"The War" FUBAR: September 1944 - December 1944 (2007)

Directors:

Ken Burns (co-director)
Lynn Novick (co-director)

TV Series:

"The War" (2007)

Original Air Date:

30 September 2007 (Season 1, Episode 5)

Genre:

Documentary | War

Plot:

Plot Keywords:

TV Mini-Series | Armed Forces | War Effort | War Weariness | Archive Footage

Cast

Quentin Aanenson	...	Himself
Adam Arkin	...	Reader
Kevin Conway	...	Reader
Keith David	...	Narrator (voice)
Paul Fussell	...	Himself
Tom Hanks	...	Al McIntosh
Rebecca Holtz	...	Herself (voice)
Samuel L. Jackson	...	Narrator (voice)
Josh Lucas	...	Reader
Carolyn McCormick	...	Herself (voice)
Emma Belle Pelcher	...	Herself
Katharine Phillips	...	Herself
Burt Wilson	...	Himself

Directed by
Ken Burns		(co-director)
Lynn Novick		(co-director)

Produced by
Sarah Botstein	....	producer
Ken Burns	....	executive producer
Ken Burns	....	producer
Meghan Horvath	....	associate producer
Taylor Krauss	....	associate producer
David McMahon	....	co-producer
Peter Miller	....	co-producer
Lynn Novick	....	producer

Original Music by
Wynton Marsalis		(original music by)

Cinematography by
Buddy Squires

Sound Department
Mariusz Glabinski	....	sound effects editor
Marlena Grzaslewicz	....	dialogue editor
Michael Miller	....	original dialogue mixer
Jay Peck	....	foley artist
Ira Spiegel	....	sound effects editor
Dominick Tavella	....	sound re-recording mixer

Animation Department
John Bair	....	animation supervisor
Paul Docherty	....	digital animator

Editorial Department
Paul Barnes	....	executive editor
Paul Docherty	....	assistant editor
John Dowdell	....	digital intermediate colorist
Meagan Frappiea	....	post-production associate
Mike Trinker	....	digital intermediate editor
Daniel J. White	....	assistant editor

Music Department
Bill Charlap	....	musician: piano
Amanda Forsyth	....	musician: cello
Victor Goines	....	musician: clarinet
Jacob Ribicoff	....	music editor
Andy Stein	....	musician: violin
Doug Wamble	....	musician: guitar

Other crew
Ted Alcorn	....	production associate
Jessie Anderson	....	production intern (uncredited)

Certification:

USA:TV-14

Movie Connections:

References Flying Tigers (1942)

Soundtrack:

Pennies from Heaven

More Battles And Plenty Of Heroics & Suffering

This disc only covers a few months - from September through December in 1944 - but it has a lot in it, just as the other discs, and a lot of its powerful.

I didn't take any notes but I remember a bunch of sights, such as the skies filled with men parachuting in Belgium. That campaign, "Operation Market Garden," initiated by Britain's Gen. Montgomery, was a disaster. Another was a raid on Peleliu, a small island in the Pacific, which also turned brutal, thanks to the Japanese digging in, in these incredibly-built, fortified caves. "There's nothing left to bomb," says one naval officer but then when the Marines land, they get the same surprise as what happened to the soldiers at Iwo Jima (except, thankfully, with fewer losses. However, the assignment was expected to take four days and it took four months!)

A couple of the guys from Mobile, Ala., that have been featured in this series, were among the Marines on that island. One of them wrote a diary, where he writes of his frustration over matters. His most vivid descriptions, I thought, were those of seeing dead bodies in their different stages of death and decay - gruesome stuff. It's a wonder more of these men didn't wind up mental cases the rest of their lives, the horrors they saw described here.

The gist of some of this episode seemed to be how the infantry suffered everywhere, that the men in control of decisions were fairly safe-and-sound but the guys on the ground - the average men - did all the fighting and dying, and all the suffering and witnessing of the almost unspeakable brutality.

Other memorable scenes and words included the bravery of the Japanese-American fighting unit; the horror of a man being introduced to the shock of war by seeing two dead Germans who looked to be 12-year-old boys with brains sticking out of their head and - maybe the most amazing battle site of the entire war - the ultra-thick and dark Hurtgen Forest in Germany - another place that produced a high death-rate total, a disaster on both sides when the fighting stopped.

The stories just keep getting more incredible as the tales of this war continue.