The Lost Battalion (2001 film)

Did You Know?

• The film was nominated for three 2002 Emmy Awards: Outstanding Single Camera Picture Editing; Outstanding Single Camera Sound Mixing; and Outstanding Sound Editing.
• It won the Motion Picture Sound Editors award for Best Sound Editing in Television (Effects).
• It won the Christopher Award for achievement in Television and Cable.

Plot

In October 1918, Major General Robert Alexander ordered Major Charles Whittlesey to take about 550 soldiers from the 77th Infantry Division into the Argonne forest and stop a German attack. Alexander saw Whittlesey as a stuck-up New York lawyer with too much education, and viewed his men—mostly poor immigrants and working-class guys from the Lower East Side—as expendable. Whittlesey’s officers included Captain George McMurty, a veteran of the Rough Riders, and Lieutenant James Leak, a green officer from Texas.

The battalion pushed through the German lines, expecting backup from American and French units on their sides, but those forces had been driven back, leaving Whittlesey’s men cut off. Captain Nelson Holderman’s riflemen joined them, but every messenger sent to headquarters vanished. Whittlesey relied on carrier pigeons to talk to Alexander, who told them to keep moving despite exposed flanks. American artillery accidentally killed several of their own men until Whittlesey used a pigeon to call for a ceasefire.

The Germans then attacked the dazed Americans, who fought them off in brutal hand-to-hand combat. For days, the battalion held against repeated counterattacks, running low on supplies—they reused bandages and took food from dead soldiers. The Germans captured Lieutenant Leak and a wounded man, then tried to negotiate a surrender. Leak told a polite German officer that his New York gangsters would never quit.

The other captive brought Whittlesey a German note urging surrender to spare lives; Whittlesey tossed the white flag back toward the enemy.

Reception

The film has received generally positive reviews, praised for its historical accuracy, cast, and intense action. Military.com wrote that the script is compelling on several levels, noting that Whittlesey, the bookish-looking New York lawyer turned soldier, is the Everyman Warrior viewers enjoy identifying with, and that the movie offers another take on the classic underdog versus Goliath theme, with the underdog prevailing. BeyondHollywood.com praised the visuals and cinematography for creating a war movie suitable for television without compromising on intensity and action, stating that the film gets around the problem of comparisons to Saving Private Ryan by being based entirely on a true story and having excellent cinematography by Jonathan Freeman.

The review described the movie as frenetic, chaotic, and completely breathtaking to look at, filled with brutal and personal action that gives immediacy and a sense of claustrophobia, with trench warfare coming alive in bloody color and pale brown dirt.