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If this were a literature course and we were studying the old Freytag pyramid, I’d say this latest entry constitutes some significant rising action. We’ve had a little exposition and are moving steadily toward the climax (though I think we have a ways to go), falling action, and denouement of the production.
Dye’s entry this week focuses on the need to split the production, as we’ve all heard that movies do: out of sequence stuff that that maximizes time and $$. Dye writes:
The pressure is on us here in Australia as it was on our heroes back in the bloody days of World War II, so we are now going to run two — count ‘em two — separate and simultaneous shooting units to explore the last half of the Division’s epic campaign on Guadalcanal as well as the grueling rain, mud and blood soaked battle of Cape Gloucester. I’ll handle the sequences dealing with 1st Battalion, 7th Marines’ defense of Henderson Field in late October 1942 to the relief of the Division by elements of the U.S. Army’s 23rd (Americal) Infantry Division while Warriors XO Mike Stokey will break out his rain gear and go with 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines to Cape Gloucester in late 1943.
I’d be interested to see (in the DVD features section), the behind the scenes footage on all this. It sounds like a big deal in terms of coordination and logistics.
If you happened to catch Episode 4 of Ken Burns’ The War (this is the invasion episode), you may have noticed the paratrooper/smashed pumpkin simile, with no author attributed. It was referenced as “one man described it as…”. That one man is Don Burgett, member of the 101st Airborne (A-1st-506), and noted author of four memoirs concerning the war in Europe.
So on page 87 of Currahee: A Screaming Eagle at Normandy, Burgett sets the scene: he has just landed and was getting out of this jump gear laying on his back as another plane flew overhead, “hedge-hopping” out of cowardice the author suggests, with paratroopers jumping. Burgett writes:
Their chutes were pulling out of the pack trays and starting to unfurl when they hit the ground. Seventeen men hit the ground before their chutes had time to open. They made a sound like a large ripe pumpkin being thrown down to burst against the ground.
It’s a shame Burns’ crew chose not to highlight this writer by name. I mean you can’t even say “paratrooper Don Burgett” and let others in the world google the name and discover his work? Please, visit his web site and buy his books.
So I’ve been watching Ken Burns’ epic The War ontape (I mean, who can do 2.5 hours per night?), and checking some of the history forums online to see what folks are thinking. Generally, the tone is positive, but one thing has come up a few times: “some” are annoyed at Burns’ focus on the home front. They want more battle footage, maps, analyses from historians.
This criticism is misplaced, I think, as the more interesting parts of the show (to me, anyway), have focused on, say, race relations in Mobile, Japanese internment (and who can forget that terribly ironic Life mag paraphrased quote: “they are still cheerful, as they’ve only lost their freedom”), and of course, the work of newspaperman Al McIntosh, voiced by Tom Hanks. As Burns suggests, this work is about a simultaneous view of war, what was going on in different places during the conflict. And McIntosh voices those hometown concerns in ways that evoke much pathos.
To the home front haters, get a grip. He did both. Live with it.
Viewers of Ken Burns’ The War no doubt noted the reference to Frank Capra’s Why We Fight series in Episode 1. The offerings on youtube are pretty scant, though there is one clip, likely from early in the series, where all the setup is taking place. Note the emphasis on different religions in uniting against the “dark” half of the world. Sorry to say, too, that the clip is one small part of a larger piece that is cut off pretty abruptly, though it’s still worth viewing.
The link above will play all the movies online (a national archives page), with the proper software on your computer.
More from Dale Dye on the product of the work taking place now…
In some of the most spectacular and stirring sequences I have ever seen put on film, we landed on the Orange and White Beaches of Peleliu last week. Much of what I saw on those bitterly opposed landing operations looked just like the still and motion picture images that we have seen from Peleliu back in 1944. It was as vivid and deadly as the stuff we see in the old Movietone newsreels.
Keep in mind, Dye has seen a few: SPR, Band of Brothers to name a few action driven products, and those were pretty good. What is happening now, at least according to Dye, matches the high production value of his previous work, and note his emphasis, that they are “the most…stirring sequences I have ever seen put to film.” Not just war flicks. But film.
Two articles on Ken Burns’ The War appeared in today’s Washington Post. The first is a lengthy review here by Rich Atkinson and the other is a feature-length piece (by Paul Farhi) on one of the men in the documentary, Quentin Aanenson. Both articles aptly set the tone for those ready to wade into Burns’ 15.5 hour epic, especially Atkinson’s. He writes:
Perhaps “The War” is best viewed as one views an art exhibition, focusing on the pictures and not on the captions or the curator’s exegesis. The narrative is just scaffolding for the images, many of which linger long after an episode ends: the vivid color footage of flamethrowers on Saipan; the photo of pedestrians strolling past a smoking body next to a burning city bus; the group portrait of butchered soldiers in the dead of winter, their frozen eyes open and lightly dusted with snow, like macabre Jack Frosts.
So then it begins tonite. I had planned to do episode reviews, but alas, I have a job. I will, however, post a few highlights from the episodes as I can.
I am rarely surprised anymore at the great finds out there on the web. And I can’t take any credit for scooping anything, as they are a product of late night web surfing adventures (instead of sleeping) in history forums. Over at Mark Bando Triggertime web site, a user posted a link to US field manuals from the war, among them this…
BASIC FIELD MANUAL
MILITARY INTELLIGENCE
IDENTIFICATION OF GERMAN AIRCRAFT
March 11, 1942
The German manual is 50 plus pages long and each aircraft has multiple renderings beyond the one image on the specs page. Much of the same stuff is up on the web in places like wikipedia or over at the ww2db.com aircraft section. That’s all well and good. But this! This! It’s an original and worth seeing in the form that others saw in 1942. The entire manual is here and the link to many more Army Field manuals is here.
You know, I realized that in my previous posts about Ken Burns’ new mini-series, I neglected to post the basics…So here it is, for those surfing in, straight from a PBS press release about the series. It’s getting close.
THE WAR will air over two weeks, beginning Sunday, September 23, 2007 (four nights the first week and three nights the second week) from 8:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. (8:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. on three nights).
Dale Dye’s update this week is pretty amazing. It sounds as if the production is right in the thick of it all, specifically the “Peleliu invasion which took place in September 1944, 53 years ago almost to the day,” Dye writes. There is more, about Eugene Sledge:
Late last week, we loaded up PFC Eugene Sledge and the other members of his 60mm mortar squad into an LVT-4, putting them to sea for our cameras to catch the pre-invasion jitters just before they hit the beach on the main allied target in the Palau Islands. On Monday we put the first wave of Marines ashore and will bring Sledge and the rest of the second wave onto the bloody sands later in the week. We will spend the whole time on the beach under the blazing guns of the Japanese defenders manning coral and rock bastions in our version of the Umurbrogol Hills. We’ll stay with 3/5 for most of the time in the landing sequences but PFC Leckie and his fellow Marines from 2/1 will also be seen landing on White Beach to the north of the 5th Marines’ sector in some scenes.
The end of this entry is interesting as well. Dye’s enthusiam for the project is showing through, as is his intent to help bring a production to the screen that “show[s] the unmerciful, unrelenting nature of that combat campaign with very few punches pulled.”
Scrolling through the archives of the Naval Historical Center, I revisited their collection of period artwork this evening. And it is, in a word, awesome. Many paintings of conflict are somberly painted, with good reason. But there are others, like this painting by Lawrence Beall-Smith, that show color in interesting ways. Having grown up watching shows like Victory at Sea, and viewing thousands of images from the period in black and white, I’m conditioned to look with nuances with that narrow color range.
But this! The blues of this painting are striking. Notice, too, the men at various stages of work: one pilot perhaps showing a recent engagement with his hands, the men in blue sitting on the ground talking, others “colors” at work on various aircraft. It’s an interesting mix.
The catalog of Smith’s work at the NHC is here. Be sure to check them out. The text from the page is copied below.
Task Force Hornets
Lawrence Beall-Smith #13
Oil on board, 1943
88-159-KA
The operations island is a grim gray redoubt against the sky as this aircraft carrier steams behind her task force screen with a swarm of fighters ready on the flight deck. Planes of a fighter squadron stand at Fly One, the take-off spot. Behind them, in order, will be the dive-bombers and the torpedo bombers. Meanwhile, as signal pennants snap from the truck, handling crews and pilots await the orders which will send these Grumman fighters snarling into the air.
