1916: Britain's Forgotten War ·

1916: Britain’s Forgotten War

The Untold Story of the Easter Rising
2 x 50 / 1x 90 minute HD docudrama
 

The Story

They marched along tree lined Northumberland Road, cheered on by the citizens of Dublin. One thousand men of the “pals” brigade of the Sherwood Foresters. Poorly trained and poorly led they expected to be in France that morning. Perplexed at finding themselves in Dublin instead, they laughed and joked as they marched along buoyed up by the cheers of their fellow British citizens. Within hours 230 of the “pals” lay dead or wounded, their injuries inflicted by just 17 men of the rebel Irish Volunteers. This was the Battle of Mount Street Bridge, the 26th of April 1916.

This was the British army’s first major experience of urban warfare as two battalions of the Sherwood Foresters were marched into a withering fire of well defended enemy positions. At the height of the First World War, just months before the carnage of the Somme, the soldiers met their fate, not at the hands of the German Army in France, but during 5 days of street fighting against fellow British citizens in the second city of the British Empire, Dublin.

Many of the troops were only half way through their training. The young men of the Sherwood Foresters were not supposed to die on British soil. They are part of the hidden story of a forgotten conflict lost in the chaos of the First World War; their names are not remembered on any monument, their deaths unrecorded in the official war records, their sacrifice forgotten.

1916 Britain’s Forgotten War is a 1x90/2x50 drama documentary that tells the story of these men, caught up in a conflict they did not understand. We will capture the lives of the young men of the Nott’s & Derbyshire Regiment, the “Sherwood Foresters” who fought in Dublin and the Irish rebels who faced them. The British soldiers were the last of the Great War volunteers, they knew that there was a strong chance they would die in France but to die in Dublin would never have crossed their minds. Their opponents were the rebel Irish Volunteers, weekend warriors, many of whom had no clear idea of the carnage and destruction they were about to face.

1916: Britain’s Forgotten War is a dark story which does not sit comfortably with the traditional lionised imagery of what transpired during the rising. The first hand account of the British soldier, Irish Volunteer and civilian are interwoven, giving a fresh perspective on these key events and challenging some traditional views of what took place. We have unearthed long forgotten first-hand historical accounts of both soldiers and civilians which will provide the basis for much of the narrative. This drama documentary is unique, with the voices of the protagonists on both sides and the tragic civilians caught in the middle being heard for the first time.

It is time now to remember the soldiers of Britain’s forgotten war who died as bravely as any soldier that fell in the trenches.

The Style

This drama documentary will be shot on Red Camera HD16:9 and will be master graded to give the colours a dark muted look. Using actual first hand accounts, our characters will talk to camera as if been interviewed after the event and these sequences will be intercut with the drama, to add to the documentary “feel”. We will mimic the Observation Documentary style used in the current reporting on the Afghan conflict to give the drama a resonance for a modern audience.

Existing archive will be used at the beginning and end of the programme to illustrate the major historic moments and establish the background story to the events leading up to the rising of 1916, with the scripted drama elements depicting the key events in the rising and the actions of individuals.

The story is built around eye witness accounts and the post war writings of the men and women caught up in the events of Easter 1916. Actors will play the role of the soldiers, civilians and rebels of Easter 1916. Quoting directly from both the Bureau of Military History and the Royal Commission statements, we will bring to life these long dead participants of the rising.

1916: Britain’s Forgotten War, tells the story of the rising through the eyes of the ordinary people caught up in the very real drama that played out on the streets of Dublin in April 1916.

1916: Britain’s Forgotten War, brings the viewer to the centre of what was happening to experience the heroism of the doomed, the futility of the deaths of so many on both sides of the conflict and the tragedy that befell the people of North King Street. Our drama documentary perfectly fits the zeitgeist of the present day, when dislocated soldiers are often fighting and dying in a place they should not and did not expect to be, unsure of who the enemy is, and occasionally taking revenge on the civilian population.