Posted on 10/27/2006 12:14:15 PM PDT by Borges
from Murphy's Rules of Land Combat: When in doubt, empty the magazine.
Surprised Kerry hadn`t made claim he was their along side York.
The movie "Sgt. York" was great for several reasons, IMHO, because it demonstrated:
1) Heroism
2) Rural Tennessee life at the turn of the century
3) Arguments against pacifism
4) Romantic love
5) Gratitude of the people
6) Sin, Struggle & Redemption
7) Marksmanship
8) Work Ethic
There are not too many movies about which you can say so many good things.
My personal favorite of Murphy's Military Laws:
A sucking chest wound is God's way of telling you to slow down.
When asked how he got all those Germans to surrender, he simply said: "I had em surrounded!"
The Germans were surprised when they found out that he was in fact all alone when they surrendered to him.
What a DUDE!
He will. When he runs in '08.
Give him time to work out a plausible story.
York exhibited so much class. He was just one fella from a huge family that was very American, very unspoiled, and knew marksmanship up one side and down the other before he ever went to the Army.
His part of Tennessee including the towns of Rugby, Oneida, and Jamestown has great forests and wonderful deep limestone creek gourges.
I don't know that I can believe their conclusion when they don't know the difference between cartridges and casings.
Yep, there is too much made of forensic battlefield explorations. For instance on the Custer battlefield there was a nostalgic reunion only ten years after the battle. The reunion included Indians and Reno's survivors. There were plenty of 45-70 rounds fired on those hills after Custer so clusters of discoverd cartridge cases have to be examened carefully to see if they are PROBABLE for authenticity and related to the battle.
IMHO, one of the very best movies ever, along with "The Fountainhead". (This from one who is not a big Gary Cooper fan.)
It was good the film was done before the IRS went to war with Sgt. York.
That would have been a real downer for that film.
(See third paragraph from end)
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1998/vo14no01/vo14no01_york.htm
"Yep, there is too much made of forensic battlefield explorations. For instance on the Custer battlefield there was a nostalgic reunion only ten years after the battle."
Good point. Actually I took a tour of the Custer Battlefield earlier this month and they made a big deal of the forensic methods used to re-create the battle.
There must have been .45 casings scattered all over France. It is hard to imagine being able to associate any of them with a specific incident.
York was a remarkable sharpshooter, but he did not single-handedly capture 132 Germans--he was one of a group of 8 Americans who did so. He never claimed sole credit for the deed. Most of the others were Catholics or Jews and/or immigrants, whereas he was a native-born American Protestant (although from an obscure denomination nobody had ever heard of), so he got all the attention.
In the movie, York used a P08 Luger and a 1903 Springfield. Bother were supposed to be wrong. The 1911 Colt they were supposed to use wasn't able to use blanks so they purposely were wrong when they made the substitution.
Researchers claim York had used a 1917 Enfield. That's the rifle that's used for the statue on the Tennessee Capitol grounds. Unfortunately, the NRA had a talk with York's son and he mentioned even though York's unit was issued the Enfield's, York didn't like the rear sight so he was able to swap for a Springfield.
York was able to get behind the lines and capture the commanding officer. It was York telling the officer he better call off his men and surrender before he lost his head.
Granted, this was late in the war when the Germans were getting tired of fighting. I wonder if such a thing could have happened earlier in the war?
When I was in Nam I first heard a sucking chest wound described with typically sardonic G.I. humor as "natures way of telling you that you've been in a firefight."
One of my favorites.
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