Crimson Field star Marianne Oldham says she was stunned to find the First World War WAS a laughing matter.
Marianne, who plays volunteer nurse, or VAD, Rosalie Berwick, in the BBC drama, became a World War One bookworm when she landed the role.
“I read a few books but it was such a massive subject matter to approach,” reveals Marianne.
“Then I was in a dusty old secondhand book shop in London, I found a book, Roses Of No Man’s Land.
“It was amazingly apt, all these personal stories about VADs who were out there.
“It was really important. And what was incredible was the amount of humour in it.
“I remember a line: ‘You had to laugh otherwise you would have lost,’ and that really struck me.
“It was so intense and relentless that I don’t think we can imagine what people went through then.
“To read that they had to laugh was very touching and human.”
The BBC tried to make the drama as realistic as possible.
“When they brought the convoys (of injured troops) in the middle of the night shoot you really didn’t have to do any acting,” she adds. “It was freezing and we were waiting and waiting.
“Eventually everything came together, the trucks rolled in one after another and the dust was flying everywhere. “You saw all these men with mud and blood and blank faces looking at us.
“It brought it home what it would have been like with this awful amount of people coming into these hospitals.”
The Crimson Field, BBC1, Sunday, 9pm
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