doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com OT: "The War" series by Ken Burns on Public TV

Jeff:

Are you related to Captain Jeff Mull serving in Afghanistan?

The late father of the co-worker setting adjacent to me was a turret gunner on one of the bombers in WWII. He explained that his father rarely spoke of the war and never with any detail. Seeing the interview with the turret gunner on the series really brought home what his dad had gone through.

Until he retired about 15 years ago, I worked with a B-17 gunner who was shot down over France and was hidden by residents of a small village for a few months until he was safely able to connect with advancing U.S. troops. A few years ago the villagers wanted to do something in appreciation of U.S. sacrifices in the liberation of Europe, and they arranged for Don an expense paid trip to visit for a commemorative event.

None of his former fellow employees knew any details of Don's WWII service until seeing this trip covered in a St.Paul newspaper article. The visit was described as full of joy, as one might imagine. The day after the article appeared, Don died of a heart attack while walking with his son up a lane to the farmhouse of one of the families that sheltered him.

Don's family expressed only happiness that he was able to renew his friendship with these French villagers and represent all U.S. veterans in hearing their gratitude.

I have returned to Normandy and the Netherlands several times with foundations whose mission is to remember, honor and serve the veterans of WWII and especially the men who participated in the airborne operations in all theaters. Each time we took a 7-8 veteran contingent and their wives. I feel so privileged to have been able to sit in a group of these guys and listen to them speak freely about their experiences and then travel with them to the actual locations where the events took place. Those are truly some of the most special times in my life.

I'll put in a shameless plug for these organizations. They all have essentially the same mission with different emphasis. They can always use ground support personnel and folks to help get the vets and wives around to the different events and, of course, monetary support. Me......I'm too old and fat to jump anymore but not to help out. Check out these web sites. Anything we can do to insure the memory of the sacrifice and heroism remains and that these gentlemen are honored in their twilight years is just as important as the great films made by Burns and Spielberg.

http://www.libertyjumpteam.org/

http://www.goldenwingsparachuteteam.com/

http://www.wwiiadt.com/

There is a new one out there titled In Deadly Combat A German Soldier's Memoir of the Eastern Front. Some Soviet foot soldier also has one out there, but I can't recall it's title.

I can't remember the title of the Russian book either but from reviews in distinguished periodicals it's as close as it gets to the real thing. The Eastern Front battles were unparalleled in scale and ferocity in modern times.

One dissenting vote: I thought Ken Burns' "The War" was disappointing. It plowed the same old ground umpteen WWII docs have done (and done better) - even the History Channel has done better.

Burns' report on the Battle of Midway was pathetically sparse. His heavy emphasis on internment of Japanese Americans seemed excessively PC. I thought his gimmick of the four towns was forced, just an attempt to be different without making a real difference. He focused more on feelings than on facts, did some predictable 'home front' stuff, and provided little in the way of new information or better understanding.

IMHO, Ken Burns' superb job on the Civil War made his reputation, and he has never quite reached that level since. I felt "The War" fell far short of the PBS hype.

I have been trying to avoid this, but I have to chime in with jack. I only watched about half the shows, because I really thought it was poor. My view might have been colored by all the appearances Ken Burns made preceding the show in which he made a big deal of the fact that he tried to make a series with as negative a view as possible and refused to glorify the war. His view was that the war was remembered as a "bloodless war" due to all the "greatest generation" shows, and he wanted to set the record straight. His stated goal for the series was to show how terrible war (in the generic sense) really is. He stated that there had been more than enough war documentaries, but he decided to make this one to set the record straight.

I think he is totally out of touch with the general feeling in America on this issue. I don't believe anybody views this as a bloodless war. Just see the four pages of posts above for proof. However, most of the people I know who went through it did it gladly, and say they would have done it again, even those who came back traumatized. My dad spent over four years overseas in Iran in a small, strange group called the Persian Gulf Command which has been the subject of several specials and books in the last few years. For him, it was both the most trying time in his life and also the most defining. I personally believe that if any group of people fighting any war deserve to be glorified, it is the veterans of WWII.

I thought the civil war series was likely the best series ever produced by PBS. I also liked the jazz series. While I found the footage in the WWII series interesting, I found it sadly lacking as a documentary. I too thought the four town approach was very limiting. I thought the flow was very disjointed, with too much about some issues and too little about others. Most importantly, I thought it was a very well concealed PC piece aimed at our current foreign policies. I don't think I am alone in this view. The Wall Street Journal even ran a very negative review along these same lines.

If you want the POV of both winners and losers, you can't beat the films Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima. Or if you want the sad old situation of the universal soldier, there's Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (again, different war). Although I agree that long stretches of The War are pretty lackluster, taking the American towns and cities as an organizing principle did reveal that WWII changed the face of the U.S. as well as the face of Europe. No water-filled craters, no UXBs, no Dresdens and no Nagasakis but still changed forever by the migration to centers of war industry. With the exception of the dry irony of Shelby Foote, I found The Civil War to also be pretty much a one-trick pony with the lachrymose fiddle theme and all the letters edged in black. Incidentally fellers, there was anti-war before there was politically correct. How about Grand Illusion?

jack

I really don't know anyone who is not "antiwar"............especially anyone who has spent time as a soldier. Even necessary wars are not fun to fight and who would want to be labeled prowar anyway.