The Return of Paul Jarrett
The Return of Paul Jarrett (Written, produced, and directed by Clark Jarrett, 1998) This extraordinary, multi-award-winning documentary belongs in a World War I trilogy including All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and The Guns of August (1965). The remembrances of WW I survivors would enhance the accounts in Paul Fussell’s The Norton Book of Modern War (1991).
This multi-tiered story starts with a grandson’s love for and fascination with his grandfather, Paul Jarrett. A youth’s question “Were you in World War I?” triggered a series of recollections that Clarks Jarrett began to record.
Paul Jarrett, a month after America entered World War I, enlisted and went to OCS. In France, as part of the Rainbow Division, he was selected for special training as a hand-to-hand combat expert. His mission was to go beyond enemy lines and find and capture German prisoners. His professional tools were a lethal trench knife and a Colt revolver. Lt. Jarrett described these raiding parties as ‘belly button to belly button.’ Thus his captain dubbed him the ‘belly button gang.’
As a platoon leader, Lt. Jarrett was involved in the first all-American military offense. On May 3, 1918, he was involved in an assault on German positions near Neuvillier les Badonviller. His platoon suffered casualties during heavy fighting. Lt. Jarrett earned various medals, including three Purple Hearts, before Armistice Day.
Grandson Clark, a high school history teacher and budding filmographer, dreamed of accompanying his grandfather back to the site of his WW I experiences. Finally, he saved enough money to take his 93-year-old grandfather to France in 1992. They returned a year later to a festive reception by local villagers, culminated by naming a street Rue Paul H. Jarrett.
During these visit Paul recounted some of his recollections, as he sought to identify ‘No Man’s Land’ amidst the now-flourishing farm fields. His telling of his story is supplemented by interviewers with nearly a dozen WW I military survivors,
American, British, and Austrian. Their descriptions of living and fighting in ‘No Man’s Land’ provide insights into war (“War-killed or be killed”) that provided a bottoms-up view of what others glorified as The Great War:
- “Frozen boots. Blood in the snow. Awaken to see rats gnawing at your frozen boots.”
- “Mustard gas—it was yellow and you could see it. You could smell chlorine gas. Another gas was almost undetectable. You’d hear the distinctive sound of a gas bomb. It was soft and would crumple.”
- “They would start shooting Whiz Bangs (Austrian 88s). They would go whiz, then bang. Heavy artillery got there before you heard it.”
- “Trenches were indescribable; Rats-plenty; body lice and cooties; dank smell of bodies.”
- “After seeing my first body, it didn’t bother me afterwards. There were burial squads and we didn’t think any of it.”
- “Terrible feeling—you didn’t know if you would make it through the night.”
- “The lieutenant lectured us that some of us wouldn’t make it, and then he didn’t come back.”
The documentary does not dwell on the meaning of war. It provided a broad overview of how World War I commenced and that the British and French were mired in trench warfare against the Germans for over three years, before the Americans arrived. Since General John Pershing wanted to maintain an American identity, the raw Americans were trained with Allied troops, before forming American battle units. Thus the Americans, including Lt. Paul Jarrett, moved into trenches that previously had been occupied by French troops.
Upon Paul’s return, the May battle for a devastated Neuvillier was seen through his eyes and an old Frenchman who, at age six, had experienced the assault. Paul, in his nineties, walked the battlefield and, at times with teary eyes, recalled what he and his comrades had experienced. Especially touching was when he entered concrete German bunkers and discussed how these had commanded the field across which the Americans mounted their assault.
When he was 101, Paul was awarded the French Legion of Honor, France’s highest military award. This had been initiated by a letter from Neuvillier to the president of France. Paul graciously accepted it for all the soldiers who had fought
in France. He then spoke of the solidarity and friendship that existed between soldiers and the brave citizens of Neuvillier, requesting that the medal be returned to Neuvillier upon his death.
For me the most remarkable aspect of this extraordinary documentary was the matter-of-fact manner in which survivors described what it was like to experience the day-to-day trench life of World War I. They, like Paul, are the true heroes of war.
