Posted on 09/25/2007 4:18:57 PM PDT by VOA
Yes, apparently not related to Joshua Chamberlain, but his dad was at Bellea Wood.
Those German paratroopers at Cassino were some damn good soldiers.
I’ve got Andy Andrews on DVD with The Seven Decisions. He illustrates the “butterfly effect” with Joshua Chamberlain’s story and how this country wouldn’t be what it is today if he had not charged.
Yes, I am sure the fathers of those world war one, doughboy thought things would change while fighting in the civil war.
Damn, suddenly the screen became all misty, when they told about Babe’s death.
I thought that the “Red of The A&P” column from Luverne, MN, as read by
Tom Hanks was the sort of magic...
that today’s newspaper writers can’t (and/or WON’T) produce.
And that was just in one small home-town newspaper.
OK,
Part 4 tomorrow night: D-Day
(I do like the Band of Brothers’ label “The Day of Days”)
I’m reminded of the movie “The Tuskegee Airmen”, a must see.
I don’t know how historically accurate it is, but is inspirational and deeply moving, especially the final moments.
Highly recommended. Great men, the Airmen.
“Well, I suspect that PBS probably insisted such agenda items had
to be included.”
.....EXACTLY!!....glad somebody had the guts to sat it....primarily this show is obsessed with victimization and oppression....secondarily, it is obsessed with attacking military leaders....Schwinfurt was a disaster, Tarawa was a disaster, Anzio was a disaster, Cassino was a disaster...you’d think we were losing the war....the great and brilliant victory at Midway was given one sentence tonight....a huge turning point and it got one sentence!....and what about the great stories of selfless individual heroism.....where are they?....PBS hates the military....all they do is find fault.
I’m so glad WWII occurred during my parents generation....if it were to happen today outfits like PBS, the networks, NY Times, Wash Post, Hollywood ect would try to made us lose.
My father enlisted in early '42. He trained for what turned out to be the North Africa invasion but got side tracked into an MP unit for almost a year. He wound up going to the SW Pacific as a 32nd Infantry Div. replacement in '43. He also served on New Guinea. He helped take back Leyte Island but went MIA over Christmas '44 and then was hospitalized so he never made it to Luzon. He was in army hospitals until April '46.
“After dad died we put together two volumes of the V-mail he sent home.”
we have done the same thing with my Dad’s letters from the S. Pacific....they were forbidden from saying where they were however....from the combat patch on his Eisenhouer jacket I learned his outfit....from there I can match the dates on his letters with his unit history....thus I can read the letters and follow on the map as they hopped from island to island.....may I suggest as a tool:
“Finding Your Father’s War” by Jonathan Gawne published by Casemate Publishing 2006....”a practical guide to researching and understanding service in the WWII US Army”
“a naive viewer might reasonably think that gunners on B-17s never
left a scratch on a single German airplane.”
I couldn’t agree more!....you know I once saw an interview with a highly decorated German Luftwaffe pilot....he spoke of his absolute terror when he dove into a box formation of B-17s....it was all he could do to control himself and his plane as he watched all those .50s swinging around to train on him....and then they opened up, sending streams of 750 gr. rounds trying to tear him out of the sky.
I was able to do the same with the v-mail letters my father sent to his parents from the Pacific. Somewhere along the line my mother got them and I found them after she died. The letters are amazingly innocuous in light of the kind of hell the war in the south Pacific was like. (As if there is any other kind.) I also found the 32nd Division Association website and learned they were to have a reunion here in northern California a few years ago. I met a lot of his comrades but none who remembered him or were in his Company. I don't think many besides my father survived the war. They got stuck out in the wilds of Leyte Island without supplies and were missing for about three weeks. I might try to find the book you mentioned in your post. Thanks for the tip.
What I’m finding interesting in a lot of the footage used in this series, is how much of it was in color. Stuff I’ve never seen before, such as landings on Islands in the Pacific, or on the beaches in Italy. I’m really enjoying this color footage. Wonder where he dug it all up from. Lot’s of research had to have gone into this documentary. Many, many hours of work and editing. By the way, I like the music that Wynton Marsalis has done for the background. Some of it is very unusual, and frankly eery, when used during battle scenes. Very unique.
My dad’s division was headed to Leyte, but was diverted to Luzon instead. My dad died in 2000. Is your dad still with us? If so, thank him for his service. I never really appreciated what they did until dad died and I started looking into it.
No, he died in 1958. But I will send him your thanks anyway. I learned from an Army historian that a large number of vets who had fought in the Pacific died 10-15 years after they returned. Jungle warfare did permanent damage whether you were hit by enemy fire or not. He did, however meet my mother, marry and have a son in the time he had.
The first two nights were good, but tonight we are being punished with liberal guilt. I understand we had internment camps and segregation....report it and move on. Tonight has been 20% history and 80% lib hand wringing.
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