This is one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite war movies, and it is exactly why all those alpha, sigma, raw egg weirdos know nothing about women, war, or what makes a man a man
The men start the clip hardened. It is 1917, three years into the slaughterhouses of the trenches. The French Army is at its breaking point, they just had some of their own men executed for mutiny
They start jeering the German girl, she is an object and they are at their basest
But then she starts to sing. It is a German song called Der treue Husar (the faithful hussar), who learns his love is sick and dying and tries to make it back to her in time.
The French soldiers don’t understand the words, but a woman’s voice is a woman’s voice
It does what it always does: it completes men, and reminds them that beauty exists in the world beyond the horror they fight through. Her voice literally transforms them from barbarians back into sons, husbands, and fathers… and in the end, back into soldiers again
What is cool about this scene is that it was filmed in 1957, and the French Army extras were actually German police officers. That means most of the older ones were veterans of WW2. They knew what it was like at the front, far from those you loved.
Because soldiers at the front think about women. A lot. They think about their mother’s cooking, or their wives and daughters. They think about that smoke show who got away and the ones that didn’t.
It means something that in the most masculine environment possible, we still think of them. Even more so.
And no. Women are not perfect. For every happy thought there is someone at the MWR in Talil learning his woman is sleeping with her “friend” on her summer abroad.
But to deny what makes men men. What makes us fight harder, and longer, and pushes us to even greater heights is to fail to understand manhood at all.
It is an effort to intentionally weaken both men, and society. To isolate them from what can make them great.
No, you can’t let women control you, no more than you can let anyone control you. But if you only live for yourself, and ignore every siren’s call then you are no man at all.
Be stronger, be better, be complete.
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