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“The Battle of the Bulge”
— Catherine Wilson
(We watched a PBS 2002 documentary last evening. It was brutal. Forgive this attempt to process the horror.)
Published in General
R-L. Accounts like yours are truly where words fail. Having watched that documentary – we saw footage that I didn’t know existed. These images are with me forever now. Psychiatrists administering sodium pentathol to shell-shocked boys and scolding them while they were nearly unconscious in order to get them functioning enough to send them back into battle.
That old man who tried to put his friend out of his misery.
I will never see this war and those young men in the same light again.
I am undone.
Thank you for sharing your father’s and his brother’s stories.
It is so big.
What we owe. Yes. EVEN to white males.
Dear God.
Thinking about Reagan’s speech (thank you @marcin) got me to thinking that them Rangers were not too happy when they got to the top of that cliff.
This is John Williams’s “Hymn to the Fallen”:
The Longest Day went for a “futility of war” moment there at the cost of a little historical accuracy. The guns weren’t there, but it was because they had been pulled back a little way from the beach. They were still nearby. The Rangers found them (with the crews having a meeting a little ways off). They put thermite grenades on the traversing gears and took them out of action.
I think I got that out of an Ambrose book.
Yep, thermite grenades are effing awesome!!!