Cook 1

Jarrett Cook

History since 1850

Prince

19 April 2016

Call of Duty 2: Big Red One in Relation to World History

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

to what happened is important.

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).
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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

to assume that the player and his allies are fictional.

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.
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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.
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Americans ever shown in combat in the game, and the documentary cutscenes unsurprisingly

focusing on American troops and victories.

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.

11 Flint Whitlock, The Fighting First (Westview Press: 2004), 132-142.

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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,

killing machines in battle.

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).
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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

information given, no matter what is shown.

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References

Call of Duty 2: Big Red One (PS2 Version), Treyarch (Activision, 2005).

Flint Whitlock, The Fighting First (Westview Press: 2004).

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

Television 27 no. 4 (2007).

Wheeler, James, The Big Red One: Americas Legendary 1st Infantry Division from World War I

to Desert Storm (University Press of Kansas: 2007).