2435 The Second World War films about Bomber Command and Prisoners of War including USA service men and Vietnam

At the same time as I watched a film about the naval men who attempted to guard the North Atlantic convoys and commenced to reread Nicholas Monsarratt’s fictional tale The Cruel Sea, the government announced that a new medal would be awarded to the men, the wives and surviving relatives who had travelled the most northern route, the Artic convoy route. The government also announced that it was also awarding a medal for those who served in Bomber Command during World War II and last year the Queen. For decades of peace between the UK and Germany as joint members of the EEC it has been considered de riguer  (don’t know the appropriate German equivalent)  not to mention or show approval for the blanket bombing of German towns and cities by the allies in  revenge for what the Nazis did to British and European cities.

 

Two weeks ago now after listening to Bruce Kent explain why there is no justification for governments to hold, let alone develop weapons of mass destruction, a former Airforce pilot expressed his anger and frustration at the CND the Satyagraha protests, actions and peace camps in which I participated and where I am reading the excellent analysis of the causes and roles in Sean Scalmer’s thesis Gandhi in the West and the rise of Radical Protest in the UK and the USA. I resisted the temptation to get up and try an explain that I regarded him to have been a man of great courage and service to his country and that I hoped he would continue to regard his working life in a positive way, but then as I now I believed it was morally wrong to engage in the wilful bombing and threatening to bomb children, women and men who are non combatants

 

Last year, half a century later, the national memorial to the men who did not return from bombing missions was opened by the Queen in London. It is therefore another coincidence that a film channel also showed once more one of the few films which paid tribute to the brave men who flew in bomber command knowing that odds were against then surviving the maximum number of flights before being assigned to ground or other duties. The film is called Appointment in London and starred Dirk Bogard,

 

The appointment is at the end of the film at Buckingham Palace and a tribute to the men who were unable to participate. The film has a limited story in that Bogard plays the Squadron Leader coming to the end of his third tour and 90 missions and ordered to stop flying because of the danger to him. The crews have begun to say there is a Jinx because of the number of fatalities and the wife of one of the pilots has written expressing concern (assumed at the time to be the man’s mother). When he does not return from a mission she visits Bogard at the station and on finding she has booked in at a local Inn he offers to introduce her to some of those who were friends with her husband.

 

This is not a love interest for Bogard. This is someone in the WRAF who he meets in London and is able to talk about his responsibilities and need to complete the 90 missions. A number of the latest bombers arrive with their new crews and the settling in induction party is held where the fun consists of furniture being piled up and soot from fire being missed with water and one by one the new pilots imprinting their soot covered feet on the ceiling. At the party are the widow and the girl friend observing the boys will be boys.

 

The base is to participate in a major blitz of an important industrial complex and they all set off with the exception of one participating which develops undercarriage problems and which cannot be immediately fixed. Bogard who has been officially grounded and to be assigned to training role elsewhere offers the use of his plane and decides to accompany the crew but in effect as an observer. Their task is to assemble at a point where planes from other wings will gather and then follow a led path finder who lays down red flares for the route and eventually green flares for the target area.  When this plane is hit, Bogard is in a position as the senior officer present to use the plane he is in as the new command guidance control in the air ensure  many of the others hit the target,

 

Thinking that he will be upset after being grounded the female friend has come up to the base to console him before he leaves to a location abroad, and then finds  that  no one knows where he is and then that contrary to orders although he is not acting as a pilot he is in the air. The base radio man has rigged up a unit which enables those in the control room to hear what is going on in the air over Germany and because she is part of the service she is invited to listen in.

 

As the film draws to a close all the aircraft return except one, that of the plane of Board and when there is contact all the station rushes out to the landing area who greets their hero. He has shown there is no jinx completing his 90 missions. Dianah Sheridan, Walter Fitzgerald, Bill Kerr, Richard Wattis and Bryan Forbes all participated.

 

Mosquito Squadron is also a film about Bomber Command, starring David McCullum and also featuring Dinsdale Lansden and where after launching an attack on a V1 rocket based the Squadron Leader is shot down and believed killed. His wife is the former girl friend of another member of the Squadron played by McCullum who comforts and then reignites their relationship.

 

He then becomes the Squadron Leader and asked to go on a photographic mission on a Chateau believed to be housed an underground rocket manufacturing/ development plant. The Squadron is then trained to use Barnes Wallis bouncing bombs needed to get the explosive into the entrance of the plant.

 

Unfortunately before the attack can be made the Germans move captured airman into the Chateau as human shields and photographs reveal that among the prisoners is the Squadron Leader. Given the instructions to continue with the attack McCullum decides that he will not raise the hopes of the man’s wife.

 

The plan is for the local resistance to mount an attack on the Chateau to get the UK prisoners out, first getting a message via a priest for the men to attend a service to hold in the open air.  The attack is successful and one of the bombs is used to make a hole in the wall of the Châteaux enabling the prisoner to escape. McCullum’s plane is shot down and he joins the Marquis in helping to rescue the airman, finding the Squadron Leader who is suffering from amnesia cannot remember his name or that he is married. The get away is hindered by a tank and the Squadron leader sacrifices himself. McCullum is able to get back to the UK where he is congratulated, but keeps the news that her husband was alive temporarily.

 

This was a low budget piece of fiction made in 1969 and which right did not find favour with the critics or the cinema going public.

 

Danger Within concerns the attempt by British prisoners of war to escape but realise that one of their number is a German spy. There is a powerful cast with Richard Todd as the Colonel senior officer, with Richard Attenborough Donald Houston, Michael Wilding, Bernard Lee, Dennis Price, Peter Jones, Michael Caine, Vincent Ball, Andrew Faulds and Terence Alexander are all part of this stellar cast. The camp is run by Italians but is to be taken over by the Germans following the armistice between Italy and the allies. There is a race against time to find he informer and get the prisoners away. As with many similar films there are issues about the use of tunnels and the action takes place against a theatrical production, in this instance Hamlet rather than the usual concert party. The venture is successful. The film is based on a novel.

 

Another work of fiction about the Second World War also features David McCullum as the live in son of the owner of the Ritz Hotel who has a large model railway with a resistance radio hidden in a tunnel. There are cameo performances by Leslie Caron as Coco Chanel and one of my favourite actors, the gorgeous Cherie Lunghi also has role. The great casting is Josh Ackland as Hermann Georing in charge of the Lourve and raiding the art of France to make available to his Nazi comrades as well as developing his own collection.

 

The man who lived at the Ritz is an art student from the USA with an inheritance who remains in Paris despite the arrival of the Nazis and continues to enjoy the high life of the city available to those with the cash. He becomes a friend of Hermann Goering and advises on the authenticity of the paintings as well as helping the man to uncover a scam in which pictures are beings stolen. Other characters who the student meets include Edith Piaf, Man Ray and Pierre Monet; He becomes involved with the resistance via a love interest and has to go on the run.  He is captured and brought to face Ackland who had come to regard the young man as his son after helping him to uncover the theft of artworks.

 

Before this he has an encounter with Joseph Goebbels on a visit to Paris by special train with his mistress having been introduced by Goering so when he is able to escape from the clutches of the Gestapo after giving himself up to save his girl friend and then by good fortune is taken to the station to be killed in front of a train he sees Goebbels about to return to Germany and is invited into his train to advise on a picture he has acquired. Geobbels then rescues him from his captors and when the train is stopped at the border and the truth of his guest is revealed to him he finds that the man has escaped from the train.  He is then shown with his girl friend fighting with the resistance. This TV film is based on a novel. I need say no more

 

The final film about war is another work of the imagination centring on the widespread belief in the USA and beyond that the government failed to ensure that all GI Prisoners of War were returned from Vietnam or those countries where prison camps were created. The film  Uncommon Valour was made in 1983 with Gene Hackman  as retired marine Colonel Jason Rhodes whose son was reported missing in action back in 1972 and who  spends the next decade searching Asia for evidence that his son is alive and being held captive.

 

After getting photographic evidence of a prison camp he brings together members of his son’s platoon who remain guilt ridden about having left some of their comrades when they were airlifted by helicopter and added to this group are two helicopter pilots with the participants each having their own story and reasons for joining the mission.

 

They are taken to a construction of the discovered camp in Texas with the mission funded by the wealthy father of another missing son played by Robert Stack. Organising the training is a young recently serving officer, too young to have been a veteran and this bugs the others until they find that he has joined because his father is among those listed as missing. Understandably their activities are monitored and every effort made to dissuade them from making the trip with their helicopters and weapons. The CIA then arrange with Thailand authorities in Bangkok  to impound all their equipment and the men are left with limited resources, mainly the money which the businessman had given them for participating in the mission. This enables them to purchase some basic weapons and ancient ordinance and to arrange with a former drugs baron to get them across the border to Laos where the camp is located. Having already lost sons he brings with him his two attractive daughters both trained fighters. At the border they encounter guards and in the fight one of the daughters is killed.

 

The group divide with one party going to the nearest helicopter base to steals the escape transport which involves a fight while the others approach the camp which appears deserted until they see that the prisoners  mostly locals but with a handful of Americans return from their work party. There is a great battle to rescue the men who after decades of imprisonment have become institutionalised to the situation. Several of the party are killed in heroic circumstances, one blowing himself up as he  blows up a bridge preventing troops coming in pursuit while another is also killed enabling  the son of the expedition’s financier to be rescued. Sadly Hackman’s son is not among those rescued.

 

Those rescued return to their families and Hackman learns that his son had become ill and died shortly after capture. This provides some closure for himself and his wife. Patrick Swayze plays Kevin Scott the young man searching for his missing father.

 

Now to the truth? Following the agreement reached in Paris in 1973  fewer than 600 USA prisoners of War were returned. The government had previous listed  1200 killed  whose bodies were not recovered and another 1350 missing in action with the majority  airman shot down over Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Over the subsequent two decades the governments negotiated to ensure that as far as possible the remains of men killed were identified and the cooperation of the governments in Vietnam and Laos led to the “normalization “of relations between the countries. Organisations representing the missing men, service organisations and others groups were formed supporting the belief that men had been kept as prisoners for a variety of reasons and that the governments  including  successive USA governments had covered up this fact as part of the progress to normalization relationships

 

Several congressional investigations took place and between 1991 and 1993 of which John Kerry and John McCain were members concluded that there was no compelling evidence proving that Americans remained alive in captivity in Southeast Asia.

 

The problem had first arisen because the Nixon Administration had argued that there were at least 1500 prisoners so when 600 were only returned the belief commenced of many others continuing to be held. Only one soldier was subsequently returned in 1979 and about whom there remains controversy.

 

The National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in South East Asia was formed by wives of men who continued to press for information and action after the Paris agreement. A national Alliance of Families for the Return of America’s missing Service Men was founded as late as 1990. This group took a more active and radical stance from its predecessor and played an active role in the Kerry Committee disagreeing strongly with its findings. The business Ross Perot who stood for the Presidency at one point was an active supporter of this cause. It could be argued that this effort did result in the Vietnamese and Laotian government allowing the USA to excavate known crash sites and bring home remains that were found although the number was comparatively small at the time.

 

 A retired Air force officer solicited funds for expeditions based on a boat docked in Thailand but never produced any prisoners. Another special forces member also undertook a number of privately funded trips to South east Asia and a mission was  commenced in 1982  but the 15 Laotians and 3 USA POW’s were ambushed at the border and the mission failed. His activities are considered by many to have been counter productive. Another figure whose military record is said to have been a largely concocted claimed that he had identified POWs in Laos and ordered by the CIA to assassinate them.

 

Uncommon Valour is only one of several film attempts to argue that there were POW’s and they were deliberately abandoned by USA governments. Good Guys Wear Black and Missing in Action were two other films appearing at the same time as Uncommon Valour. There was Sylvester Stallone in a Rambo film in 1985 together with POW the Escape 1986 and Dog Tags 1990. There was even an episode of the X Files.

 

The claims and counter claims have continued with accusations of evidence shredded testimony suppressed and one has only to considered what the authorities did here in the UK in covering up the truth of Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland or the police and political covering up of the truth of Hillsborough to appreciate what can be done. I also have the direct knowledge of two significant cover ups in my later life.

 

The remains of over 700 of the missing men have now been returned although I do not know if the time of death has been fixed to when it is said they went missing or to much later. The list of what happened to unknown was officially reduced to 300 with the Defence department stating that 190 of these are believed to be dead.