For you, Tommy

On a recent trip to the British Film Institute, I recently came across this final scene, cut from every single British First World War film or television miniseries ever made.

(A cafe)

LIEUTENANT SHERBORNE

This Schnaps is really not very good at all sir. I don't know why we came all the way to Berlin for it.

 CAPTAIN CHARTERHOUSE

Nor do I, Sherborne. But I promised, just before we went over the top that last time, that when the war was over we'd go for a Schnapps in Berlin, and I am a man of my word.

 SHERBORNE

Ah yes, now I remember. Sorry if I seem a little distant, and I apologise in advance, in case I lose the thread and glaze over once or twice.

 CHARTERHOUSE

Understood. It's a pity none of the men made it.

SHERBORNE

God bless them. Braithwaite, with his "ee by gum". Atkins, charming the prostitutes with his pearly cap and his cheeky Lambeth Walk. Taffy and McTavish, making fun of each other in between saving each other's lives.

CHARTERHOUSE

That's the wonderful thing about the Staffordshires. It's an equal opportunities regiment. We make sure we represent every identifiable regional character, and for a regiment nominally recruited from a single English county that's no easy trick.

SHERBORNE

It just got so wearing, watching them die one by one like that.

CHARTERHOUSE

Although it did, ultimately, give me a rare chance to show my heart of gold. I'd been saving it up for just before the last one finally passed out.

SHERBORNE

That's true. Even by January 1915, you'd already been hardened and brutalised. Why was that?

CHARTERHOUSE

I don't like to talk about it.

SHERBORNE

[after glazing over momentarily] Oh, one final thing sir: how did we win this war?

CHARTERHOUSE

Pluck and general Britishness of course.

SHERBORNE

I appreciate that, sir, but we spent the whole time doing one of two things. Either we'd sit in the trench, sometimes go on patrol, and get picked off one by one. Or we'd all rush out of the trench blowing whistles, and get mown down like dandelions. I rather hoped that the Germans might rush out of their trench for a change, and give us a go at mowing them down, but it never happened. It didn't seem to be going our way at all.

CHARTERHOUSE

Funny thing there. The two Germans we finally saw and captured at the end, because they'd run out of bullets...

SHERBORNE

Fritz and Kaiser Bill?

CHARTERHOUSE

Yes, them. Well, they really were the only two Germans in the whole thing. Now, how about we get back to Blighty and marry each other's sisters?