I totally get why the two soldiers sent on the mission felt it important, but not so much those in charge.
On the relatively importance of saving "1600" men in the big picture, I'm not a veteran, but in seems to me in typical military camaraderie, just saving your buddy next to you, is alone worth your life, .
At the base foot soldier level yes, but back then war was still thought of by grandeur, nobility, and honor dating back to the old Napoleon days, whole towns joined up together. The original picklehaub helmet used by the Germans shows how it started along with noble cavalry charges into machine gun lines (see Warhorse - does great job of showing the mindset in the early stages). Once it settled into a grinding slog of trench warfare, disillusionment set in and reality took over for the men on the lines. At the British command level tho, the nobility of it never went away. Haig kept sending wave after wave of soldiers in the same outdated fashion to their deaths. He created half a million casualties among the allies when those under him knew it was pointless but he wouldn't stop. He eventually achieved his victory, only to have Passchendaele abandoned less than a year later. To the man in the trench 1600 was astounding, to the officers in charge, they thought nothing of losing 1,600 so they wouldn't have concerned themselves much with this attack, maybe even thought of it as a sacrificial test of the new German lines.
World War 1 changed the entire perception of war, so much to the point that France dedicated its doctrine to the Maginot line, and the rest of the world leaders let Germany expand and take territories in hope of avoiding conflict. They wanted to avoid another stalemate and were totally unprepared for a full air-armor-ground onslaught that the future would bring.
When you see the movie, you will see how the characters diverted between one talking about the honor of a medal and the other not wanting to go home.
