Talk:The Black Battalion (Cerný prapor)

Moved from main page

SUMMARY: (SPOILERS) The Black Battalion (original: Cerný prapor) is a 1958 Czechoslovakian film about Czech members of the French Foreign Legion fighting in the French Indo-China War.

A plane carrying returning Foreign Legionnaires lands at a local airport. Waiting for them with anticipation are the relatives of legionnaires, including an old woman who questions the returning soldiers as to the fate of her son, however none of the men seem to recognize his name or photograph.

The film then flashes back to Indochina, where private Vaclav Maly (Jaroslav Mares) from Pilsen, after a year service in Algeria, arrives with other soldiers as reinforcements for a small fort. Soon after his arrival, the newcomers are involved in their first combat action. It ends in a fiasco, as the unit suffers great losses, including their commander. A new commander replaces him, ethnic German Wolf (Hannjo Hasse). This information is of great interest to Vaclav Maly. Since it is rumored that in World War II, Wolf possibly served in the SS overseeing the Wenceslas sector of Prague.

(The following is guesswork based on the mangled English paragraph)

A junior pay clerk, responsible for payments to the soldiers, has discussions with Maly which confirm his suspicions, that Wolfe indeed served in Pilsen with the SS, 90 kilometers west of Praque, where Malys' family lived. Many of them were killed by the SS during this time. Tensions between the commander and his subordinates begin to grow as ethnic Czechs plot revenge for the atrocities enacted by the Germans.

An opportunity arises during a battlefield operation, as Commander Wolf decides to go out on his own and survey the field. He requests one volunteer and Maly eagerly agrees. The two men venture into the jungle. The film is then flashes forward, back to Prague and the airport scene. The mother, still unsuccessfully looking for her son, he asks a man called Petr, who served with Vaclav Maly, but he denies that he knows him and continues walking towards the main Airport building.