❄Colin Firth & Taron Edgerton read Rudyard Kipling's letters to his 17-year-old son

Dear Father, Here we are, billeted in a splendid little village, nestling among the downs about twenty miles from the firing line. It's an awfully nice place. Typical French village, about the size of Burwash Wheel. I have the great luck of being billeted with the Mayor, who is also the schoolmaster in his house. I'm awfully comfortable, having a feather bed with sheets, and a sitting room for the three of us, the whole place being absolutely spotlessly clean. The old Mayor is a topping old fellow, who can't speak a word of English, but the kindest chap you ever met, and awfully funny. He possesses a very pretty daughter, Marcelle, who is awfully nice, and we get on very well. The old lady, too, is A1, and they'll do anything for me. The only disadvantage is that there's very little food, and what there is, is very second rate. All the other regiments have gutted the place, and one can't get a cigarette for love or money. Our food in the mess is mostly bully beef and jam. I can't, of course, tell you where this place is, but it's quite near the place I told you I thought we'd go. The country's looking awfully nice, with all the crops yet to get in. We haven't had any letters since we left, but are hoping they'll arrive tomorrow. Motorbike dispatch riders abound here, tearing along at fearsome speeds, and big lorries go all out. How goes old Vincent? The French here are the dirtiest I ever saw. Their idea of hotels is simply unspeakable. The men talking French are screamingly funny, and they manage to get on very well with the French girls. As we have to censor all the letters at our platoon, we get some very funny things. Also some rather pathetic ones. The men are sticking it wonderfully, considering they haven't had a square meal since they left England. The idea is, I believe, that we stay here for a fortnight before we go up on the trenches, but one can never tell from one moment to the next what's going to happen. Please send me a pair of my ordinary pyjamas, that stiff hairbrush. Grayson has discovered a French girl who rather resembles Gabby in appearance, and very much so in morals, so he's quite happy. You might send me one of those letter block letters, and envelopes all in one. Please remember me to Gerry. Much love to yourself. John. August 25th, 1915. Dear old man, as I leave tomorrow at a perfectly ungodly hour, in order that there may be time at the railway station to examine the passports, I write my little daily letter to you now. I hope to be in Folkestone by six o'clock tomorrow evening, but this is a deceitful world, and there have been several delays in the channel boats. I expect the submarines are on the rampage again. Yesterday's train went off crowded to the lee scuppers, if that's the right word, on account of no boat going the day before. I've been working all day at my accounts of my travels and saying pretty things about the French army. I really think that they are excellent, and I expect as time goes on, you will be of that opinion too. Really, there isn't much difference between the way in which the officers of the English and French armies look at things. I was talking the other night, somewhere in France, with a delightful old general. We were miles from a town, and the German and French searchlights were playing all around us, and I asked him if he knew who was his opposite number on the Hun side. Quite well, he said. I've known him for months. He told me his name. He's an old man, and I think he has gout, and every now and again, I keep him awake all night with my big guns. He always loses his temper. He gets excited and begins to fire away all around the landscape. I should say he cost Germany a lot of ammunition. Now, isn't that very much as an English officer would talk? 11 p.m. Just back from an idiotic cinema theater at the Ambassadors. There were lots of faked pictures of the war, and the only funny turn was about a kid who was spanked for throwing stones into a river where a man was fishing. So he went back to his father's caravan, who was a gypsy, got a crocodile skin, and fastened it over his dog. Well, as you can imagine, the sight of a sky-blue crocodile on four legs running at him like hell rather upset the fisherman. And then the dog crocodile got loose all over the country, and the usual upsets and panics followed. Thursday morning, 9 a.m. Just off for Boulogne, and I've just received a copy of your letter of the 20th describing your billet with the mayor and the maid Marcel and the immoral luck of Grayson and local Gabby. I'm sorry about the food, but Bateman's will do its best to supplement. You ought to get a whole lot of letters from me when you arrive, as I've written to you regularly. And now for the Gard du Nord and a hell of a crush at the station. Ever, Dad. Dear Father, just a hurried line as we start off tonight. The front-line trenches are nine miles off from here, so it won't be a very heavy, long march. This is the great effort to break through and end the war. The guns have been going deafeningly all day without a single stop. We have to push through at all costs so we won't have much time in the trenches, which is great luck. Funny to think one will be in the thick of it tomorrow. One's first experience of shell fire, not in the trenches, but in the open. See, this is one of the advantages of a flying division. You have to keep moving. We marched 18 miles last night in the pouring wet. Came down in sheets steadily. They are staking a tremendous lot on this great advancing movement as if it succeeds, the war won't go on for long. You have no idea what enormous issues depend on the next few days. This will be my last letter, most likely, for some time, as we won't get any time for writing this next week. But I'll try and send field postcards. Well, so long, all dears. Dear love, John. November the 12th, 1950. Dear Lionel, Our boy was reported wounded and missing since September the 27th. The Battle of Loos. And we've heard nothing official since that date. But all we can pick up from the men points to the fact that he is dead and probably wiped out by shell fire. However, he had his heart's desire and he didn't have a long time in the trenches. The guards advanced on a front of two platoons for each battalion. He led the right platoon over a mile of open ground in the face of shell and machine gun fire and was dropped at the furthest limit of the advance, having emptied his pistol into a house full of German machine guns. His commanding officer and his company commander told me how he led them, and the wounded have confirmed it. He was a senior ensign, though only 18 years and six weeks. He'd worked like the devil for a year at Whalley and knew his Irish to the ground. He was reported on as one of the best subletons and was a gym instructor and a signaller. It was a short life. I'm sorry that all the year's work ended in that one afternoon. But lots of people are in our position and it's something to have bred a man. The wife was standing it wonderfully, though she of course clings to the bare hope of his being a prisoner. I've seen what shells can do. And I don't. We are pounding on in our perfectly insane English fashion. The boys at the front are cheering us off. We've got rather a lot of artillery and the Hun is being killed daily. The old story. All the victories were on Napoleon's side all through and yet he didn't somehow get further than St Helena. Now, my dear old man, try to look after yourself a bit and keep fit. We've a hell of a year ahead of us, but after that I think we'll be through. Ever. Roger.