehicle. Whilst screaming in a high pitched manner and engulfed in flames, Parker tumbles out the vehicle and then takes his own life with his service pistol. From his entry to his exit, everything is done to make Parker look as ineffective as possible. His character is largely redundant to the plot and seems to only serve to make the officer class look as bad as possible.
‘Aliens’: Before anyone starts, ‘Aliens’ is definitely a war film…and a horror film…and a science fiction film. It’s got Marines in it, a lot of guns and a crap officer, so today it is a war film. Lieutenant Gordon is a far more convincing officer than Parker, but equally clean cut (as the picture below shows) and out of his depth. He immediately alienates (excuse the pun) himself from this troops, by not eating with them, getting their names mixed up, imposing unreasonable timelines on them and by generally being an ‘asshole’. He doesn’t redeem himself by showing nerves during the combat drop onto the planet, and thus revealing his inexperience to everyone on the mission.
Things are made worse by his decision to stay aboard the command vehicle, whilst the marines enter the buildings without him. When things start to go wrong, he panics and makes poor tactical decisions which forces Ripley to take matters into her own hands. Luckily for everyone, he is accidentally knocked unconscious for the middle of the film, enabling Michael Biehn’s ‘Corporal Hicks’ to take over. When he finally comes around, he resigns himself a non-command position for the rest of the film. His only redeeming moment is when he courageously turns back to rescue a wounded Vasquez.
They are both trapped and surrounded in a ventilation shaft, so to prevent them being taken, he kills them both with a grenade (why didn’t we include that in Part 1: GRENADES!?). Rather unfairly, the last thing that is said to him is by Vasquez who grunts “You always were an asshole, Gorman.” just before he pulls out the grenade.
‘Kelly’s Heroes’: Captain Maitland is only in the film for about a minute, but he is totally preoccupied with ‘appropriating’ a small sailing boat to take home to the USA. He is oblivious to the situation developing around him or what his subordinates are up to. Clint Eastwood plays Private Kelly, who is a former officer himself, but was demoted after a failed infantry assault. Whilst an excellent if tongue in cheek war movie, the film belongs to the enlisted men and the officers don’t get a look in.
‘The Eagle has Landed’: Another excellent war movie, which almost has you rooting for the Germans, but contains a truly terrible officer. To be fair to ‘The Eagle has Landed’ it does have some very good officers in it, but Colonel Clarence E. Pitts is one of the worst portrayed on screen. Not only inexperienced, but also keen to get some glory after being left out of D-Day preparations, his idiotic assault on the church results in many of his men being killed. The character of Colonel Pitts is comedic relief that isn’t needed in the film, and to some extent detracts from the drama. His death is as equally ridiculous as the rest of his presence.
‘Sharpe’ (TV): Sir Henry Simmerson is a reoccurring villain in Bernard Cornwell’s ‘Sharpe’ series, and was played in the television series by Michael Cochrane. A portrayal of the old type of officer who has purchased his commission, Simmerson is a coward and an idiot. In the books he is described as short, squat, and red-faced giving the impression of “a pig sitting on horseback.” He is snobbish, aristocratic and a narrow-minded, the exact opposite of Sharpe.
Sharpe starts life as a private in the infantry, but gains a commission from the ranks in the midst of battle and ends up as a colonel by the time of Waterloo. His struggle against the likes of Simmerson is one of class and background that is relevant to this entire article.
‘Blackadder Goes Forth’ (TV): The fourth and final series of the Richard Curtis and Ben Elton comedy is the best of the Blackadder series, and one of the best British comedy series of all time. Whilst it is a comedy, it has been criticised for reinforcing the ‘lions led by donkeys’ mantra mentioned previously. Every officer portrayed in the series has serious character defects, none more so than General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett,KCB (played by Stephen Fry) who was a caricature of Haig and other generals of the time. His Wikipedia entry sums him up perfectly as;
“…a loud, childish, unintelligent, incompetent, pompous warmonger… his preferred battle tactics and general attitudes towards warfare are stuck firmly in a bygone era. He fails to understand or comprehend the basic concepts of modern trench warfare and is totally unable to come up with a new strategy that would suit it. Instead he continuously sends men to a senseless death with seemingly no tactics at all.”
His sycophantic adjutant is no better. Captain Darling is graciously described as a ‘snivelling rubber desk-johnny!’ by Lord Flashheart, himself a narcissistic, arrogant and self-absorbed lunatic played by the incomparable Rik Mayall. The Hon. George Colthurst St Barleigh, is a young, enthusiastic lieutenant whose excitability is only matched by his naivety, where as Blackadder himself is a liar and a coward. With characters like this it easy to see how the stereotypes have prevailed.
Despite this, and remarkably for a comedy, the series ends with one of the most poignant sequences depicting the Great War. It is hard to watch it and not be moved. The writers received disapproval for trivialising the horrors of the era, but the closing scene completely silenced their critics.
So those were some of the examples of the bad officers depicted in celluloid, but what about the good ones?
‘Band of Brothers’: Dick Winters’ exploits during WW2 have been well documented thanks to the excellent HBO series based on Stephen E. Ambrose’s book of the same name. Throughout the preparations for D-Day, the assault itself, the liberation of France and the invasion of Germany, he showed exemplary leadership in difficult circumstances. The headquarters element of Easy Company was shot down during the D-Day insertion, killing everyone on board. As a result Winters had to assume company command for the duration of the Normandy campaign. He was nominated for the Medal of Honor for a crucial assault on a German gun battery, defeating 50 Germans with only 13 of his own men. Aspects of the attack are still taught at West Point (The American version of Sandhurst) as an example of an assault with a numerically inferior force. During the ill-fated Operation Market Garden, Winters successfully assaulted a German position of 300 soldiers with only a platoon of 30. He was always humble about his achievements, dedicating his success to his ‘company of heroes’. Winters died in 2011.
On the opposite side of the coin is the real life character of Herbert Sobel played by David Schwimmer in the TV series. He was known to be petty and vindictive and universally hated by men and officers alike. He was considered a poor leader who knew little about basic infantry tactics, and was more concerned with his image than the welfare of this men. However many of Easy company agree that his harsh treatment of them was instrumental in turning them into one of the best fighting units in the U.S. Army.
‘Saving Private Ryan’: Another Spielberg World War II epic, that arguable started the modern trend of officers being portrayed in a more realistic and favourable light that was carried forward to ‘Band of Brothers’ and ‘The Pacific’.
Tom Hanks deserved his Best Actor Oscar Nomination for his portrayal of the stoic and dependable Captain John H. Miller, who is an inspirational father figure to his men, yet keeping a respectful distance that allows him to maintain command. Even when everything is going wrong and his men are dying around him he stays loyal to his mission and keeps them moving forward, no matter how pointless it seems. He shows compassion, even to the Germans he is fighting and doesn’t give up despite mortally wounded and faced with a Tiger tank armed only with a Colt .45. He sacrifices everything for the life of someone he doesn’t even know.
‘We Were Soldiers’: Another film that is based on real events and contains some truly inspirational officers, from the commanding officer Hal Moore (played by Mel Gibson) who refuses to leave until all his men are accounted for and off the battlefield, to Major Bruce Crandall who won the Medal of Honor for flying his helicopter in and out of the combat zone multiple times to bring in ammunition and to extract the wounded.
Someone that deserves a special mention is the relatively unknown Rick Rescorla, a Cornishman who not only served with The Parachute Regiment, the Rhodesian Police and the Metropolitan Police, but also joined the U.S. military as an officer. Hal Moore described him as “the best platoon leader I ever saw”. He fought at La Drang during the events depicted by the film, but he and his unit were almost completely written out of the script. However this is not the prime reason you should know his name. He should be remembered for his actions on September 11th 2001, where he was the director of security for Morgan Stanley in the South Tower of the World Trade Center. He correctly predicted that the next terrorist attack could be a plane crashing into the towers, and designed emergency evacuation procedures for such an event, which were practised every three month despite friction with the company executives.
When the first plane hit the North Tower, Rescorla ignored instructions from his superiors to stay put and began evacuating employees immediately in accordance with his drills. To boost morale he began to sing British military songs, a childhood habit which he had utilised throughout his time in Vietnam to inspire his men. He was last seen heading back up the South Tower to ensure he had got everyone out, shortly before the tower collapsed. Nearly 3,000 people owe their lives to his foresight, leadership, courage and discipline.
The Truth
So it seems that there once was an endemic culture for unprofessional army officers rising through the ranks to the upper echelons, primarily caused by the purchase of commissions and the maintenance of the class divide. This image wasn’t helped by the rapidly changing nature of warfare during the early 20th century, which rendered many senior officers outmoded and obsolete despite their best intentions. Hollywood and the film industry in general has always catered for the masses, and therefore was keen to portray the difference between the elitist officers and the enlisted men. Inspirational stories of the common man doing well, whilst simultaneously showing the weaknesses of the entitled that were meant to led them through birthright, were always destined to be popular.
To counter this it seems that whenever the media draws its inspiration from real life events, the depiction of officers has always been more balanced. In the military there are both good and bad officers, just as there are good and bad soldiers. Young officers will always lack experience, but they make up for it with exuberance and bravery. A good NCO should support and mentor their officers, rather than undermine and circumvent them. For every Winters there needs to be a Malarkey. For every Miller there is a Horvath at his side throughout. Even Hal Moore had Sergeant Major Plumley and Sharpe had Harper. This is not a coincidence.
“Good young officers who become good old generals are made by good sergeants, … a combination of ill-founded self-confidence, bluff and outstanding support and guidance from a series of unforgettable sergeants allowed me to create an impression of competence.” – Major-General Lewis MacKenzie
“A new lieutenant is a precious thing…. Don’t take advantage of him, but train him, correct him when he needs it (remembering that diplomacy is part of your job description), and be ready to tell the world proudly that he’s yours. If you are ashamed of him, maybe it’s because you’ve neglected him or failed to train him properly. Do something about it. Show a genuine concern that he’s learning the right way instead of the easy way. But be careful not to undermine his authority or destroy his credibility. Remember that order and counter-order create disorder…. As the senior and most experienced NCO in the platoon, you must pass on the benefit of wisdom and experience to your platoon leader as well as to the soldiers.” – 1st Sgt Jeffrey J. Mellinge
So whenever you see an officer portrayed in the movies, have a look at the NCO by his side…
What other ‘Military Movie Clichés’ annoy you? Pictures of pregnant wife / new baby = first to die? No reloading during battles?! Inconsistent explosions? One-in-a-million shots happening 9 out of 10 times? Let us know in the comments below what you want to see and await the next edition….
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