The Lost Battalion

I'd covered before the Sabaton song, "The Lost Battallion", but had not realized that that particular battle had been immortalized in film.

The film transitions to France with a mixture of establishing shots filmed previously by the U. S. Signal Corps. We next see our characters enjoying letters from home before the start of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. Once the offensive starts the men of the 77th division are shown in their trench waiting for the order to go over the top. The order is given; rushing into no man’s land and fight hand-to-hand once they reach the German trench on the other side.

When the Meuse-Argonne Offensive starts an animation shows the events of Oct 2nd and how the 1-308th gets encircled. The animation uses actual maps and documents from the event.

The film returns to our character trapped in “The Pocket”. These scenes were shot on location in France in the actual ravine known as “The Pocket”. The very same ground where just a few months earlier these events happened. Along with the actors of the movie, the veterans who we saw at the beginning of the film, survivors of “The Lost Battalion”, return to reenact their heroic deeds for the film.

Read the whole thing over at Rolling Boxcars.