Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Jarrett Cook
Prince
19 April 2016
World War 2 shows up in more media than any other war. Because of how long and how
much went on during the war, there is so much to go over. The movies and books that have been
made number in the hundreds, and often times there will be several about the same events. As
time goes on and different people write about it, how events happened will change as personal
bias is added. In most American movies, it is clear that the Allies, more specifically the
Americans, are the heroes of the battles. Despite initial neutrality in the war and a general lack
of experience from American troops, movies often show the American troops as the best
combatants, beating all of their enemies. The only time they would be portrayed as losing is to
make the viewer feel some sort of tension and excitement. Movies also run into inconsistencies
with what weapons or vehicles are shown. Some weapons might be more recognizable than
others, meaning an audience could relate to it more easily. Recognizable does not always mean
more accurate. These inconsistencies have an impact on the movie experience for people who
can recognize them, so the same should be true for a game about World War 2. Since games like
Call of Duty 2: Big Red One, released in 2005,1 are based around actual events, specifically the
1st Infantry Division of the United States army and the roll they played in World War 2, accuracy
Call of Duty 2: Big Red One starts off near Maubeuge, France, on September 7th, 1944. The
player is in an American Control Post, surrounded by other American troops and his own squad,
1 Call of Duty 2: Big Red One (PS2 Version), Treyarch (Activision, 2005).
Cook 2
the Big Red One. Eventually, a German Junkers Ju87 aircraft, nicknamed Stukas,2 crashes
near the characters, and a battle commences. The player and his squad storm through German
troops in the town, and the level is over when one of your allies is shot and the player passes out
after a mortar strike. This battle serves as the tutorial level of the game, and is of little
consequence in the actual war. Because of how many troops were in the Big Red One, it is safe
The game then jumps into a flashback level set in Oran, Algeria on November 8th, 1942
during the invasion of Northern Africa1. The unit then moves through Northern Africa as part of
the first American campaign against the Axis Powers.3 The game never mentions any sort of
training, however, the American troops did receive training in the United Kingdom before
invading Northern Africa.4 Because of Operation Torch, the codename for the invasion of
Northern Africa, American forces were able to force the Afrika Korps to surrender, which is
something the game and book both clearly show. The game does not, however, play through any
of the battles after that. Despite the documentary footage being shown after this battle, it glazes
over the battles from Gafsa to Bedja-Mateur,5 which were arguably more important in seizing
Northern Africa from the Italian army that was stationed there. In the game, other than being
told that you are fighting Germans, it is never overtly stated who you are fighting. Throughout
the entire campaign, it is always the Germans that the player is fighting against, never the Italians
2 Call of Duty 2: Big Red One (PS2 Version), Treyarch (Activision, 2005).
3 History, Society of the 1st Infantry Division, accessed April 18, 2016,
https://www.1stid.org/historyindex.php
4 James Wheeler, The Big Red One: Americas Legendary 1st Infantry Division from
World War I to Desert Storm (University Press of Kansas: 2007), 138-140.
5 James Wheeler, The Big Red One: Americas Legendary 1st Infantry Division from
World War I to Desert Storm (University Press of Kansas: 2007), 184-214.
Cook 3
or anyone else. This shows that there is a definite bias in how history is portrayed in the game.
That applies to the Allied Troops as well, because the player never actually sees any British
troops in the game, they are only mentioned in the cutscene that plays after the last mission in
Northern Africa. Some of the cutscenes, this one included, in Call of Duty 2: Big Red One are
unique because they are film clips that were actually filmed during World War 2 from the
Military Channel. This same concept was applied to the 1980 film The Big Red One, which was
directed by an actual soldier, Samuel Fuller, who was in the Big Red One.6
The next set of missions in the game take place Sicily, which is part of the south of Italy.
They again fight through waves of enemies before securing Sicily from the German forces. The
Italian Campaign feels to be shorter than the other parts of the game, which is appropriate
considering the Big Red One was only in Sicily from May to August of 1943 before moving on.7
The player is fighting mostly against Germans enemies, but there are a few Italian enemies as
well. Despite not being a long part in the war, it was important to break in to Italy because it was
a key shipping route, seeing an estimated 1.8 million tons of shipments per year, and taking
Sicily could lead to Italy surrendering much more easily.8 After completing this set of missions,
there is no mention of the shipping routes or anything of that sort. It gives the impression that
the battles are only American troops bravely fighting their way into Europe, knocking on Hitlers
door, an impression that is backed up by the lack of any almost any Allied Troops other than the
6 Marsha Orgeron, The Most Profound Shock: Traces of the Holocaust in Sam
Fullers Verboten! (1959) and The Big Red One (1980), Historical Journal of Film,
Radio, and Television 27 no. 4 (2007): 482-491.
7 James Wheeler, The Big Red One: Americas Legendary 1st Infantry Division from
World War I to Desert Storm (University Press of Kansas: 2007), 227-258.
8 James Wheeler, The Big Red One: Americas Legendary 1st Infantry Division from
World War I to Desert Storm (University Press of Kansas: 2007), 227.
Cook 4
Americans ever shown in combat in the game, and the documentary cutscenes unsurprisingly
The final set of missions in Call of Duty 2: Big Red One are part of the invasion of the
mainland of Europe, starting with Omaha Beach at Normandy, and ending with the Seigfried
Line just beyond the German border.9 Normandy is an iconic moment in world history, and it
would be a reasonable assumption that Call of Duty 2: Big Red One would include it in some
form. In the game, the player and his squad are under enemy fire as they try to make it to land.
Despite losing several American boats on the way in, the boat the player is on safely makes it on
to the shore before advancing up the beach. The in-game version of Normandy feels
significantly calmer than one would have come to expect from the infamous D-Day. Despite
being able to hear near-constant gunfire, the amount of enemies on the beach is underwhelming
given deadly this event was in real life, with a nearly 90% casualty rate in companies.10 Maybe it
has to do with how difficult it would have been for the player, or how difficult it would have
been for the game system to process everything, but the number of people, both Allies and Axis,
on Omaha Beach at Normandy was significantly smaller than it was in reality. The number of
enemies thickens out as the player and his squad pushes up past the beach and trenches, and the
later missions feel like they have more enemies than the in-game Omaha Beach did. There is
also no mention of how scared or unprepared the American troops were, or how they shot down
their own low-flying aircrafts that acted as spotters.11 Capturing Normandy was incredibly
difficult and required the sacrifices of thousands of troops. It can be an entire papers subject on
9 Call of Duty 2: Big Red One (PS2 Version), Treyarch (Activision, 2005).
10 James Wheeler, The Big Red One: Americas Legendary 1st Infantry Division from
World War I to Desert Storm (University Press of Kansas: 2007), 272.
its own, but overall the Call of Duty 2: Big Red One version of Normandy was an incredibly
simplified take on said event. The next few missions are of the player and his squad pushing
through German troops in various towns that had been absorbed into Germany as they move
towards the Seigfried Line, a huge defensive line also called the Westwall12 Fighting through
the fields of enemies on this mission ends the game after the player and his squad destroy a few
German V2 missiles along with a German tank division. Another documentary cutscene is
played after this, and it talks about how the Big Red One fought through Germany, into
Czechoslovakia and liberated concentration camps. The single-player campaign of the game
ends in a very sudden way, dropping off and not sharing much of what happened to the Big Red
One after that battle other than what is shown in the documentary footage. It is possible this is
done because showing the concentration camps could be considered taboo in a game that
children might wind up playing. This possibility did not stop Samuel Fuller from showing the
concentration camps in his 1959 film Verboten!, where he used actual footage recorded in the
camps by the Allies like he would later do in The Big Red One (1980) as well.13
When looked at as a whole, Call of Duty 2: Big Red One tells the general story of what
the Big Red One division went through during World War 2. It adequately portrays the
weaponry of the era. From tanks to rifles, the game gives a good basis of what weapons soldiers
in World War 2 would have used to fight. It does skip over much of the training they did, as well
as many battles, but those seem like design choices to keep the players engaged. Working with a
limited amount of space meant the developers had to pick and choose what they did or did not
12 James Wheeler, The Big Red One: Americas Legendary 1st Infantry Division from
World War I to Desert Storm (University Press of Kansas: 2007), 310-316.
13 Marsha Orgeron, The Most Profound Shock: Traces of the Holocaust in Sam
Fullers Verboten! (1959) and The Big Red One (1980), Historical Journal of Film,
Radio, and Television 27 no. 4 (2007): 475-482.
Cook 6
want to show in the game. The game spends time having the characters argue with each other
while they are on their way to different parts of their missions, trying to make them into
characters the player can relate to, or at least empathize with. The game fails in this sense,
portraying the characters as argumentative and highly irritable outside of battle, and merciless,
With over 20,000 casualties14 in the Big Red One division alone throughout World War 2,
the chances of any of the five people the player was constantly with surviving the entire war is
incredibly low. While some did die, and the deaths were supposed to be meaningful in some
way, there is no downtime given between a character dying and combat happening. This in itself
is not a problem, because this is what soldiers would have actually had to deal with. The issue is
that the player is never given any time viewing the characters as feeling bad about the deaths of
their allies, save a few short seconds before being thrown back into the heat of battle. The player
is fights through battle after battle, and is given no information on the characters while they were
not in battle. Despite the developers taking the time to create characters with original and
unique, if not somewhat clich, personalities, there is little the player can actually empathize
with. This could have parallels to the situation the men in the Big Red One division were
actually in during World War 2. Because of the short amount of time they were in the war and
the number of casualties in that time, there was no real time for any of the soldiers to form strong
bonds of friendship with each other. Much like the characters in the team the player is in, the
real-life soldiers in Big Red One had a bond because they had to work together, but no real time
for friendship.
At times, art can imitate life. However, it is difficult to capture the essence of actual
events in such a medium that has the restrictions like a game would. Details like locations and
14 Call of Duty 2: Big Red One (PS2 Version), Treyarch (Activision, 2005).
Cook 7
weaponry are accurate to the time period, and correctly show where parts of World War 2 took
place. Elements such as the reality of a squadron surviving together during the entire war and
reactions to physical and mental trauma are glossed over, decreasing the accuracy to reality. In
this sense, many of the movies are very similar to what is portrayed in the games. They both
pick and choose what they show based on what the creators will think is the most interesting to
the people experiencing it, and this often skews how the events are portrayed. Whether it is the
intended purpose or not, it is up to the viewer to distinguish between fact and fiction out of the
References
Call of Duty 2: Big Red One (PS2 Version), Treyarch (Activision, 2005).
History, Society of the 1st Infantry Division, accessed April 18, 2016,
https://www.1stid.org/historyindex.php
Orgeron, Marsha, The Most Profound Shock: Traces of the Holocaust in Sam Fullers
Verboten! (1959) and The Big Red One (1980), Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and
Wheeler, James, The Big Red One: Americas Legendary 1st Infantry Division from World War I