What is it good for? Great movies, as it happens. The killings fields of the Napoleonic wars, the trenches of two World Wars, the jungles of ‘Nam, the blood and sand of the Gulf... Every major conflict in history has hit the big screen in countless war films, whether offering epic battle scenes, flag-waving propaganda or a throttled cry for peace.
Stanley Kubrick directed one the greatest World War One pics in Paths Of Glory and turned his camera on the Vietnam War in Full Metal Jacket, which showed US recruits losing their hair, their identities and finally their minds. Ex-WWII infantry man Sam Fuller claimed it was impossible to show combat on the screen unless he were to "fire real shots over the audience's head and have actual casualties in the theatre". His autobiographical WWII epic The Big Red One doesn't quite go that far, but now available in its original four-hour cut, it's dynamic, brutal and right from the heart.
Then again, war is never just waged on the battlefields. The story of the home front is tackled in William Wyler's classic Mrs Miniver, about a separated middle-class family during the Blitz. Hollywood, of course, has never let reality get in the way of a good war movie. Men-on-a-mission films like The Dirty Dozen have turned war into lock'n'load crowd-pleasers, with Lee Marvin taking a rag-tag gang of criminals on a suicide mission to assassination Hitler.
Let's not forget the thrilling Where Eagles Dare, which sees Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood infiltrating a Nazi stronghold and racking up an extraordinary body count. It's often claimed Eastwood kills more men in this than in any other film on his CV. Start counting...