Update on "Documentaries" of WW2

For a full page HDef picture click on picture.  

Darmstadt Germany

Destroyed the last days of the war. 

 The Russians would contest the statement that the invasion was the mightiest  military campaign in history. 

Other "documentaries" have extolled  the Red Ball Express supply by truck as great and amazing.  Maybe but Eisenhower said it hampered the military effort and they needed a port with RR transportation to really get the supplies. Antwerp for example. All you need to verify this is to look at the pictures of say 500 bombers dropping their loads of 5 to 10 thousand pounds of bombs Or look at pictures of the army shooting off salvo after salve of shells weighing 100 pounds or so.  No a few two and a half ton truck driving on a single road to supply hundreds of thousands of men is ludicrous.  They needed a port and railroads to supply the army adequately.Look  at Part 5 of Crusade in Europe.

If you want to see how phony these documentaries are note the sound effects. Probably 99 percent of the film shot was with silent cameras.  The sound had to be added later. Or set up a studio as was done occasionally so they could get voice on film.  In Crusade in Europe all sound was dubbed in.  In other words a lie.  If you like to be duped then watch Crusade in Europe. Victory at Sea was worse as the producers just picked out the film they wanted without regard as to where it was shot in the battle the film was talking about. 

In the part covering the air war it is obvious that the film was shot in a studio.  Actual night photos shot from a bomber does not have enough light to show any detail but this problem is not a problem to the producers of these documentaries.
  There is a lot of looking at guns shooting, looking at the bottom turret on a B17, So where did the camera sit except in a studio?  You are looking straight into the eyes of the gunner inside the plane. Where was the camera?  The cameraman had to be straddling the barrel!  Nonsense.  It didn't happen. Had to be made in a studio. Another picture shows a German fighter from the rear, obviously taken from a fighter which had shot it down..  But at this time according to the narrator these raids  had no fighter escort.  Then back to looking at a waist gunner from the outside.  (Studio of course) So you will need to ask yourself if the producer lied about this part of film would they have any compulsion to tell the truth the rest of the time?  So from now on forget the WW2 documentaries if you want history.  Go to David Irving's web site.  He wrote 30 books on WW2. . 

In the section on R and R nothing was said about the Whore  Houses set up for the troops entertainment.  In France at least. 

In the 80's my wife and  I went to Europe on a trip and visited Anzio and the US Military cemetery there.  I was amazed at the percentage of airmen buried there.  Anzio was a disaster and American troops ( and other nationalities) were under siege for 3 months by the Germans. But a large part of the men buried there were airmen. In  Crusade in Europe even though at times raids on Europe by the 8th Airforce lost close to 50 percent of the attacking planes .  Shot down or damaged so much they were not usable. But except for a couple short scenes you would not know this by Crusade in Europe.  These men were out there doing their job knowing they were going to die.  That is the reason the Air Force put a 25 mission limit on how many missions they were required to make.  But Crusade In Europe downplayed the danger by giving the impression that occasionally a plane was lost when actually they were lucky to get back  alive.

The narrator talks about precision  bombing when actually the Planes could miss the target by miles.  Later they gave up all pretense of precision bombing because they dropped their bombs when the lead bomber let his go.

Have a nice day and take a look at Bill's War. Click on the link




Phone Take a look at Bills war. His widow created a story of his service with the 39th FA in WW2. Find it at Four years in the 3rd Inf in WW2

A little about me in Berlin 1945

Miserable picture of me at the Brandenberg Gate in Berlin. The Germans made great cameras but they also made some bad ones just like we did. The one I had was a borrowed one and it was rainy so the picture was bad. Note the white sign just to the right of me which is a check point I think. Although at this time Oct. 1945 we were able to go back and forth into east Berlin without restriction that day. The day this was taken I and a truck load of others had gone to Berlin from Darmstadt which was the HQ of the 3rd Inf. Division Artillery. The reason we were able to go was there was a football game between the 3rd and another outfit and we were supposed to watch it. I wanted to see Berlin and couldn't care less about football. Just to my right off camera is the German Reichstag the German parlement. My buddy who took the picture and I went down into Hitlers Bunker where he killed himself. This was behind the Reichstag. After looking around a little a Russian came and run us out. This means we were in the Russian zone and makes me wonder if I have been wrong all these years about exactly were we were. I am wondering if the Reichstag was on the other side of the Brandenberg Gate. Something I haven't thought about for 65 years. I had been thinking that the Reichstag was in the western zone but becaue the Russian ran us out means it was in the
Russian zone. You can see two or three people on the sidewalk on my right. Note there are no autos. We still had the Autobahn to ourselves. No civilian traffice yet. I drove from Darmstadt to Kassel at the Jeeps max which was 67 MPH without seeing a civilian car or military that I can remember. I will see if Google can clear this up.

Emil Ludwig Kasserne in Darmstadt

See Bill Sheldon's War

Standing where I was in 1945 with GI guide

Chapter 6 More basic training then bivouac at Hunter Leggitt

This is written as the thoughts come to me. So it will be pretty disjointed to a professional author. So if you are expecting professional writing you'd better buy a book. Also if you are interested in my entire experience after reading this go to the start by scrolling down and reading up. You've heard of writing from right to left so leave it to google to read from the bottom up. That's a joke son. There will be some pictures. Remember to click on a picture to see a big picture. The next post will show links to the first stories of this blog.

Please leave a comment if you take the time to read this. I'm going to see if google has a page counter. Maybe no one is reading it anyway.

For all you WW2 types whose eyesight is perhaps not too good I will increase the size of the print. Near Camp Roberts is the Military Reservation, Hunter Leggitt, where the trainees go for their final training where they put their knowledge into practice. Somehow I had acquired a camera or had someone else take the pictures. As I said before my memory is/was bad and unless I had a reason to remember it, it is gone. Pictures are a good way to remember what was going on. I managed to contact my friend Burdette Anderson who was in the Infantry at Camp Roberts and as I talked to him it brought back many memories but not of Camp Roberts Basic Training but things in general of army life. Of course he is about my age and considering that he lived through 85 plus or minus years and 90 days of combat on Okinawa I think it is remarkable that we are still around to talk about it.

I don't remember much of Hunter Leggitt but someone did take a few pictures of me there,



Of course they gave us various training in weapons. In the artillery soldiers don't normally carry rifles they carry carbines. So the infantry manual of arms is pretty much unknown to the artilleryman. Later in Germany at Worms when they handed me a n M1 rifle for guard duty I had to do a quick learn of the manual of arms. Not too tough actually as I'd seen them do it a lot of t mes. A real Marine or infantryman would probably have had a laugh if I had actually had to do it. The duty was guarding the perhiphery of the camp. Not too hard as we were a long ways behing the fighting at this stage of the war. This is the first I came in contact with the hunger and starvation going on in Gemany at this late stage. I remember one little kid trying to play and keep up with the other children who had not suffered so much malnutrition as he had. Small spindly legs, very thin, large shoes that kept him from keeping up with the others. I was to see a lot more of this but sheltered in the army with plenty of food, not living in the poplulation at large, the impact on us was less how bad it was for the Germans. Of course we had to know as the women congregated around the post liquor bars, willing to sell themselves for something to eat. But more of this later. But if you are under the impression the the American soldier was popular because of his winning ways you can forget that. I wonder this late date where all the people lived that had occupied Darmstadt and many other cities in 1945. One day late in the war the British or Americans raided the town of Darmstate with a population of around 120,000 killing 30 thousand or so. Take of look at Darmstadt in the summer of 1945. I took this picture Not a soul living here or even a place to stay by the looks of it. where did they go?




Enough for today more on basic before we graduated and sent on to other adventures. A spot of leave then on to the war for some.