Lotsa Loudness
Okay, the fog is all about. Soldiers hunker down in the frosty forest. Why, in gawd's name are the soldiers running around and talking loudly about inane things? eh, Nazis are bearing down on you, men.
shareBecause that's how they do it in Hollywood war movies, natch.
shareI deserved that.
shareBut they had the Goimans being rather loud too. So, at least they were consistent with that.
Anyway, this was I company not E company, ahaha. Easy was "In the shi-ite" in the woods above Foy (spelling?) and they were getting pounded to pumice compared to these guys- These guys came to Bostogne later than Easy, it would appear, so maybe they did not know the rules about Wisecaracking, espacially Van Johnson and his snotty smartmouth. Ahaha! (Best Van Johnson ever, I think)
I know that the director of this film was a veteran of WWII. IT was interesting in that it showed men breaking down as they would in combat. For the time, it was a superlative film.
I knew a guy who was really there his name is Jay Nichols, 101st 502 B Company he went through the whole experience from D-day to a near fatal wound in Bastogne..
I asked him to watch Band of Brothers and Battleground with me a couple of years ago and to pick apart the scenes. What follows are his comments. Not verbatim, but in a general sense.
Battleground and Band of Brothers (BoB):
He said that both movies were bull on the conversation. No one moved around in the day when up on the line around Bastogne unless an attack was on. If you took a crap or wiz it was in your helmet because the Germans would use one 88 shell to kill one GI. He also said that you never used the old fox holes because when the Germans pulled out, they zeroed the old holes for mortar and artillery fire. Also, quite often they would send in mortar attacks on voices. Jay said that at night no one talked, hardly whispered. He said also that Bastogne beat D-Day hands down for pure misery and fear.
He also said that the level of foul language was not nearly as heavy in his unit as it was portrayed in BoB. But he also said with a laugh that it wasn’t as “G; rated as it was in Battleground.
There was more but I can’t remember it all.
I’d love to see Battleground re-mastered with the sound worked to be more accurate. But that’s my own glitch. I LOVE to hear that EN-bloc clip “PING” out of a Garand…
I know that the director of this film was a veteran of WWII.
Important correction here. Director William (Wild Bill) Wellman was not a veteran of WW2, although he did make two of the best films about that conflict -- THE STORY OF G.I. JOE in 1945, and BATTLEGROUND in 1949. However, he was a flyer with the Lafayette Escadrille in WW1.
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