April 9th

Having mostly learned the history of WW II from the American perspective of the expected final victory, movies like April 9th, about Danish soldiers tasked with delaying the German invasion in 1940, or Uprising, about the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising, give me the very different perspective of the good guys losing.

In April 9th, a Danish platoon of bicycle infantry is tasked with holding off an invading column of German motorized infantry until reinforcements can arrive. 

It does not work out that way, of course. The bicycle versus the armored car is a fitting metaphor for the fighting that ensues, but the actions and character of 2LT Sand drive the story. He is repeatedly given questionable orders, faced with setbacks and shortages, and forced to fall back, and fall back, and fall back. Sand is an honorable man who must balance his duty to follow orders with doing what he believes is the best thing, and he must handle the tension of men vs mission when the mission seems increasingly impossible.

I found the movie compelling, but I'm interested in this kind of story. It only has a rating of 6.6 out of 10 on IMDb, so apparently it's not to everyone's taste.

It is free on Amazon Prime right now, if you are interested.

Addition, 4/2/23: I guess to make the review complete I should address some other film aspects. I'll put these below the fold, and there are some slight spoilers.

Songs from World War II

It's about 3 hours of 1930s and '40s music focused on WWII. Some of the song titles are great:

• The Washing On The Siegried Line
• Where Does Poor Pa Go In The Black-Out?
• They Can't Black Out The Moon
• The Deepest Shelter In Town
• Could You Please Oblige Us With A Bren Gun?
• Der Fuehrer's Face
• The Thing-Ummy-Bob (That's Going To Win The War)
• Don't Let's Be Beastly To The Germans
• I'm Gonna Get Lit Up

Enjoy!

Col. Shames, Last of WWII "Band of Brothers," Passes

According to Breitbart:

Col. Edward Shames, final surviving member of the World War II parachute infantry regiment known as the “Band of Brothers” which inspired the HBO miniseries and book of the same name, died Friday. He was 99.

According to his obituary posted by the Hollomon-Brown Funeral Home & Crematory and quoted by Breitbart:

He made his first combat jump into Normandy on D-Day as part of Operation Overlord. He volunteered for Operation Pegasus and then fought with Easy Company in Operation Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge in Bastogne.

...

When Germany surrendered, Ed and his men of Easy Company entered Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest where Ed managed to acquire a few bottles of cognac, a label indicating they were ‘for the Fuhrer’s use only.’ Later, he would use the cognac to toast his oldest son’s Bar Mitzvah.

Here is Col. Shames talking about his experiences:

Airborne Beer All the Way!

A good story from Stars and Stripes that I stole from Ace:

It took 65 years for Vincent Speranza to find out that his actions in Belgium during World War II had been immortalized — for his ingenuity with the beverage that the country is famous for producing.

...

Speranza joined the Army in 1943 right after graduating from high school. He was assigned to Company H, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, as a replacement in November 1944 while the unit licked its wounds from the devastating failure of Operation Market-Garden.

Within weeks, Speranza would be in a foxhole in Bastogne, Belgium — cold, running short on supplies and ammo and surrounded by German troops.

...

On the second day of the siege, a friend named Joe Willis was wounded with shrapnel in both legs and brought to a makeshift combat hospital in a blown-out church. When Speranza tracked him down, the fellow paratrooper asked him to get him something to drink.

Speranza explained they were surrounded and no supplies were coming in. The soldier asked him to check a devastated tavern nearby.

Speranza found a working beer tap there. He filled his helmet — the same one he had used as a foxhole toilet — and made two trips to the wounded in the church. He was caught by an angry major and told he would be shot if he did not stop, for fear he would kill the wounded.

Visiting Bastogne in 2009, Speranza found his foxhole still there, but Dutch and Belgian military officials told him that the legend of the soldier filling his helmet with beer for the wounded is still told — and had been immortalized on the label of Bastogne’s Airborne beer.

The beer is typically consumed from a ceramic helmet.

So, I had to find  the beer. The website Untappd gives enough information that I should be able to order it. I wonder about the helmet mugs, though. (Pics at the linked page.)

There is more about Speranza's service and a video of him telling the story at Stars and Stripes.