World War II

Book Review: “The Double Agents” (Men at War #6) W.E.B. Griffin

I will be the first to say that I am always ready to read anything pertaining to the OSS in World War II and love the genre. I’ve read many of W.E.B. Griffin’s books and they follow along a same general outline. The plot and character development take up the vast majority of the novel and the action sequences are nearly an afterthought and seem to be shorted out too quickly. It sometimes seems he’s looking to set up another novel by always leaving you guessing at how the action plays out.

“The Double Agents” is no different, using his same characters from earlier work, Griffin spins the tale of the Dick Canidy, the OSS and upcoming invasion of Sicily. The one thing I like about Griffin’s novels is the meticulous detail to get every little facet of life during the World War II years as close to perfect that he can. He weaves his characters around real ones, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Wild Bill Donovan and sometimes you have to remind yourself that it IS a novel when you read the dialogue between FDR and Donovan.

Throw in the machinations of Charles “Lucky” Luciano, the jailed Mafia don who helps the Allies by getting the Sicilian Mafia on board (which really did happen), to pave the way for the invasion, and you have the stuff of intrigue. Griffin obviously had some fun by weaving in the characters of Ian Fleming (author of the James Bond books), and actors David Niven and Peter Ustinov as well in this tale. The two actors, Fleming and OSS operative Lt. Hoche weave a tale about a dead British Major’s body that washes ashore in Spain. It is it believable? Ah, no…but it makes for a fun ride.

Our OSS hero Major Richard “Dick” Canidy is en route to Sicily. The ruggedly handsome, playboy type is also a hard-core, Special Operative that is equally at home blowing a German ship out of the water as he is romancing the ladies…. Isn’t that the description of every Special Operations trooper? At least in our own minds….but I digress.

The story has a few subplots that can be distracting at times but starts with a Dr. Rossi that has proof that the Nazis (dastardly buggers that they are), have infected Allied POWs with Yellow Fever. And our hero Canidy, has blown up the aforementioned boat with Tuban, a dangerous nerve agent that Hitler is going to use against the Allies. So Canidy has to ascertain whether the nerve agent sunk with the boat or burned in the explosion.

He also has to work with Luciano’s man Frank Nola, who is the prototypical Mafia Don who sets Canidy up with the local Mafia in Palermo. And from the previous books, Canidy’s love interest Ann Chambers resurfaces for those who like a little bit of romance thrown in with their war stories.

Griffin’s book nicely mixes the true events, the Sicily invasion, Luciano’s help with securing the Mafia’s cooperation, the dead British Major floating ashore in Spain with faked documents and weaves them around his fictional characters.

This particular novel by Griffin I thought could have been much shorter. He used quite a bit of filler that perhaps didn’t need to be in there. One of the more common complaints about Griffin’s novels pertains to filler and the amount of swearing that goes on in them. Welcome to the real world folks. Having worked in Special Operations, the amount of cussing going on in Griffin’s novels is pale by comparison to what you’d find in a Special Forces team room. An American Ambassador in South America once told me having Special Forces A-Team guys in the Embassy was educational. How so, I asked him? He said, he never knew there were that many ways to conjugate the verb “To F**k” before he met us.

I really liked the part with actors Niven and Ustinov, and Ian Fleming it was a fun, enjoyable part of the book and the interactions among the characters were priceless. Having watched Niven (Guns of Navarone) and Ustinov (Spartacus) in countless films, it is easy to see this scene playing out. Especially being a fan of James Bond. They behave as I’d see them behaving…or perhaps as I’d like to see them.

Like all of his novels, Griffin’s believability scale is about pegged out. Our hero Canidy always seems to get things worked out exactly in his favor. Like the jet-setting Green Berets in Griffin’s later series, one has to roll their eyes at times. But truth be told, I would have loved to serve in Griffin’s Special Forces.

But that’s not why we read novels, at least speaking for myself. We/I read them to be entertained. And when reading a military novel about World War II and the OSS, Griffin has woven plenty of true facts around a story that makes for a very enjoyable ride.

I’ve read about 10 of his books and still have seven (friends and colleagues borrow and “forget” to return them), so there is a good reason why I keep coming back for more. I wouldn’t say this is the best of his work, but even as one of his lesser efforts, it was well worth the time.

For you aspiring Special Operations candidates as well as its veterans, you will enjoy the OSS and Green Beret Series of his books. They make for light, enjoyable reading. I bought this particular book for a long flight to the Middle East. I ended up not reading a lick of it on the plane, but lost two nights of sleep after arriving as I couldn’t put it down once I began to turn the pages. Just like his other books.

In the jacket of the book, Griffin dedicated to Colonel Aaron Bank and Captain William Colby, both members of the OSS during World War II. Bank ended up becoming the “Father of Special Forces”, being the first commander of the 10th Special Forces Group. Colby was an OSS operative who joined the fledgling CIA after the war and worked his way up to become the Director of Central Intelligence. He never forgot his OSS service and could be seen for years, cutting his grass with his Army Patrol Cap on.

Photos Courtesy: Wikipedia, author

September 7, 1940 the Germans Bomb London During the Battle of Britain

In the summer of 1940, the German army was a juggernaut. The punched a hole through Belgium, rolled across France and were preparing for the coup de grace, the invasion of England. Even the ever-confident Hitler was surprised at the speed in which the Germans crushed the allied forces of Britain, France, and Belgium.

The German Luftwaffe was preparing to soften up the English coastline for the invasion force by attacking the British airfields in the southeastern corner of Britain. There with air superiority, the Germans felt they could use their smaller and weaker navy to cross the channel and invade. The code name for this “Operation Sea Lion” was slated to begin on September 15.

On August 1, he gave the order, “The German air force is to overcome the British air force with all means at its disposal and as soon as possible.” Thus the Battle of Britain began.

The Germans arrayed three Luftflotten (Air Fleets) which combined boasted over 3000 aircraft of all types but over 1100 of which were fighters mainly the Bf-109E which was an equal to the British Spitfire at that time of the war but suffered from a notable lack of range. For the longer range targets, the Germans had the Me-110, the twin engine fighter with a lot of firepower but suffered from a lack of maneuverability. They were to be totally outclassed by the Hurricanes and Spitfires of the British. The rest were bombers. Mostly the He-111, some Dornier-17s, and Ju-88 and about 400 of the vaunted Ju-87 Stuka dive bombers which ran roughshod over Europe but were soon to be seen as sitting ducks when not having air superiority around them.

On the British side, when they regrouped after the disaster in France, they had only 446 modern fighters (Spitfires and Hurricanes). But by August 11, they’d increased that to 704 fighters with another 289 in their ASUs (Aircraft Storage Units). In just 10 weeks from the withdrawal of troops from Dunkirk, the RAF had doubled the size of its fighter command. The British aircraft industry had answered the bell, in a big way.

The British air defense network, although unfinished by the battle’s beginning, was the most technically advanced in the world. The British radar system could pickup German formations before they even crossed the English Channel. This allowed for the conserving of pilots and fuel, the radar could pinpoint the location of German squadrons without the need for countless patrols. And when the RAF fighters were alerted, they had a much greater chance of being directed onto the target.

Opening Moves, Operation Eagle: The Luftwaffe was ready by August 10. The launched Operation Adler (Eagle) which was designed to drive the Brits from the skies over southern England. The German staff planned to annihilate the RAF south of the London-Gloucester line in four days and just four weeks to eliminate the RAF as an effective fighting force. They were convinced that the planned invasion could take place with German air superiority in mid-September. Those estimates were very wrong.

After poor weather on August 11 limited the Germans to some small raids on the coast, the first big attack occurred the next day with six major raids and several small ones targeting the British airfields and radar installations on the south coast along with shipping in the Thames Estuary. The Battle of Britain had begun.

Of the six radar installations targeted, five were damaged but only one was knocked out of action. The Germans lost 31 aircraft, the British losses were 22 fighters. German intelligence was poor. They had little information on British industry and lacked a cohesive plan on which industries to attack. They focused more on tactics than strategy and the High Command was constantly in the dark over Britain’s capabilities as well as the amount of damage that had been done.

On Day 2, August 13, the Germans flew 1485 sorties and included a successful night bombing of a Spitfire factory outside of Birmingham. The Germans lost another 45 aircraft, the British just 13. During that week, the Germans attacked some 30 airfields and aircraft factories. German intelligence estimated that they’d destroyed 300 aircraft in the air and on the ground. In fact, they’d destroyed less than a third of that.

On August 15, the Germans were raiding nearly constantly thru the day, as one attack would finish, another would start somewhere else. They launched 520 bomber sorties and 1270 fighter sorties. Their losses were climbing as the British downed 75 aircraft against just 34 of their own. Another 1700 sorties followed on August 16 as the Luftwaffe attacked several airfields, severely damaging the one at Tangmere. Another 45 planes were lost. British losses were just 21.

Goering Changes Strategy: The four days were over, the British were supposed to be swept from the skies south of the London Gloucester line. German intelligence, in taking stock of the situation estimated that the British were down to their last 300 fighters. They had nearly double that amount. They foolishly thought that just another one to two days would be all it took to sweep the RAF from the sky.

On August 18, the Germans went after airfields at Surrey, Kent, and Sussex. German losses were high, 71 aircraft lost. The RAF losses were 27 fighters. Fighter Command of the RAF wasn’t swept from the skies and the Germans made their first big change in their planning. By the 18th, the Germans had lost 363 aircraft of all types. The British losses were 181 shot down and another 30 on the ground. But the Germans withdrew the Stukas, the Ju-87 from the front lines as their losses had been appalling.

The problem the British were having was with the availability of trained pilots. While they lost a total of 211 aircraft, the British aircraft industry replaced all but 40. But their losses included 154 experienced pilots. Their training schools had replaced them with just 63.

The Germans reasoned that if they attacked the airfields farther inland nearer to the Number 11 Group where all of the fighters in the south were controlled from, they would force the British to consolidate their forces, strike at the heart of their defenses and force the RAF into a battle of attrition that they couldn’t possibly win. They knew the risks of sending the bombers that far inland and sent an even larger percentage of fighters to cover them.

The Germans went all in to destroy Fighter Command and attacked the air bases at Biggin Hill, Kenley, North Weald and Hornchurch which were turned back. But the bombers got through to Debden. Biggin Hill was the sight of two raids on August 30, doing severe damage and killing 39 people on the ground. On the 31st, the bombers did severe damage to Debden, Biggin Hill, and Hornchurch. It was the RAF’s bloodiest day of the war, 39 aircraft were shot down. German aircraft sorties were around 1500 which only 250-400 were bombers. They attacked the Hawker factories outside of Weybridge where over half of the Hurricanes were manufactured.

The British were being worn down, they’d lost a total of 286 aircraft, with many others severely damaged. Out of 1000 pilots, 103 were killed and 128 wounded. The German losses totaled 380. Although they were down, they weren’t out and the war of attrition was one the Germans couldn’t afford to fight much longer. The RAF was not out of commission, the D-Day for Operation Sea Lion was pushed back to September 21 from September 15. The Luftwaffe and Göring needed to administer a knockout blow to the RAF in the next few days if the invasion window was going to be reached. Göring decided that they needed to change their strategy once more. They were going to bomb London.

The Blitz Begins Over London: The German High Command believed that the attack on London would accomplish three things. The Germans hoped to get the British to push all of their air assets over London where they could be destroyed. The second was to interfere with the British industry and government and paralyze their decision-making process just prior to the invasion. It was also hoped to terrorize the population into capitulation. And finally, the Germans wanted their pound of flesh.

On August 25, a German bomber jettisoned his bombs in the night and they fell on central London, the first time that it happened in the war. Churchill ordered the immediate bombing of Berlin which RAF Bomber Command carried out on two successive nights. Göring had assured Hitler that this would never happen and now he wanted revenge.

On the afternoon of September 7, 300 German bombers escorted by 600 fighters flew up the Thames Estuary. A few bombed the oil installations at Thameshaven, the rest flew on to London itself. The bombers hit the docks east of the city, fires raged out of control in Silvertown. The Germans used these fires for night raids and they kept up the pressure after dark and an additional 250 bombers rained steel and death down on London until dawn. For the citizens of London, the “Blitz” had arrived.

As London was being bombed the code word “Cromwell” was sent off to the Southern and Eastern Commands of the British Home Guard which meant that the invasion was imminent.

The weather became an issue with daylight raids but London was being hit every night. On September 10, the Germans bombed London again and for the first time shot down more of their enemy (29), than they suffered (25). But the clock was ticking. Hitler again moved the invasion back to September 24. The Luftwaffe had three more days to destroy the RAF as the Navy needed a 10-day window to prepare the invasion barges.

Two more days of bad weather made for small raids. The invasion was put back to September 28, the last time the tides would be right until late October.

September 15 was to be the day that Göring delivered his death blow to London and the RAF. He sortied 230 bombers and over 700 fighters to central London. The Spitfires and Hurricanes ravaged their formations where the bombers were either wildly ineffective or jettisoned their bombs over southern London. They’d suffered terrible losses of 60 aircraft, their most in a single day of the war. British losses were just 26 of which 13 of the pilots were saved and could fight another day. On September 17, Hitler postponed Operation Sea Lion indefinitely. A few days later he ordered the dispersal of all of the barges for the invasion, to limit air attacks.

There would be no invasion of Britain.

Further Attacks: While Göring was not yet prepared to admit he failed, he decided to hit London with everything he had in hopes of forcing a surrender without the benefit of a German invasion. Because of bad weather, the Germans were only able to raid London on three more days in September, on the 18th, 27th, and the 30th. His losses were heavy, another 120 aircraft and crews were lost against just 60 for the RAF.

But the change in strategy by attacking London and abandoning their attacks on the airfields, while devastating for the citizens, doomed the Germans to failure. The losses by Fighter Command, while heavy were now being kept up with by the aircraft industry.

Hitler’s sights were now set on Russia and although the Germans continued to bomb London and the surrounding cities at night where they operated with virtual impunity. From September 7 and November 13, London was bombed every night save one. By the time the bombers moved east in May of 1941 for the Russian invasion, 40,000 British civilians would be killed, another 46,000 wounded. Over a million British homes were either damaged or destroyed.

The Germans had underestimated the British resolve and her people. This wasn’t the Britain that appeased Hitler and that turned over Czechoslovakia in 1938. The Americans had agreed to help via Lend-Lease and helped the Royal Navy recover from their losses at Dunkirk. Less than seven months later after the Blitz, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States would enter the war. The Germans foolishly declared war on the United States after Roosevelt declared war on Japan. Britain was no longer alone. That would seal Hitler’s fate.

But the British survival was not guaranteed by the US, but by 1000 pilots of Spitfires and Hurricanes who, despite the odds, weathered the storm and persevered. Churchill in one of his most famous quotes to the House of Commons said of the RAF, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”

Photos courtesy: Wikipedia

Book Review, American Guerrilla: The Forgotten Heroics of Russell W. Volckmann

Unless you’re a Special Operations soldier or avid reading buff of guerrilla warfare, chances are that you’ve never heard much of Russell W. Volckmann. But American Guerrilla, The Forgotten Heroics of Russell W. Volckmann should be required reading for prospective Special Operations troops as well as current operators (although I dislike that term). The book was written by a former Armor officer Mike Guardia who tells the life story and military career of a very important if somewhat ignored American military officer.

Guardia weaves a very entertaining read of a staff officer stationed in the Philippines just prior to World War II who didn’t retreat to Australia with General Douglas MacArthur nor surrender after the capitulation of U.S. troops on Bataan. Instead, Volckmann and his troops retreated into the jungle. There he raised at first a rag-tag army of American and Filipinos that turned into a powerful guerrilla army of US and Filipinos that reached a strength of 22,000. His hit and run raids and ambushes against the Japanese occupation forces killed 50,000 of the enemy. They tied up huge amounts of Japanese troops and kept the enemy harassed until the invasion by the Americans helped liberate the islands from the empire of Japan.

In the jungles, Volckmann’s troops made contact with Allied headquarters in Australia and helped direct Allied efforts to key enemy positions. He set up a resupply chain via American submarines for the resistance and helped direct the Allies when they returned to the Philippines. The guerrillas saved countless lives by giving MacArthur’s staff timely and accurate intelligence on the enemy. And when the Japanese began to discuss surrender terms with the Allies, Japanese General Yamashita sought out Volckmann rather than MacArthur to open negotiations.

Yet when most military historians discuss the campaign of the Philippines, Volckmann’s name is rarely mentioned while discussing MacArthur’s campaign to recapture the former American protectorate.

In the book’s final two chapters Guardia makes the case for the naming of Volckmann and not Aaron Bank as the “true” father of the US Army Special Forces. That was sure to raise some hackles in the SF community where Bank is always discussed in the highest regard possible. We’ll address that below as he makes a compelling argument.

At only 240 pages, the book is quickly and easily digested although Guardia could have delved more into the other resistance movement across the Philippines focusing on Volckmann’s sizable contribution. He also was very critical of MacArthur’s decision to withdraw to Australia, (following the orders of the President) which has always been a source of controversy. The details about Volckmann’s operations seemed a bit thin, the author could’ve used a bit more detail there. One surprising aspect of the interviews done for the book was that no former Filipino guerrillas were quoted here. The lack of better maps of the areas that the guerrillas operated in was a detriment to the book and later additions should see to that. It would make it much easier for the reader to follow along and travel

Volckmann kept a diary where he daily logged on his attempts to raise, train and lead a guerrilla force of Filipinos from Luzon. They were a thorn in the Japanese’s side, committing acts of sabotage, raids, ambushes as well as intelligence gathering that was extremely valuable to the Americans once they began their attempts to recapture the Philippine Islands.

Students of Guerrilla and Unconventional Warfare should study the struggles of Volckmann’s efforts against the Japanese that stretched on for three years. And his efforts definitely saved countless lives, yet in all the books about MacArthur’s triumphant return, he’s scarcely mentioned if at all which is a tragic oversight.

Guardia’s assertion that Volckmann, not Bank is the true father of the modern day Special Forces is based on his role in drafting the Army’s counterinsurgency doctrine and the concepts for Guerrilla Warfare and Special Forces operations. He was tasked with the writing of the two Army field manuals, Operations Against Guerrilla Forces and Organization and Conduct of Guerrilla Forces for the Psychological Operations Command.

While Volckmann had a tremendous influence on the development of Special Forces, one must remember that many of the operational tenets that he wrote in the two manuals, while tried and tested under his leadership in the Philippines were already being used by the O.S.S. in their own training and operations. That in no way should denigrate from Volckmann’s tremendous efforts, as he deserves a place at the table for Special Forces founders.

Did Guardia prove his statement that Volckmann “designed the mission capabilities and operational framework” of the Special Forces? No. I am still firmly in the camp that Bank, drawing on his own experiences as a “Jedburgh” created the organizational makeup of SF that exists to this day. And the fact that it was he, Bank selected as the 10th Special Forces Group’s first commander that deserves that honor.

However, despite that, I recommend students of Special Warfare read “American Guerilla” simply from the standpoints that it is a good look at the American and Filipino guerrilla warfare efforts against the Japanese and that sometimes it is a good thing to read and discuss viewpoints different from your own…. There is entirely too little of that today.

Photos Courtesy: US Army, Amazon.com

Worst War Movies Ever… Don’t Waste Your Time on These Stinkers

Back in May around Memorial Day, we listed some of our favorite War Films that are guaranteed to entertain and keep your interest. We could have easily added a couple of more as the genre always has some worthy additions by Hollywood’s filmmakers. This year’s blockbuster “Dunkirk” could easily make its way into that list.

But today’s list is going in the opposite direction. These are some of the worst war films, in our humble opinion out there. In every genre, especially one as chocked full of entries as the war film category, you’ll have plenty of lousy films, that are just groan worthy from military veterans and war film buffs alike.

So watch these following films…if you dare. But as a word to the wise. You may turn it off before it is over. As some of these films are just plain awful. Normally we’d say, drum roll, please. Instead, we’ll play a dirge. In no particular order here is your Wall of Shame of Worst War Films:

Battle of the Bulge (1965) – Despite a stellar All-Star cast of Henry Fonda, Robert Ryan, Telly Savalas, Charles Bronson, Dana Andrews, George Montgomery and James MacArthur this one got nearly everything wrong. The uniforms, the tanks, the history was skewed horribly.

Less than a minute into the film, the narrator, William Conrad uttered this: “To the south lay Patton’s Third Army, to the North Montgomery’s Eighth”….What? Field Marshal Montgomery’s Eighth Army, for which he rose to fame in the desert, was in Italy, not the Northern edge of the Bulge. That should tell you right away that this stinker was not going to get things right.

The German Tiger Tanks were actually M-47 Patton tanks and the American Shermans were portrayed by M-24 Chaffee light tanks. Filmed entirely in Spain, the terrain resembled the wooded, hilly Ardennes, not at all.

The film wasted a good performance from Robert Shaw, as the fanatical SS officer Col. Hessler who was tasked to break through the Allied lines. Shaw’s Hessler was loosely based on SS Colonel Joachim Peiper. No mention is made of the counter-attack from Patton’s forces from the south, the 101st Airborne’s holding of the key road junction of Bastogne or the Allied air power, which after the skies cleared, decimated the Germans on the ground.

Instead, this film would have you believe that the only thing that stopped the Germans from reaching Antwerp was the lack of gas. The climactic tank battle at the end was another loosely based big tank battle at Celles. In the film, the Germans wipe out the American forces. In reality, it was the opposite. The 2nd Armored Division left 88 German tanks smoking in the hills. This film was so bad that General Eisenhower came out of retirement to excoriate it for its lack of historical accuracy.

Inchon (1979) – This stinker was produced by the religious leader Reverend Sun Myung Moon, head of the powerful Unification Church in the 1980s. He put up $30 million of his own cash to make this limp, tepid offering. The production costs ballooned up to $46 million, which would be near $150 million today. Sir Laurence Olivier was paid $1 million bucks to play General Douglas MacArthur and it is clear, he was there for the paycheck only.

Rev. Moon claimed that the spirit of MacArthur visited him during the filming giving his blessing to the project. OK…does anything else need to be added here?

The cast of Olivier, Ben Gazzara, and Jacqueline Bissett was wasted here with dialogue as dry as a buffalo fart. Olivier looked more like Emperor Palpatine than MacArthur in this one. And Moon threw in a little sex action between Gazzara and a Korean hottie while cheating on Bissett who was his wife at home to take away from the rest of this potboiler I guess to show that the war was the cause of marital infidelity. It was actually filmed in 1979 and Moon shopped for three years for a studio to release this turkey.

I didn’t make it thru the original release, falling asleep in the theater and guarantee if you are having sleep issues watch this and it will do the trick. This one was so bad that MGM didn’t even release it on video. You can find it on YouTube if you care to.

Pearl Harbor (2001) – Michael Bay took a 90-minute action film about the bombing of Pearl Harbor and squeezed it into a 3-hour 3-minute monstrosity that took severe creative license with the actual history. Starring Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale who are involved in a complicated love triangle during the and immediate aftermath of the Japanese attack that kicked the U.S. into World War II.

Pearl Harbor had a huge operating budget of $140 million but made a respectable $450 million at the box office. Some of it was filmed in the huge Baja Studio that James Cameron built for Titanic. And the ship scenes filmed there were still visible (the wreck of the Arizona) a few years later when I got to work on the beginning of a Narnia film there in 2009.

The numerous factual inaccuracies were pretty numerous, the Marlboro Lights in a sailor’s pocket…was inexcusable. A pretty amusing scene is where Affleck is talking to Colonel Doolittle in his office and behind the Colonel are his trophies for air racing. Look closely and there is an F-86 Saber jet from the Korean War. Affleck’s supposed action in the “Eagle Squadron” with the RAF is flawed. No American Army pilots were allowed to join. Only civilians. And what in the wide, wide world of sports is the intelligence officers and Beckinsale listening to during the Doolittle Raid? It certainly wasn’t radio chatter from the planes over Japan. They were on strict radio silence.

This one at least had some good action scenes during the actual bombing of Pearl Harbor which Bay did well although again inaccurately and had the always enchanting Beckinsale in the lead. A curious decision was the one to portray Mrs. Ben Affleck (Jennifer Garner) as a dowdy nurse, perhaps to take away from Beckinsale’s draw.

Redacted (2009) – If you’ve never heard of this one, don’t be alarmed, you aren’t missing anything. Normally I love the films of Brian De Palma but he swung for the fences with this one and missed. De Palma took a real incident about a rape of a young Iraqi girl and the murder of her family and tried to create an anti-war film about the U.S. involvement in Iraq. Surprisingly, some of the medium’s most well-known critics loved this film. Don’t waste your time, it was unmitigated trash, exploitation. He tried to shock the audience, right down to a slide show of gruesome pictures of Iraq’s war dead. We aren’t told who killed them, or who they are…it is just supposed to shock the viewer.

The message? here is that the war is making monsters out of American youth? I don’t know. It is kind of murky there but De Palma goes full-blown exploitive with the two Americans being the cartoonish, one-dimensional villains in the scene.The one perpetrator even wears a helmet mounted camera to catch the ugliness on film as the antithesis of the combat footage we’ve seen on screen during the war.

This was one of De Palma’s lesser efforts, the dialogue is atrocious and totally unbelievable for any grunts and sounds like a cliche machine.The way these guys interact with one another is a joke. Is this a unit that went to Iraq together or did they meet on the set just ten minutes before? It was just a crudely done, poorly defined film that even the “found camera footage” is unbelievable. It was a one-dimensional bit of schlock that is best left to the imagination.

Revolution (1985) – Ok, I know “The Patriot” also taking place in the Revolutionary War took tremendous liberties with the historical facts. But the cast at least made it entertaining. Revolution was one of the most horrible films I think I’ve ever been subjected to. A few years ago, I hadn’t even heard of it, and a friend of mine, said that I absolutely, positively had to watch it.

Well, I did and I agree with the original review published in 1985 with its release that it was quite probably the worst film of the year. The casting was absolutely ridiculous. Don’t get me wrong, I love Al Pacino. Some of his performances are legendary stuff, Scarface, Heat, the Godfather saga. But casting him as a trapper caught up in the Revolutionary War is a head scratcher. Where was he trapping? In Brooklyn? His accent is not American Revolution-esque unless we had a lot more Italian immigrants in the colonies than what has been reported.

Speaking of accents, Nastassja Kinski, who back in the day was quite the box office draw, has a completely different one from the actresses who play her mother and sisters. I guess we’re supposed it ignore it or assume that she was adopted.

The British characters led by Donald Sutherland, are the unequivocal bad guys here. And just in case you don’t see it first hand, the director makes sure that you do by making most of them kiddy-diddlers. Pederasty aside, it is still a horrible film that is just not worth your time. The director wasted some nicely filmed battle scenes in Yorktown by making a boring, yawner who…like the ones listed above, took great liberties with history.

There are several more we could have listed here but you get the idea. And please feel free to chime in with some of your own Hall of Shame War Films. So with Labor Day Weekend upcoming, if you’re not making one last run to the beach this summer and you’re content with sitting home and watching some of your favorite war films, do yourself a favor. Skip these five. You’ll be glad you did.

Photos courtesy: IMDB

Operation Foxley, The Special Operations Executive Mission to Kill Hitler

The British Special Operations Executive, SOE, put together a plan, “Operation Foxley” which was to be an attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler in July 1944. If the British had actually put the plan into action, historians believe that millions of lives could have been saved, the war shortened by many months and eased the suffering of untold amounts of people. Winston Churchill initially supported the planning of this operation.

Although detailed planning was done to facilitate the attempt, it was never put into action. SOE had several plans on taking out Germany’s Führer, including blowing up his train or by using poison. Neither of those had much of a chance of success. The SOE then planned on using a sniper to kill Hitler when he visited the Berghof, Hitler’s home in the Obersalzberg of the Bavarian Alps near Berchtesgaden, Bavaria.

SOE became aware of a facet of Hitler’s routine that made the attempt possible. One of his former security guards was captured in the fighting in Normandy during the early summer of 1944. This prisoner revealed that while at the Berghof, Hitler always took a 20-minute morning walk just after 10 a.m.and have breakfast at a teahouse on the premises. They learned that Hitler wanted liked to be left alone during this walk, leaving him unprotected along the edge of a wooded area, where he was out of sight of sentry posts. The Berghof was part of a large complex on the Obersaltzberg. Many high-ranking Nazi’s had houses there so that they could relax in comfort when Hitler was there. Whenever Hitler was at the Berghof a Nazi flag was hoisted from the main house and could be seen from a café below in the town of Berchtesgaden.

The plan was for a sniper, armed with a Mauser Kar-98K and fitted with a scope to kill Hitler as he took his morning walk. However, it wasn’t going to be easy. Although he felt secure within his compound and preferred to walk alone on most mornings, there were various sentries posted around the area anywhere between 100-500 meters from the path to the teahouse. The shot would be from a few hundred meters or failing that, he could be attacked while being driven back to the main house from the teahouse.

The obvious issue for the British was the actually getting the team into and out of Germany. The two men picked for the mission were a German speaking Pole and a British sniper. The British lucked out when a German POW named Dieser told SOE that he had an uncle named Heidentaler, who lived as a shopkeeper in Salzburg, about 12 miles away who was a die-hard anti-Nazi. Heidentaler also did frequent target practice less than 10 miles from the estate and knew the area well.

The British sniper practiced with a Kar-98K and became proficient with it practicing in similar conditions with a moving target. He was also given a Luger 9mm pistol with a suppressor attached so that any unfortunate souls that stumbled upon them at the estate would be eliminated.

The plan was to have the two men parachute into Germany, make their way to Salzburg where Heidentaler would hide the men and then transport them to Berchtesgaden disguised as German Mountain troops.

Everything was ready to go and the plan was submitted in November 1944. But SOE’s Deputy Head of their German Directorate, Lt. Colonel Ronald Thornley thought the assassination was a bad idea. Hitler, Thornley argued, may be turned into a martyr and the Germans’ loss of the war could be blamed on his loss and not a flawed overall strategy. Moreover, he said, it may cause a repeat of the WWI-WWII scenario where Germany may try to rise again.

Ultimately it was decided to scrap the plan, in no small part because Churchill’s advisors believed that Hitler, with absolute power, was a terrible strategist. With his increasing paranoia and poor decisions that were becoming more frequent, it was thought that his being in charge of the German war machine was a better alternative than removing him via an assassin’s rifle and having a more apt leader continuing the war.

Hitler is was deemed, was more valuable to the Allies alive than dead. The plan was scrapped. Just a few months later, with Germany in ruins, he committed suicide in Berlin.

The suppressed Luger is now on display at the Combined Military Services Museum in Maldon, Essex.

Photos Courtesy: Wikipedia, Combined Military Service Museum,

Disaster at Dieppe Aug.18-19 1942, A Valuable But Costly Lesson for D-Day

Operation Jubilee was a large scale prelude to the D-Day invasion that would take place in less than two years. The British Commandos had been having great success with hit and run raids especially in Norway. But by 1942, political pressure was being put on Churchill and Roosevelt by Josef Stalin to open a second front.

Churchill knew that eventually, the Allies would have to go across the channel and stay. So they attempted a bold raid that would include over 6000 troops, 160 tanks and 60 squadrons of aircraft, along with destroyers with 4-inch guns for direct support fire from off-shore. The sleepy French resort beach at Dieppe was chosen because that would put the raiding force in easy covering distance for the Spitfires and other fighters. The German defenders were from the 302nd Infantry Division. They had ample artillery and reinforcements close by.

On the night of the 18th of August, the flotilla of 252 ships under the command of Vice-Admiral Lord Mountbatten sailed from four south coast ports. They sailed to just 8 miles off the coast of Dieppe undetected, arriving at 0300 hrs (3 a.m.) on the 19th. The 2nd Canadian Division was to seize Dieppe and vicinity and hold it until the demolition tasks were complete. Then re-embark and return to England. In supporting, roles were the men of the No. 3 and 4 Royal Marine Commandos, who with 50 officers and men of the US Ranger Battalion.

By 0330, 5000 men were in their assault landing craft and heading towards the beaches behind the small gunboats that would lead the way. All was going according to plan as smoothly as an exercise until 0347 when all hell broke loose. The gunboat leading No. 3 Commando into “Yellow Beach” at Berneval and Belleville-sur-mer ran into five German armed trawlers who fired star shells to illuminate the scene. The gunboat was ripped to shreds, most of the crew wounded on the deck and as a result of pure chance, the 20 landing craft of No. 3 Commando were dispersed. Only one landing craft with 3 officers and 17 Commandos hit the beach at Belleville-sur-mer. Armed with personal weapons and one two-inch mortar, they harassed the German “Goebbels” battery to the extent that their fire was ineffective for much of the crucial parts of the battle.

Six other landing craft of No. 3 Commando hit the beach at Berneval and came under devastating machine gun fire. Barely a handful survived to reach the beach and once there, were pinned down under murderous fire.

On the far right flank, No. 4 Commando hit the beach in a textbook raid. On time and right on target, they completely destroyed the “Hess” battery and by 0730 were off the beaches and on their way back to England. Sadly, this was to be one of the few success stories of the raid.

The German defenses of Pourville had withstood the guns of the destroyers, and fighter bombers and the smoke screen was ineffective. The “Rommel”, “Hitler” and “Goring” batteries gave the Canadians coming ashore hell to pay. The Saskatchewan Regiment and the Queen’s Own Cameroons were under heavy fire.

On Blue Beach, disaster struck the Royal Regiment of Canada. They’d been delayed coming ashore, had been spotted via searchlights and attempted to make the landing in daylight. The Regiment was nearly annihilated. 27 officers and 516 men went ashore. Only 3 officers and 57 men were rescued off the beach.

The attack on Dieppe itself foundered on the beach. The Essex Scottish and Royal Hamiltons landed as the smoke screens lifted and they too were hit with murderous machine gun crossfire. The Essex Scottish couldn’t reach the sea wall, the town itself was out of the question. The Germans poured direct 75mm and 88mm artillery fire right at the men on the beaches. Coupled with highly accurate mortar and machine gun fire which enfiladed the beach, success was impossible.

The Essex Scottish men as individuals fought back fiercely, men were using their bodies as bridges over the barbed wire. A small group of 12 men made it to the Esplanade where they hurled grenades into gun positions, and fighting house to house harassed German patrols for over an hour before being forced back to the beach.

White Beach on the right fared equally poorly. The Royal Hamilton Light Infantry was coming under direct fire from 47mm and 37mm anti-tank guns coming ashore. Machine gun and mortar fire raked the beach into a death trap. Nearly all of the officers and senior NCOs were killed or wounded. One small group attacked the Casino and held a small foothold for a short time. Another group coming off the beach tried to storm up a cliff and the entire group was killed on the slope.

The tank landing craft, so crucial to the success of the operation were battered as soon as they emerged from the smoke screen. The assault groups of Sappers coming off of the tank landing craft were annihilated. One group of 71 had just nine left in less than ten minutes upon hitting the beach and four of them were wounded. Of the total of 314 Royal Engineers, nine officers and 180 men were killed upon landing.

Despite the fire, 17 tanks in the first wave made it to shore. Six reached the Esplanade. One climbed the steps of the Casino and they fired everything they had at the enemy until their ammunition was spent.

Only 28 tanks made it to shore, all of which were destroyed by the Germans. Because of the extremely heavy casualties including the Signalmen and beach groups, the commanders on ship were completely in the dark. At 0600, the commanders committed his reserve blindly, the Fusiliers Mont-Royal right into the center of the beach and they were immediately forced to dig in on the beach to stay alive. Of this group, 288 officers and men were eventually forced to surrender.

The Royal Marines were thrown back into the breach at 0830 but as soon as they came out of the smoke screen, the murderous fire began raking the landing craft. Their commander, Lt. Colonel J.T. Phillips signaled for the craft to turn around.

By 0900 the decision was made to start a withdrawal of the troops. There could be no orderly withdrawal as units had ceased to exist and it became an exercise in grabbing whoever they could off the beaches. At 1022, the destroyers lined up and to follow the rescue ships in as closely as possible firing with everything they had. The fighting on the beaches took another three bloody hours to get the remaining men off the beaches. The raid had been a colossal, bloody failure.

The Canadians had lost 215 officers and 3164 men. Total losses for the raid were 494 officers and 3890 men. Canadian casualty rates were about 68 percent. Of the 1000 Commandos, 247 were lost. All of the vehicles that made it to the beaches were lost. The Royal Navy lost 81 officers and 469 men including a destroyer (HMS Berkeley) and 33 landing craft. The Royal and Canadian Air Forces lost a total of 111 planes shot down. Of the 50 American Rangers, six were killed, four were wounded and six were taken prisoner. German casualties totaled 591 with the Luftwaffe losing just 48 aircraft.

The bloody lessons learned at Dieppe would serve the Allies well when they came ashore in France to stay in 1944. It would provide the Allied planners a blueprint on what was needed to successfully conduct amphibious operations. They included:

Proper preliminary artillery support, including aerial, naval bombardment;
Sustained element of surprize;
Better intelligence concerning enemy fortifications;
The avoidance of a direct frontal attack on a defended port city; and,
Better re-embarkation craft
Specialized Armored vehicles for the engineers to clear the beaches

Another lesson learned was that the Allies learned that taking a port city would render the harbor and piers useless through the action of taking them. Therefore they would construct prefabricated harbors, “Mulberries” that would be towed to the beaches. They wouldn’t make the same mistakes in Normandy.

Photos Courtesy: Wikipedia, the Canadian Forces, Dieppe Raiders Association

Could The War in Vietnam Been Avoided? the Case of Ho Chi Minh and OSS

There have been countless books written about the war in Vietnam as the United States was involved in a very costly war in terms of human loss and what the conflict did to tear apart our country as a whole. But could the war in Vietnam have been avoided in the first place? In the closing days of World War II, the US’ OSS (Office of Strategic Services) had sent a team in Indochina to work with the Viet Minh and Ho Chi Minh. He pleaded to the US and President Truman to help Vietnam gain its independence. His pleas were ignored, Truman and the US backed the French to take back their colonial empire and the rest is history.

Was Ho’s plea a clever Communist tactic just to get economic support from the US and help a fledgling country get on its feet? Or was he, as tried to portray himself, a fervent Vietnamese nationalist who just wanted to free his people? The answer may never be known completely but the truth may be a little bit of both.

Ho Chi Minh traveled in his formative years, gained an education from the French school in Hue and traveled abroad first on a steamer to France and later lived in the United States for a short time working menial jobs in Harlem and Boston.

After World War I, he went to France, got into politics, especially when it came to Vietnamese independence. He wrote letters to French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, and US President Woodrow Wilson at the Versailles peace talks asking for civil rights for the Vietnamese people. Ho pointed out that the self-determination proposed in the peace talks should include Vietnam and end the French colonial rule there. He asked for freedom of the press, freedom of association and assembly. Supposedly he claimed that his hero was George Washington who freed America from British colonial rule. But it all fell on deaf ears.

During this time, he fell under the sway of French socialists and became a member of the Parti Communiste Français (FCP). He studied in Moscow and moved to China where he taught young people at Whampoa Military Academy. He bounced between Europe and Asia until World War II broke out and in 1941, Ho returned to Vietnam to take control of the Viet Minh Independence Movement.

Ho commanded 10,000 guerrillas of the Viet Minh known as the “men in black” in fighting not only the Japanese occupation forces but those of the Vichy French as well. In April 1945, Ho met with Archimedes Patti the OSS Station Chief in Kunming, China. The two struck a deal where the Viet Minh would provide intelligence on the Japanese and rescue downed US aircrews. The US would supply them with communications gear, and small arms as well as the training to properly use them.

In July of 1945, the OSS parachuted a team into Vietnam codenamed the “Deer” team, about 70 miles west of Hanoi. They were met by the Viet Minh and treated as heroes. They were brought to the austere headquarters of the Viet Minh where the team found Ho close to death suffering from malaria and dysentery. He was treated by the medics where he made a full recovery.

During the training to teach the Viet Minh how to use the US bazookas, light machine guns and hand grenades, the OSS’ interpreter PFC Henry Prunier, from Worcester, Mass. was teaching a Viet Minh, named Mr. Van how to throw grenades with the overhand lob which was foreign to the Vietnamese. Mr. Van’s real name was Vo Nguyen Giap who later defeated the French and led the war against the Americans. Once Ho learned Prunier was from Massachusetts, he regaled him with his stories about his time in Boston.

The Viet Minh rescued a downed US pilot and Ho personally brought him to China to return him to American authorities. There he asked to meet Claire Chennault, who led the Flying Tigers in the early days of the war. Ho still talked to the OSS men about Vietnamese self-determination and asked them if he was any different than George Washington.

With the war winding down, Ho began writing letters to now President Harry Truman who took over after Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in April. Roosevelt favored Vietnamese self-determination. Ho in his letters, the first was written on August 17 began to ask Truman for help. His letters were ignored, however State Dept. cables from the time speak of Ho and his Communist leanings and it was clear that the US was not going to support him, despite the recommendations of the OSS team leader Major Allison Thomas and later Aaron Bank. Bank met with Ho and although he had Communist leanings felt like he was worth supporting.

Thomas in his reports to the OSS Station in China downplayed the Communist side of Ho’s personality and tried to play on the nationalistic side of things. “Ho definitely tabooed the idea that the party was communistic” since “the peasants didn’t know what the word communism or socialism meant—but they did understand liberty and independence.”

With the Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945, Ho and the Viet Minh entered Hanoi and proclaimed their independence. His choice for their own Declaration of Independence mirrored the words of Thomas Jefferson.

“All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

“This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.”

Ho wanted US support for the Vietnamese independence movement and asked for our help in not allowing the hated French from returning to their colonial empire.

That was not to be, the US began to tacitly and then actively support the French return to Vietnam. It wasn’t until the mid-to-late 1950s where Ho Chi Minh finally broke with his attempts to cultivate American favor.

Was Ho Chi Minh a Communist? Yes but more so, he was a fervent Vietnamese nationalist. After suffering under French rule for so long, it is doubtful he wanted to replace the French controlling his country with bosses from Moscow and Beijing calling the shots. But he was a pragmatist, he couldn’t take on the French alone and if the US wasn’t going to help then he was going to seek out those who would.

In a footnote to all of this, Prunier, the OSS interpreter, several times turned down opportunities to join the CIA after the war. Instead, he returned to Massachusetts and the family masonry business. However, in 1995 the U. S. Indochina Reconciliation Project, which had been established a decade earlier as a non-profit group to help facilitate relations between the United States and countries in Indochina asked him and the surviving members of the OSS “Deer Team” to return to Vietnam.

Giap remembered his OSS trainer and grabbing an orange, he aped the overhand movement that Prunier had trained him in 50 years prior. “Yes, yes, yes!” Giap exclaimed. Another Vietnamese soldier kept grabbing Prunier’s arm and calling his name. The Americans were stunned that they were held in such high esteem so many years later. Prunier donated his uniforms and papers from the OSS mission to the Vietnamese Museum of Military History in Hanoi. There they are prominently displayed and the museum’s Director General Le Ma Leung, who was a veteran of Khe Sanh, called Prunier’s donation “one of the most significant historical contributions that the museum had ever received.”

We’ll never know if the US could have held sway over Ho Chi Minh and turned him away from the Russians and Chinese. Even if the US had gotten involved in Ho’s bid for independence from France, would Vietnam have gone Communist? It is a great question and we may never really know the answer. Chances are they probably would have but the US lost an opportunity to stop a war from ever happening at the cost of 58,000 American lives.

Photo Courtesy: OSS archives

Book Review: Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage

As a former Special Forces soldier, I love reading books about the Special Operations Forces of not only the United States but other countries as well. But after devouring everything I could get my hands on about Special Forces during the Vietnam war especially those men from SOG some of whom trained me when I was a young pup, I went in search of the beginnings of SF.

Both Special Forces and the Central Intelligence Agency owe their direct lineage to the OSS, (Office of Strategic Services) that was started from scratch just before the United States entered World War II and by war’s end had over 10,000 men and women in their ranks. They became the war’s intelligence gathering, espionage, unconventional warfare, sabotage and subversion experts in just a few short years.

Working in close cooperation with the British, OSS patterned their organization from the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) and many of the later leaders of both Special Forces and CIA came from the OSS ranks.

After graduating and teaching in-house from the Special Warfare Center’s Advanced Special Operations Techniques course, I tried to learn everything possible about our predecessors “the Glorious Amateurs” as they were called who comprised the Jedburgh Teams and the Operational Groups that were textbook definitions of what our UW training called for. But what about the leader of the OSS? Who was William Donovan?

Douglas Waller’s intensive biography of William “Wild Bill” Donovan who rose from humble beginnings to be a successful lawyer, a World War I hero with the 42nd ‘Rainbow’ Division and later became the head of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services)is a fantastic read.

Donovan was born to poor Irish-American parents and worked his way from poor beginnings to a law degree from Columbia Law School where one of his classmates was the future President of the US Franklin Delano Roosevelt and married into a wealthy Protestant family.

During World War I, Donovan served mainly with the storied New York “Fighting 69th” mainly Irish Regiment. He was a cool customer under fire and his men loved him and that is where he got the nickname “Wild Bill” for his courage under fire. His closest friend in the Regiment, Father Francis Duffy, was his chaplain and the poet Joyce Kilmer his adjutant. He was awarded the Medal of Honor and the French Croix de Guerre for his heroism in France.

When he finally received his Medal of Honor, he immediately took it off and presented it to his regiment. “It doesn’t belong to me,” he said. “It belongs to the boys who are not here, the boys who are resting under the white crosses in France or in the cemeteries of New York.” He left the medal in the 69th’s New York armory and never retrieved it.

After the war he went into the law business and was very successful, building political connections on the way. He traveled extensively to Europe, building up more contacts along the way. Despite being very much an anti-FDR Republican, the President respected Donovan and asked him to travel to London and gauge whether the English would hold up under the German attacks of early WWII. The American Ambassador Joseph Kennedy was a firm defeatist and thought Britain doomed.

Donovan met with Winston Churchill and the two were of the same mind. Hitler needed to be defeated and to do so would require attacking the ‘soft underbelly’ of Europe. He returned to tell FDR that Britain would fight on that America needed to end its isolationism and join the British.

Donovan started the war-time intelligence and special operations organization from scratch and built it into the premier organization that deserved much better than to be disbanded at war’s end.

Just before the US entered the war several of the aides of FDR as well as Donovan were lobbying the Roosevelt administration on the need for a coordinated American intelligence service partnered with the United Kingdom. This was echoed by Admiral Godfrey, Britain’s Naval Intelligence chief, and his aide, Commander Ian Fleming. Fleming as many of you will recall was the author of the James Bond books. Donovan spelled out his feelings on how the organization should be run and organized was sent to Roosevelt in a memo.

“Strategy, without information upon which it can rely, is helpless,” Donovan’s memo said. “Likewise, information is useless unless it is intelligently directed to the strategic purpose.”

Like any other new or upstart organization, Donovan made several enemies in the highly politicized seas of Washington. The new unit and the commander of OSS had the ear of the President and besides the service intelligence chiefs who never cooperated with one another and always jockeying for position, Donovan and OSS made enemies with the FBI and especially the Director J. Edgar Hoover.

Hoover hated Donovan with a passion and kept files on all of his comings and goings and tried to discredit everything he did as well as accusing him of some outlandish things, all of which were proven false. When Donovan passed away in 1959 of dementia, Hoover tried to spread the rumor that it was from syphilis.

Through Donovan’s leadership and ability to get things done, in just two short years, Donovan along the British SOE had infiltrated several teams into occupied France before the D-Day landings and they supplied, trained and advised French Resistance groups that proved invaluable for the war effort. Just prior to the invasion, the Resistance and OSS/SOE had planned on cutting the French rails in the Normandy area in 1050 places. The accomplished the mission in 950 of them. This operation was Donovan and the OSS’ finest hour. Led by extraordinary agents such as Virginia Hall, the missions were an unqualified success. The book is filled with the many successes and the few failures of the organization.

The men who served Donovan during the war years as he called them “PhDs who can win a bar fight turned into a veritable who’s who in the later years of both CIA and the US Army Special Forces. Allen Dulles, William Colby were OSS operatives who became the Directors of National Intelligence. Aaron Bank was an OSS veteran who conducted successful missions in Europe. He went to Vietnam, then French-Indo China and met with the Viet Minh guerrilla chief Ho Chi Minh. He tried unsuccessfully to get the US to support Ho despite his Communist leanings over the return of French colonial rule which he saw as an upcoming failure.

Eventually, Donovan’s enemies got the ear of Harry Truman who took over from FDR after the President died in the latter days of WWII. Truman recognized that the US needed a professional intelligence service but not one with Donovan at its head. He had OSS disbanded after the war and then two years later created CIA with many of the same people that Donovan employed.

For the aspiring Special Operators out there, this should be required reading. It gives the background on where the units are today and how they got there. I would also encourage our readers to check out the novels of W.E.B. Griffin on the OSS as well. They were fantastic. We’ll review other books on OSS in the future.

The detail of Waller’s work is extraordinary and it is will quickly become a book that the reader can’t put down. It is a tremendous biography of a great, courageous but still flawed man who unfortunately didn’t live to see how large his former organization had become or the influence it would have around the world. His legacy is alive and well today.

Photos Courtesy: CIA, Wikipedia, and the US Army

U.S.S. Indianapolis, A Terrible and Needless Tragedy

On July 30, 1945, in the closing days of World War II, the cruiser Indianapolis (CA-35), unescorted in the Pacific Ocean, was steaming for Leyte, having left Guam after just delivering the components for the atomic bomb to Tinian.

The Indianapolis’ orders were to rendezvous with the battleship U.S.S. Idaho (BB-42), in the Leyte Gulf and prepare for the upcoming invasion of Japan. She was steaming west on a course of 262 degrees and making 17 knots. She would never arrive.

She was struck by a Japanese submarine (I-58), who fired six torpedoes, of which two struck the cruiser and blew away the bow, the second struck near midship on the starboard side next to a fuel tank and a powder magazine. The resulting explosion split the ship in two to the keel, knocking out all electric power. The ship went down by the bow and then rolled over to starboard in just 12 minutes on July 30. Not enough time for the ship’s captain to radio a distress call.

Some of the sailors were able to don life jackets, whose buoyancy faded after about 48 hours and would begin to slip down a sailor’s body which increased his exhaustion. Few men were able to make it onto life rafts or debris from the sinking. Those who didn’t have either life jackets or make it onto a raft, however, were forced to tread water until another sailor drowned, died from exposure or was eaten by sharks.

No alarm had been raised by the Navy in Leyte, the ship wasn’t reported overdue and the men would have all died if not for blind luck. The men were at the limits of their endurance when a Navy reconnaissance plane noticed a large oil slick in the water. Upon a closer look, he saw survivors bobbing in the water. All available ships were sent to the area.

PBY Catalina’s dropped freshwater, life jackets and life rafts to the survivors. One PBY made a dangerous open water landing, to pick up single survivors and those in most need of medical attention. Loading 56 men onboard he whisked them onboard to safety. He stayed on station with his search light on during the night so that other Navy ships could find them. The next morning, August 3rd the U.S.S. Cecil Doyle arrived and picked up the remainder of the survivors.

Of the over 1200 sailors onboard the cruiser, more than 300 died in the initial attack. More than 800 sailors were dumped into the Pacific Ocean where after five days of suffering burns, drowning, dehydration, exhaustion and shark attacks, only 316 were rescued.

The story of the Indianapolis’ crew and the horror suffered was first made famous by Robert Shaw in the 1975 thriller “Jaws” where Shaw as Quint, described the shark attacks. “Sometimes the shark’d go away… sometimes he wouldn’t go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into ya. Right into your eyes. Y’know the thing about a shark, he’s got… lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn’t seem to be livin’… until he bites ya. And those black eyes roll over white, and then… oh, then you hear that terrible high-pitch screamin’, the ocean turns red, and spite of all the poundin’ and the hollerin’, they all come in and they… rip you to pieces.”

The Indianapolis’ captain, Charles McVay III was court-martialed for the sinking. He was exonerated on one charge but was found negligent of putting his men in danger by not zig-zagging in the Philippine waters. This was despite testimony from the Japanese sub commander that zigzagging would have made no difference in the action. He was made the scapegoat for the entire affair.

The sinking sent shock waves thru the Navy and they delayed even releasing the information about its sinking until August 15 when the US announced that Japan had surrendered. But many of the facts surrounding the court-martial were quashed, which would have exonerated Captain McVay completely.

US Naval intelligence was aware of two Japanese submarines (I-58 and another) operating in the area, due to the ULTRA secret organization that had broken the Japanese codes.

McVay’s request for destroyer escorts was denied, despite the fact that his ship lacked the proper anti-submarine detection equipment. He was also not made aware that a Japanese sub had attacked and sunk a destroyer escort in the same area.

Shortly after the Indianapolis was sunk, the Navy decoded a Japanese message claiming that the I-58 had sunk an American battleship. That message was ignored.

There were also reports of the Indianapolis’ radiomen who claimed that they did, in fact, send off a distress call. The Navy claims to have never received any call from the stricken cruiser. However, unsubstantiated reports surfaced later that these too were ignored as a Japanese ruse to lure American rescue ships into the area.

At his court-martial, his defense lawyer didn’t contend two key parts of the prosecution. One that McVay’s orders were to zig-zag, “at his discretion. And the other was that the Navy contended that visibility was clear on the night of the sinking. McVay ordered the cessation of zig-zagging when visibility was so poor that crewmen couldn’t see each other only yards apart on deck. Even the Japanese sub commander who testified at the court-martial on December 3, 1945, after the end of the war, believed the charges were contrived.

The Indianapolis’ tragedy did, however, bring some major change on how the Navy’s reporting procedures for ships arrival and non-arrival. During World War II, these reports were not required.

The Indianapolis was steaming alone. Now any Navy ship with a crew of 500 or more sailors must have an escort. Lifesaving equipment, life rafts, life jackets have been vastly improved since then.

The men of the U.S.S. Indianapolis suffered and died needlessly on that day 72 years ago. Had they been given a proper destroyer escort which was needed and requested, perhaps no sailor would have lost his life. The fact that Captain McVay was made a scapegoat for the entire affair is wrong and was a blight on the fine history of the Navy during the Second World War.

Photo Courtesy: US Navy

Dunkirk an Intense, Masterful, MUST-SEE War Film

Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk” is a masterpiece of a war film that is a must see for any fans of the genre. The battle and evacuation of Dunkirk have been very rarely touched by filmmakers and for that reason, this film is a fresh look at a part of World War II that is largely forgotten.

To give an accurate breakdown, during the timeframe of 26 May – 4 June 1940, it was a full 18 months before America enters the war with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The Nazi war machine is at its peak. After overrunning Poland, the Germans sliced thru Belgium and France, the British and French are a defeated army trying to get to England to prepare for the invasion that was thought to be coming.

Nolan doesn’t care if the audience knows that or not, there are no sweeping history lessons, no politicians or generals making speeches or moving big flags across a map. This film is about the ordinary soldiers and opens with a squad of infantry already on the run with the Germans on their heels just blocks from the beach.

The film and Nolan’s filmmaking feel like a documentary and he builds an incredible amount of tension. The soldiers, packed tightly in formations on the beach look up in dread at the sight of the Stuka dive bombers lining up for a bombing run. No one knows what is about to happen, there is nowhere to run and the men are sitting ducks in the open.

There is a distinct lack of blood and gore here, instead, the tension, the suspense, realism, and the filming, done in IMAX brings the viewer onto the beaches. You are not an observer, but part of the chaos and uncertainty flooding the beaches. The musical score does a fantastic job of lending, even more, tension to the action. Like a ticking time clock, it sets one on edge and keeps you there throughout the film.

The Germans are the unseen enemy without a face. Yes, the machine guns and rifles bark constantly and the planes zip overhead at regular intervals but the Germans are like an invading alien horde. Without a human face attached to it, they are the monsters licking at the British soldier’s heels.

Nolan breaks down the evacuation in three parts, one if by land (which lasts a week), two if by sea (which lasts a day) and three if by air (which lasts an hour). It is a juggling act where he breaks off one scene and jumps immediately into another and in another timeframe. While confusing at times, it lends itself superbly to the tense, dread that permeates the film from the opening shot to the final frame.

Kenneth Branagh, as Commander Bolton is the closest we’ll get to intense character development but the film doesn’t care about that. The character IS the 330,000+ men stranded on the beaches. However, Branagh’s character based on an actual person is the quintessential British hero. Understated, calm, with a deep compassion for the men he must get off the beach.

And while his eyes betray the difficulty that job entails, his “stiff-upper lip” English countenance never lets the slightest doubt to be visible to the sailors and men with this unenviable task. The only emotion we see from Bolton is when he spots the flotilla of tiny English fish and pleasure boats answering the call.

Because Nolan doesn’t overdo the dramatics of the boats arriving, they are just pinpricks on the horizon, bobbing up and down in the French surf. There aren’t the thousands of boats to a musical fanfare, just a few scattered, tiny boats with much more to come. But as Branagh says when asked what does he see in the distance, “home.” Absolutely brilliant.

Academy Award winner Mark Rylance puts in another fantastic performance as British civilian Mr. Dawson, who, with his son and a friend pilots his small boat from England. Like an old warhorse, Dawson is running right to the sounds of the guns rather than away. But with the understated brilliance he showed in “A Bridge of Spies”, he stays calm and tries to keep his young charges the same, even after they pick up a shell-shocked soldier who was torpedoed off another rescue ship.

Tom Hardy puts in a terrific performance while having no more than a dozen lines in the film. He is Farrier, a Spitfire pilot and we actually see his face very few times, like his character Bane from the Batman series. He wears an oxygen mask for most of the film, as he flies over the beaches and takes on German aircraft. But Hardy’s eyes are what tells the story as he scans the skies for the Luftwaffe and continuously checks his fuel which is running low.

CGI was kept at a minimum, Nolan supposedly had thousands of extras and cardboard cutouts on the beaches. The aerial sequences are superb as the pilots do their own death’s dance high above the ocean. With the filming done in the cramped quarters of the old planes, the realism is striking. Reportedly Nolan purchased a restored Nazi bomber for $5 million dollars just to crash it.

The sinking of the ships after being hit with bombs and torpedoes is the height of suspense. As the soldiers and sailors scramble out from under the ship as she turns over threatening to take the men down with her. It is claustrophobic, scary as hell as realistic as I care to ever get to a sinking ship.

Dunkirk isn’t a film about heroics or an over-the-top patriotism parade. It is a gritty, story about survival. Not everything that happens on the beaches are things the soldiers would care to remember. But they persevere and get over 330,000 men off the French coast and back to England. The British and French lost over 68,000 troops in casualties during the battle. And this film was made in a tribute to them.

See this film in an IMAX theater, you’ll be glad you did. This film will clean up at the Academy Awards when it comes to cinematography and musical score. There were only two points that I could find that didn’t pass the realism test and the strange part is one is in the opening scene and the other in the final one.

The first is admittedly a tiny one, British soldiers pluck leaflets out of the sky urging them to surrender. They’re in full color. Having read books on Dunkirk and seen the photos the original ones were in black and white. Granted, it is something only a military film buff would recognize. The second, however, was a bit of a whopper. As Hardy’s Spitfire runs out of fuel high above the beach, he begins coasting down to the shore. A German dive bomber is lining up the troops for a strafing run. And Hardy/Farrier takes them out in one pass as his plane plummets to earth with no fuel. That dog won’t hunt. But it doesn’t take away from an overall outstanding war film and will quickly become a must see and must add to any military war film collection.

However, it doesn’t take away from an overall outstanding war film and will quickly become a must see summer blockbuster and must add to any military war film collection.

Photo courtesy IMDB, YouTube