Passchendaele [2008, Canada, melodrama, drama, war, DVD5]

1917. Back home in Calgary after fighting at Vimy Ridge, Sgt. Michael Dunne is now working in the army recruitment office. This situation was his only viable option as he went AWOL in being shell-shocked by his experience in battle, especially in being decorated for the brutal killing of a German soldier, and it was either this job or go through a court-martial for desertion which would have eventually led to his execution in the certainty of being found guilty despite that decoration. Major Dobson-Hughes, his direct superior at the office, seems intent on making Michael's life miserable, Dobson-Hughes who has an idealized view of the conflict as one never having seen battle and thus who would arguably have preferred to see Michael court-martialed. Despite this situation, Michael, doing whatever to accomplish his goal, decides to reenlist under an assumed name to serve in the same regiment as and thus look out for David Mann, the younger brother of his girlfriend, Sarah Mann, a nurse who he met while recuperating from his battle injuries in the military hospital in Calgary. While David has a necessary medical exemption as an asthmatic, he, with a romanticized view of war in wanting to show that he is a real man and not a sickly boy, pressed to enlist as a condition by his fiancee Cassie Walker's father, Dr. Walker, for marriage, Michael, in turn, knowing that Dr. Walker's own goal is to get David out of Cassie's life in the expectation that David will never come back from battle alive. One set of issues for Dr. Walker in not wanting the marriage to happen is the discovery that Sarah and David are ethnic Germans and that their now deceased father fought for Germany at Vimy Ridge. Michael and David's regiment is eventually sent to fight at Passchendaele, what ends up being one of the bloodiest battles in the war. The question is how Michael will react this time around in battle under this new circumstance with David under his wings.