IN the last years of WWI so many officers had been killed or injured that the Army faced a crisis of command. And many of the dead were the products of public schools. More than 500 of the nearly 2,500 former pupils of Winchester College who served their country lost their lives (www.winchestercollegeatwar.com). The story nationwide is told in Public Schools in the Great War by Anthony Seldon and David Walsh, who challenge such productions as the 1960s Oh! What a Lovely War and the 1980s TV series Blackadder Goes Forth. In a bid to set historical scholarship against popular entertainment, they point to Journey’s End by R.C. Sherriff, a play based on personal experience on the front line. Whatever the reality, there was definitely a shortage of officers in the later years of the war, which required taking other ranks ‘from the trenches’.
more heartbreak as the two victims of friday s terrorist attack on london bridge were remembered and new video and eyewitness accounts emerge nbc s bill neely is there tonight. reporter: grief at vigils today the girlfriend of one of those murdered breaking down. the two victims of friday s rampage had tried to help the man who killed them, hoping to rehabilitate convicted terrorist usman khan he might have killed more, but a group of heroes using a fire extinguisher and a whale tusk tackled him before police opened fire a california professor saw the killer strike. i saw people die. i saw things that i m never going to be able to unsee. reporter: the killer s own lawyer says he fo that he d reformed even a decade ago. i ain t no terrorist. reporter: but he was convicted of plotting to bomb the u.s. embassy, then released early britain s leader now using this as an election weapon.