Posted on 03/26/2009 5:49:43 AM PDT by DFG
It was film night in Stalag Luft III and the dwindling band of surviving PoWs was marking the 65th anniversary of the daring breakout by watching The Great Escape. Even though this is Hollywood’s celebration of their story and ensured their enduring fame, it wasn’t the Nazis they booed — it was Steve McQueen and his motorbike.
“We were not impressed when that film came out,” said Reginald Cleaver, 86, a flight engineer who had been shot down over the Netherlands and who helped to make disguises for the escape. “The bits about the way the tunnel was dug and how things started was quite accurate, but the later bits were nonsense.
“The Americans played no part in the escape. To have Americans riding motorbikes was ridiculous.”
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Steve McQueen was great, but he was portrayed as a dim-witted American in “The Great Escape” IMO.
But then they had a stunt man to do the actual jump - the deceptive web becomes ever yet more tangled...
What an idiot. You might go back and direct your comment to the one intended, providing you can maintain the mental discipline to keep your thoughts organized.
He also jumped on the bike and did his own stunts after seeing the stunt driver do it, and not think it was very good.
Director blew his lid.
(Or so I’ve heard.)
“Anybody who has studied the war knows that Russia did the overwhelming share of heavy lifting against the Nazis.”
It’s always good when the bear gets bitten by the wolf, in my book.
In his later years, he had a flathead 1947 indian, which looked like a well worn motorcyle. He grew a beard for diguise, and would go riding in that outfit. He called it the blob
Yep. There were a lot of Americans building those Spitfires and Hurricanes IN THE UK. Sure were.
I’m not going to deny that we supplied them a big chunk of raw materials and some war goods leading up to our entry into the war. But to come in here and equate the British in 1940 with the French? Come on, you can’t be serious.
}:-)4
True enough. The casualties on the Western Front were only a fraction of those on the Ostfront. The sheer scale of the slaughter there—of the battles, the killings by the Einsatzgruppen, the deaths of POWs, the bloody revenge by the Red Army—boggles the mind. Over a million men, women, and children at Stalingrad alone in a six-month period, another million during the three-year siege of Leningrad, God only knows how many hundreds of thousands or millions when the Red Army pushed into Germany in 1945.
One telling stat that Antony Beevor came up with in his recent book on Stalingrad—during the battle, between August 1942 and February 1943, the Soviets themselves executed more than 11,000 of their own soldiers for desertion or other “crimes”. That’s roughly the full strength of a Red Army rifle division. Three times the deaths we’ve suffered in Iraq in six full years, suffered in six months, killed BY THEIR OWN SIDE. That’s astonishing.
}:-)4
I have less of an argument with you on that point (about current Britain) than I do on the historical stuff you’ve brought up. Yes, their leaders, even their supposed religious ones like the Archbishop of Canterbury, are selling them out to the “strong horse” of radical Islam. I think there’s still a backbone, a bit of that old “stiff upper lip,” in there somewhere among the population of the UK, but will it be big enough, and will it come out in time?
}:-)4
I did not belittle the British military in any way. The opposite, actually.
Sorry ... I was responding to your response to dmz post #14 ... dmz's elevator doesn't go all the way to the top floor in my opinion.
Likewise Raptor29 ...
You must have overlooked the fact Hitler declared war on us, but before that hundreds of our fighter pilots were flying missions out of Southern England in defense of the UK.
I’m not certain they even HAVE elevators...
And God bless the U.K. & Churchill.
Sorry ... I was responding to your response to dmz post #14 ... dmz’s elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top floor in my opinion.
_____
post 14 was raptor29’s response to me. I am arguing the same point that you are BluH2o.
As for my elevator not going all the way to the top? LOL. You could well be right notwithstanding that you are insulting the person who agrees with you.
Actually, I agree with DMZ:
I saw it as a comment from a man who was there and how the silliness of Steve McQueen riding off on a motorcycle seemed to make light of the situation.
My father’s business partner (both of them RIP) was shot down over Germany and was ‘saved’ by the Gestapo from being killed by villagers with pitchforks. He spent a few years in a POW camp. He was deeply offended by Hogan’s Heroes for making light of something that was very serious to him. He, and the British vet at the center of the discussion, had a perspective shaped by the reality of the situation, not by Hollywood’s desire to snare a better audience for its shows.
I’m surprised a freeper would have such difficulty with that notion. There is no reason for the British vet to deliver a paean to American involvement in WW2 when discussing the Steve McQueen motorcycle scene of the Great Escape.
48 posted on Thursday, March 26, 2009 7:17:34 AM by dmz
Donald Pleasence who appeared in The Great Escape, actually was a POW.
Matter of fact he was tortured by the Gestapo.
He was at first a conscientious objector, but later joined the Royal Air Force and served with 166 Squadron, Bomber Command. His Avro Lancaster was shot down on 31 August 1944 during a raid on Agenville.[3] He was taken prisoner and tortured by his captors, then placed in a German prisoner-of-war camp, where he produced and acted in plays. He would later play Flight Lt. Colin Blythe in The Great Escape where much of the story takes place inside a POW camp.
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