WAR FILMS

[Old Hippie]

Was that about the Russian Army/Stalin? I seem to recall such a movie...and yes, it was good...

 

Flasher,

 

Forgot to ask...has there ever been, in your opinion a movie made that accurately depicted the Vietnam war?

[Guest lazyphil]

my dad said das boat is the best/realistic movie he has seen featuring submarines , having 20 years in them must qualify him to suggest this.....he likes this movie alot, bored me to tears!

his sub was depth charged by the Russkies on a few occasions in the baltic sea and i like his accounts of tipping over gun runners in the mallaca straights :: one of these days i want his slides shots on my computer, the shots going through the panama canal are good ones.

[Flashermac]

My dad's first cousin -- whose mum was from Manchester, of all places -- is retired from the US submarine service. He is very quick to point out that he was a diesel submariner, not nuclear, and there aren't too many of them still around. Cuz, who is in his 80s now, is the sole survivor of one sub. He was taken off sick in Darwin, and the boat went out and was lost a few days later with all hands. Somebody was watching out over him! He also told me about one of his post-war CO's, who was one of 3 or 4 survivors of another sub. The sub was hit by a stray torpedo and went down like a rock. The CO had managed to get out when the boat was already about 100 foot under water and rode an air bubble up to the surface. He found a dozen or more men floating on the sea, but by the time the Nipponese gents found them the next day only those 3 or 4 had managed to stay afloat without even any life jackets.

 

Hippie, I like a little known fairly low budget film called "Platoon Leader". Tells of a brand new 2LT who takes over a somewhat rowdy infantry platoon in VN. Quite believable and nothing buggered up by Hollywood. Oliver Stone's "Platoon" was very offensive in parts and very unrealistic in others. Rather surprising since Stone had been a LRRP himself. But his politics got in the way of his film making.

 

BTW my favourite VN War book is Michael Herr's "Dispatches". A VN vet friend -- ex-Special Forces -- said to me, "That book made me remember things I wanted to forget." I felt about the same way a few times.

[Flashermac]

sayjann said:

 

i always like listening to my Uncle who was involved in the Vietnam War,albeit in a secrative way as of course the Brits were 'never' there.

 

 

 

There is a British veterans' site on the "little wars' that have been forgotten. They are trying to get some Brits who were in VN to tell their tales, but so far none have. I did run into a fellow who told me about the training camp the British Army had in jungle warfare in Malaysia -- and put the Yank officers there in British uniforms with instructions to keep their mouths shut around strangers!

[limbo]

Mac,

 

Dispatches is an outstanding book, one of the best I've read about VN.

 

A fairly famous VN movie is loosely based on Dispatches but I forgot which one.

[Flashermac]

Only thing i didn't like about "Dispatches" was how Herr went on about he and his buddies getting stoned all the time. All right for journalists to do that, but if we had -- we'd have been killed in short order! Some idiots in a light equipment company on our fire base did decide to hold a pot party on a perimeter security bunker! A VC sapper came through the wire that night, lobbed 5 pounds of TNT on top of the bunker and kiled 5 of them. Another one had an arm blown off. There should have been only 3 men on guard on that bunker -- 1 on guard and 2 sleeping!

 

p.s. i was on guard two bunkers away when it happened. Really lit up the sky.

[sayjann]

my Friend who was in Korea wanted to tell his story but was prevented by the UK Government.

he wrote a book about his time as a POW and how in the Years after the War he was involved in recovering Bodies,identifying them and getting them shipped Home to the UK.

 

but the Government deemed it against National interests to tell of such things and he could not tell his story..........

top FELLA though..........

in his 70's and still visiting SEA and sleeping around and has a 30 something Chinese Girlfriend here in the UK who keeps him happy......

[Flashermac]

A friend's oldest brother was a POW in Korea. The brother hates the N Koreans with a passion -- says they were as brutal as the Japanese in WWII (their former colonial masters). When the PRC entered the war and took over the POW camps, he says it was a welcome change. He has nothing bad to say against the Chinese. He did say that the 100 or so American POWs who chose to stay in China at the war's end were the collaborators. He said there was one that even now if he saw him on the street, he'd kill him on the spot!