The Lost Battalion Analysis

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The Lost Battalion When word that a detachment from New York's own 77th Division had been surrounded by Germans in the Argonne Forest leaked out, a wily editor saw an opportunity to sell more papers and immediately dubbed the unit "The Lost Battalion." Over the next week, as the men held out in the face of overwhelming odds, the story of the "Lost Battalion" became the most widely reported episode of the war. It hardly mattered that the battalion wasn't a battalion at all and certainly wasn't lost. The group of some 500 men was made up of companies from two different battalions of the 154th Infantry Brigade, and headquarters knew the exact coordinates of the unit's location from the beginning of the siege. What did matter was that this group of determined men made a gallant stand reminiscent of the Alamo and Little Big Horn, and this one had a happier ending. In a general offensive against German positions in the Argonne Forest on October 1, only this makeshift battalion managed to advance. With its flanks thus exposed, the unit awoke on the morning of October 2 to find itself surrounded. The unit's commander, an unassuming New York lawyer (Major Charles W. Whittlesey), held his…show more content…
An A&E original movie, The Lost Battalion first aired in 2001. Directed by Russell Mulcahy (The Shadow) and starring Rick Schroder (NYPD Blue) as Major Whittlesey, the movie employs the action techniques that proved so effective in Saving Private Ryan -- e.g., hand-held cameras focused tightly on the action. Here too, the effect is to render the horror of combat in graphic and relentless images. The cast, especially Schroder, is solid and the screenplay is serviceable. Schroder bears a striking resemblance to the real Major Whittlesey and plays him as the citizen-soldier facing -- and ultimately defying -- overwhelming odds that he

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