As I said, the original 1943 short film, made in color by William Wylder. There is a scene where a B-17 with most of the tailplane missing lands, and a young guy walks out smoking a cigarette all in one go. His sunglasses were smashed but he was not touched.
He left the steel mill in Gary, Indiana the day after Pearl Harbor and enlisted, so he was lucky to get six months training, not six weeks like the later crews.
He never talked about the war.
HB
My dad was wounded twice with the 3rd Infantry as a young platoon leader of a heavy weapons platoon. He never talked much about it, either.
I learned that for a short period of time during combat, he was in command of the battalion due to officer casualties. I've gotten to know a Frenchman that lived not far from where dad was last wounded. The man is a brigadier general on loan to the 3rd Infantry at Fort Stewart under an exchange program. He was born in the same town, Mulhouse, as William Wyler.
As for Wyler:
"Five Came Back explores the experiences of five U.S. film directors – John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, Frank Capra, and George Stevens – and their frontline work during the Second World War.[4] It draws on over 100 hours of archival footage and is narrated by Meryl Streep.[5] Each modern director discusses the impact and legacies of one of the five earlier directors: Steven Spielberg (Wyler), Francis Ford Coppola (Huston), Guillermo del Toro (Capra), Paul Greengrass (Ford), and Lawrence Kasdan (Stevens)."
One of Wyler's camera men was killed while accompanying a crew on a bombing run into occupied territory. The above documentary is a first class presentation. Wyler returns to the town in France where he was born. During a lull in his filming,
he films the location where his dad had a family business before the war. All Jews were taken from the town and placed in concentration camps. Wyler, a Jew, came to America as a child before the war.
Gil
