i know this is a stupid question but why was Manech Condemned?
What does that even mean?
Dear Agony, I want you in the Hunger Games.
Loriginals#19
He and the rest of the five men were condemned for self-mutilation: shooting themselves (or purposely getting the enemy to shoot them, like Manech) to get out of the war. I guess the C.O's didn't want this kind of behaviour spreading around, otherwise all the soldiers would shoot themselves in the hand or foot and get sent home, so they dealt with it harshly and effectively treated it as desertion.
Boom! Posted!
They don't deal with it as much in the movie from what I remember, but in the book the commander of the unit wants them to be spared, partly because he can't afford to lose any more men and partly because he is sympathetic, but his superior officer- who wasn't entrenched with them and didn't know the horrors that they had been facing- wants them executed (to set an example like The_Peake said), which is why he hides the correspondence that would have saved them (and is ultimately killed by Tina, the thief's girlfriend)...
"Falling feels like flying... until you hit the ground."-Tom McRae