> I received this letter from William Spear, who owns one of the
> Checker-produced Bantam jeeps of WWII. Very interesting reading. If you
> are bored with the academic side of WWII military vehicles, don't read it,
> but if you are intrigued (as I am) by the continued pseudo-history which
you
> read in many historical journals, have a look.
>
> Date: Sunday, January 28, 2001 1:20 AM
> Subject: Letter to the editor
Sort of tangentially related, but I sent a tersely worded letter off to "The
History Channel" regarding their "History Presents" presentation of "Battle
of the Bulge" with Ann Medina providing the introductory segment. She went
on at length musing that the reason there can't be many WWII-era tanks
around today was due to the war, certainly, but also to movies like "Bulge"
which destroyed them with such abandon. She then goes on to describe how
"200 of them" were used to make the armoured carnage featured in "Battle of
the Bulge" Grr!
In case you're not familiar with the movie, there are tons of post-war tanks
playing Axis or Allied according to their type, every jeep save one is an
M38, and a mixture of rear-end shots of M-series heavystuff takes the load
off of the one or two CCKWs they managed to scrounge from somewhere. That's
like, what, three nominally correct vehicles (less the halftracks in Jerry
livery) in a film which must have had upwards of 300? I told them to pass
on to Ms. Medina that they could've blown up every single vehicle in the
film and not affected then-existing WWII stocks one whit.
This ticks me off to the point of the proverbial letter-to-the-editor
because I still get transport coordinators selecting postwar vehicles to
play their WWII counterparts because "the director likes the look - he saw
them in 'Tobruk' last week" or similar. History channel presents itself as
the last bastion of responsible history, yet can't even be bothered to
research an intro as high-profile as Ms. Medina's? Endlessly frustrating,
though I suppose a mere handful of audience members would care one way or
the other. Still, that's hardly the point, is it?
Andy Hill
MVPA 9211
Vancouver, B.C. (and yes, in other films, the waste of now-valuable period
vehicles was lamentable, but I'm sure the movies were burning up the
Shermans no faster than the M60s are being pushed off of Floridian barges to
become armoured fish-bowls. It's all relative.)
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