Corrected entry: A soldier says "Nazi bastards!" The Nazi regime didn't exist in 1917, therefore this makes zero sense. (00:30:28)
Corrected entry: The soldier fires twelve rounds (two at the pilot and ten at the sniper) without ever reloading the magazine. A Lee and Enfield 303 has only 10 rounds per clip. Also the bayonet has miraculously disappeared from the end of the rifle when he crosses the broken down bridge, although we never see him take it off.
Correction: First of all, he fires 9 rounds in total, 2 at the pilot and 7 at the sniper so he had 1 round left when he lost it. Second of all he takes the bayonet off when going through the farm house before he enters the truck.
But his magazine is only a 5 round magazine.
The Short Magazine Lee Enfield rifle had a fixed 10 round magazine, loaded with two five round clips.
Corrected entry: The woman describes the baby as "mon fils" although it is a daughter and should be "ma fille".
Correction: The woman said "une fille" answering his question "what is it"? This means "a girl." She then said it wasn't her baby.
Corrected entry: When Schofield leaves the truck at Écoust due to the bridge being out, he's told that the nearest intact bridge is 6 miles. However, when he is later going down-river, an intact bridge can be seen in the background.
Corrected entry: Schofield falls into the river and is completely drenched in water, including all of his clothes. But just maybe an hour or so later, he takes out of the letter the General has given him for McKenzie and it's completely dry and readable.
Correction: His tin kept important items, like the letter and photographs, dry.
His tin kept his photos. Schofield put the letter only inside his jacket pocket after taking it from his dead friend.
He first put the letter in his jacket and later moved it to the tin.
At a later point (in the truck ride I believe), it shows him unfolding the letter and placing it in the tin.
He puts it in the tin at some point. If I remember correctly in the truck with the soldiers just after Blake died.
While Sco is in the transport truck, he moves the letter to the tin case with his photos.
Corrected entry: The boots issued to British soldiers were hobnail boots. When he crossed the broken bridge you can see they are not hobnails.
Correction: You can see the hobnails both on the bridge and when Schofield leaves the river.
Corrected entry: At the hospital towards the end, the doctor tells someone to go to "triage." The hospital is British. The term triage is French and comes from the Napoleonic wars and was coined by two French/Belgian doctors. The French were using the term triage during WW1 with plenty of photos to back this up. There is no evidence that the British or even the USA were using the term until about 1960 when it is mentioned by a Baltimore based medical facility. I can find no mention of its use in either WW2 or the Korean War. It only after this time that its usage becomes more widely used in the English speaking world.
Correction: The US Emergency Medicine Journal states that "triage" was introduced to the UK and US in the early 1900's. It was a term definitely used in WW2 and Korea by those and many more nations.
Correction: "Triàge" as a French word was already in use in Britain and America, especially in the wool industry. But medical triàge in France was developed before the Napoleonic Wars, the wars just created a different method of triàge. The use of triàge as a medical term was recorded during the American Civil War (source: Lorenzo RAD, Porter R. Tactical emergency care military and operational out‐of‐Hospital medicine).
Corrected entry: All the Germans in the movie are cartoon-cutout fanatics: the rescued pilot stabs to death his English teacher, the German stragglers try to kill the lone British soldier, rather than avoiding him In order to survive, as would have been more probable. By 1917, soldiers on both sides were tired of war, and not driven by some ideological fury (as Germans inculcated with Nazi ideology were in WW2). Pilots especially had a code of honour, on both sides, and treated their downed colleagues with respect. That is not to say the Germans (particularly the Prussians) weren't brutal in battle. Most were conscripts and - like their British counterparts - desperate for the war to end after three years of fierce fighting, and countless casualties.
Correction: You are talking about 2 German soldiers that are encountered in the movie and say they are supposed to act like all German soldiers are supposed to. That's not a factual error, the 2 soldiers can behave however they want.
Corrected entry: The entire premise of the movie is flawed. If the General needed to get an order to Col McKenzie, the quickest and surest means would have been to drop a message from an aircraft. In fact, the field beyond the aid station at the end of the movie would have been perfectly suitable for an aircraft of the time to land and hand-deliver a message the day before the assault.
Correction: The field beyond the aid station at the end of the movie was also in a prime position to be bombarded by enemy artillery. Regardless, this is not how messages were sent during WWI.
Corrected entry: When one character floats downriver and eventually comes to a literal log-jam and swims/climbs over some corpses, there is one 'body' in particular that is obviously plastic/inflatable.
Correction: None of the props were plastic. That's what a bloated corpse looks like.
Corrected entry: When Dean-Charles Chapman (Blake) salutes Colin Firth, his sleeve slides back and you see a gold chain with a clasp. Pretty sure, but not an expert, that men didn't wear those back then. Belgian and French troops had identity bracelets, but they were not gold. British troops had standard dog tags on a leather thong around their necks.
Correction: I did a bit of research, and found nothing to indicate that a man couldn't wear some sort of bracelet in the early 20th century. Being "pretty sure" doesn't make it a mistake.
Correction: British soldiers were issued red and green asbestos identity tags, the green to be left with the body and the red to be removed (this is correctly shown when Schofield hands a red disc to Blake's brother.) Metal identity bracelets were privately available and popular during the Great War, especially among sailors.
Correction: British soldiers wore an ID tag on a chain bracelet on their wrists.
Only Belgian and French troops had identity bracelets. British troops had standard dog tags on a leather thong around their necks.
Minimal research shows that although the official dog tags were worn around their necks, many servicemen wore an unofficial metal ID bracelet since they feared asbestos fiber tags were not durable enough.
Correction: He says "Dirty bastards." He says that because they boobytrapped their bunker.
lionhead