Roque Riojas,,,34th Combat Inf. Divn.--No. Africa, Italy

JOE-------?

Sgtleo----?

You are so right Jim! No wonder those guys never talked much about it.

What could they possibly say?

Last night's footage was all new to me. The Ardennes, the cold, the snow,

being taken prisoner - there was just so much. That wonderful story about

the roast beef meal with chocolate pudding on top! When he said that he

still thought about it today & boy it tasted good.

Those noble Medics who risked their lives and had to decide who to

help & who they could do nothing for. How do you live with something like

that without it haunting you forever?

Those poor souls in the Philippine Camp waiting for the Americans to rescue

them and dying every day of starvation. That woman who told her story

of distracting herself so not to think about hunger, but the babies cried to

their mothers for food. Realizing that our guys risked their lives and gave their

lives to get them out.

I think it was Bill Mauldin who said something about the men not hating

the Nazis because they didn't ever see any Nazis. They hated the Germans because

it was the Germans who were strafing, shelling, and killing their buddies.

I think it's the same for the japanese. The footage they showed of all the Japanese

civilians training to fight to the death was terrifying. They absolutely HAD to bomb

Japan & Germany no matter how many "civilian " casualties. Can you imagine

what the media would do (and is doing) today? In the face of all this, how

could anyone believe that reasoning with Evil was possible.

Our guys in that German prison camp when Patton sent a rescue party to get

his son-in-law (WHAT was he thinking??! that he didn't send enough men

to get them all out!). Those poor guys were starving & then had to go back.

We can't even imagine what that was like!

BTW - thanks Jim for letting me know it was an Army Services patch on my Uncle's

uniform!

Mary Ann

We've actually missed the first one and the last two. Starting watching the last one last night, but it was late and both of us fell asleep. We will get them all in order one of these days... Still enjoying it however.

I had a hard time staying awake till 10PM too (what an exiting life I lead ) but I pre-ordered this on DVD and it arrived on Saturday...otherwise I would have missed large blocks of this outstanding series. In the last episode when they were talking about the joy on VJ Day, I loved the Veteran that said "You could cop a feel when you were walking down the street and nobody cared!" Now only a man in his 80's could get away with saying that! 😆 The combat footage used in this series was about 80% all new to me, which was an unexpected plus. There were a few shots that are used on nearly every documentary, but I realize that most Americans are not documentary junkies like I am. Just a lovely group of people they found for this project, and all of them very well spoken. It was nice that they included several people who were still children during WWII, as it gave the film an added dimension.

Dogdaddy

I have one other observation about the series I need to vent. Unless it happened while I dozed off, I cannot remember one instance where Burns blurred the line between the Goodguys and the Badguys and took a sympathetic tone towards Germany or Japan. That is a type of PC that bugs the heck out of me these days. During wartime we (The Allies) were fighting Nazis, not the "I saw nothing" types that abound on documentaries these days. I'm glad Burns made a point of mentioning that the smell of death originating from Mauthausen deathcamp could clearly be smelled in the nearby town, although the townspeople (Nazis) tried to deny it when the 11th Armored Division liberated it! I will freely admit that the serious study of this war has left me with a negative bias about Germans, and it doesn't help to learn that there is a movement to suppress the truth about German responsibility for the Holocaust and "erase it" from German History books. In fairness now I must also mention that the younger generations of Germans are against any attempts to conceal the truth about the evil that occurred between 1933 and 1945, so there is some hope that History need not repeat itself before we learn the lessons needed.

Daddy Soapbox

I wholeheartedly agree daddy! This series was so incredibly impressive

on a multitude of levels, but one of the things that impressed me most was the absence

of politically correct spin. I wondered how he was going to treat Hiroshima & Nagasaki,

but he correctly showed that even after Hiroshima the Japanese were determined to fight to

the death & so many many of our soldiers lives would've been lost had we been forced to

invade the mainland.

m2

When Katharine Phillips was talking about her neighborhood and the veterans who lived there it reminded me of my old neighborhood growing up. Of course, I didn't realize until much later after I had not lived there for many years that I was surrounded by them.

I saw the husbands of two widowed ladies who lived on my street a couple years ago in a book of West Virginia patriots. They had passed away before I was born, I don't know the particulars, but whew!! were they handsome soldiers!

Mr. Todorovich, My grandpa, his best friend Gill, it goes on and on. And it continued with a boy up the street in the Marines, serving in Beruit, next door neighbor a West Point graduate currently employed at the Pentagon, my cousins one Army Gulf War Vet and the other in the Air Force.

I told my mom when we were watching this that it really makes you look at people like our uncle Tom, our friend Walter, and my grouchy grandpa a little differently, doesn't it?

Brooke

I told my mom when we were watching this that it really makes you look at people like our uncle Tom, our friend Walter, and my grouchy grandpa a little differently, doesn't it?

 

Brooke

Amen to that Brooke.. I have probably said it before, but programs like this have resulted in a big change in the way I view Seniors in general. For example... I no longer find myself doing a slow burn if I'm standing in a line at the store and it takes "too long" for the elderly person ahead of me to pay, or in traffic if they are driving "too slow" for my satisfaction. I am ashamed to even admit that things like this did bother me at one time but it's true, and I'm probably not the only one. I think God has used WWII history programs to teach me a lesson in humility

What I started to post in this thread was a comparison between 'The War', and 'The Color of War', which was produced by the History Channel. Both are great, but if I had to choose between the two I would lean more toward 'The Color of War.' They are similar in length but I learned more from 'Color' and it's priced at about half the price of 'The War.' My other reasons are based only on personal preference, as they are both great films!

Jim

|Hi folks

As always, I'm a day late and a dollar short in reading this topic. I love the Ken Burns documentaries because of their focus on the little guy. My dad would almost never talk about his service. He was part of the seemingly non existant 1251st Combat Engineers. Every D-day he would comment that the only mention in the paper was the annual by Charles Schulz in the comic strip "Peanuts". Pretty pathetic.

I was very lucky to have been a social worker at a nursing home for many years and really enjoyed talking to the folks. I have met Lizzie Bordens paper boy, a man that missed The Titanic (he had several newspaper articles about his lucky miss), One of Thomas Edisons secretaries and one of Ghoerings guards at Nuremberg. The guard was a member of my Civil War Roundtable and a group of us went to a local baseball game one night. I had been told he really didnt talk about it much, but during the 3rd or 4th inning I mentioned to him that I heard about his claim to fame and wanted to know his personal opinion of Ghoering. When I put it on his personal level and not as a moment of history, he talked about it for several minutes. I'm very glad that I got to know him before he passed away.

That's an amazing array of people! I find interesting people all the time by being friendly and seeking conversation. It's incredible what can transpire!

Interested people are interesting

Bored people are boring

You never know who you'll meet or what interesting people

will cross your path.

You said it perfectly M!!! "Interested people ARE interesting.

Bored people are boring!". I'll only add that "interested"

doesn't mean "nosey". Nosey people accumulate information

like packrats collect junk. They wanna acquire it, but don't

put it to good purpose.

Civilwargal, you met Lizzie Borden's paperboy! Cool!

I'm a Borden Case enthusiast.

One of my most prized possessions is

a first edition "Lizzie Borden Past & Present" signed by the author

Leonard Rebello at the "scene of the crime".

The 2nd review on amazon mentions the paperboy. In my opinion

this is THE definitive book on the Borden "tragedy".

http://www.amazon.com/Lizzie-Borden-Presen...6149440-3424035

mary ann

|Hi folks

I have met Lizzie Bordens paper boy

Pardon me for hijacking the topic, but what did HE have to say?

Brooke

Pardon me for hijacking the topic, but what did HE have to say?

 

Brooke

He said that he was afraid of her at first because he'd grown up hearing the stories, but soon found that she was very nice and an excellent tipper. He didn't mention the muffins though. I wonder what kind they were?

When I was in high school, Lizzie was my secret weapon. When things got really bad at home and my parents were on a spree of telling me how bad I was because I wasnt ....whatever there tirade at the time was, I found that going to the library and taking out a book on Lizzie Borden and say.....leaving it on the coffee table usually quieted things down a little. I used to love the Elizabeth Montgomery movie where she played Lizzie, I would feign absoloute attention to the film whenever they ran it on TV. That usually earned me a quiet evening.

You never know who you'll meet or what interesting people

will cross your path.

 

You said it perfectly M!!! "Interested people ARE interesting.

Bored people are boring!". I'll only add that "interested"

doesn't mean "nosey". Nosey people accumulate information

like packrats collect junk. They wanna acquire it, but don't

put it to good purpose.

 

Civilwargal, you met Lizzie Borden's paperboy! Cool!

I'm a Borden Case enthusiast.

One of my most prized possessions is

a first edition "Lizzie Borden Past & Present" signed by the author

Leonard Rebello at the "scene of the crime".

 

The 2nd review on amazon mentions the paperboy. In my opinion

this is THE definitive book on the Borden "tragedy".

 

http://www.amazon.com/Lizzie-Borden-Presen...6149440-3424035

 

mary ann

I havent read that book...yet. I have yet to make the pilgrimage to Fall River. I understand there is an independent tour you can drive that takes you to the house, her church, the house she moved into and the cemetary where the family is buried. Thanks for the link!!

My final comment on "THE WAR", movie is I saw the first two episodes of it.

For I related to them. I wuz there, Italy, mud,rain,snow,mountains,mule trains.

I am glad that you all liked the movie for it showed the price paid for freedom.

ADIOS PARA TODOS. Roque,(Rocky), Riojas