(2) So at the opening scene, Schofield opens his eyes as Blake is given the order and then closes them again. I always though it was him actually hoping Blake wouldn't pick him. I just love how he's portrayed as this pretty efficient soldier (even as a leader?) but just doesn't want to be. Doesn't even want to go on a mission. Like his trauma is so all encompassing it took over any sense of duty. Couldn't really say it right in english tbh.
i don’t know if tumblr has done that thing again where it eats the first message someone sends or if this is the second part of that other ask you sent me that’s still in my inbox, but EITHER WAY! i love this so much.
even though i believe something different, that he was closing his eyes so blake didn’t feel pressured to choose him if there was the slim chance it actually was something nice, i am absolutely in love with the way you’ve written this and the idea that he didn’t just close them because he didn’t want to be picked, but because his trauma had literally overruled his natural honour. i am in love.
because scho was absolutely written as a leader, not least in the scene with the bogged truck: he was older than the vast majority of the boys and he was an NCO in charge of a small section, but even if he wasn’t, i firmly believe scho would still have seen himself as someone older and therefore responsible for them - responsible to protect them and give his life for them if need be, and that’s the one thing that he didn’t lose to his trauma. even if he became a quiet recluse on the fringes of the battalion, he still watched over them.
it may have been an irrational burden of responsibility that he placed upon his own shoulders - he was a lance corporal, no one had asked it of him; it was barely expected. and before the somme, he may very well have been different. but when he survived and so many different, when he came out of it hollow and saw all these new, bright-eyed, innocent boys jumping off trucks and into the mud of the front for the very first time, it became his life’s duty, his sole reason for being: to protect them. even when they didn’t know he was doing so. even when no one thanked him for it. he couldn’t take care of himself, he couldn’t heal himself or any of the boys he’d seen die around him. but he could silently watch over the ones who were left.
and i love the idea of him getting to a point where even that reason for being becomes blurred and faded, where the trauma takes over even that - and he’s so empty, so frightened, so numb, that he can’t face the thought of being picked for something, even if that means one of the bright-eyed boys has to go, even if it’s selfish and he loathes himself for it.
because even if trauma has robbed him of his mission to watch over all those boys, even if he’s given all that up in the face of grey, bone-deep fatigue, it hasn’t robbed him of his desperate need to watch over blake. blake has come to encompass all those boys for him - the ones he couldn’t save and the ones still living. he’s come to represent all of them, and slowly scho’s focus shifts from devoting his life to devoting his life to blake, for as long as the war still aches on (and after). he’d let the whole battalion fall before a machine gun if it meant he could protect blake. it becomes his quiet, selfish obsession, the thing that gets him through each day even more than the photos in his pocket.
