If there's a place to find heroes, it's in stories like this one. Shot From the Sky is a combination of many threads. I have watched a few times and, even though I know how it will end, I'm on edge every time I watch it, wondering how Roy will get out of each situation he finds himself in.
Roy and his crew have faced dangerous missions before and lived to tell the tale. But only a few days after D-Day in June 1944, their luck ran out as German fighters couldn't be shaken and their bomber was shot down in still-occupied Nazi-held French countryside. Would Roy Allen ever return home to his wife and family?
It's a story about a young man, Roy Allen, whose courage, determination, skill, luck, loyalty, and stubbornness eventually led him home.
It's about the men that Roy served with and those who were prisoners with him. They tell how Roy affected their lives.
It's about the many people who helped Roy through his journey: the young schoolteacher and her family; the French Resistance (how they operated and how they aided the Allies); the squadron leader who showed determination, standing up to the guards and insisting on military discipline; the young flier who spoke to the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) officer (who helped get the American pilots out of the camp eventually); the French doc who constantly moved Roy from one bed to another in the prison "medical" center; the man who dared give Roy a pot of hot soup to share with the other fliers.
It shows the brutality of the Nazi regime. They didn't care who they picked up and put into concentration camps; American pilots were supposed to be treated under the rules of the Geneva Convention. The SS soldiers - and the criminals they employed as guards in the camps - used intimidation, then force, whenever they felt like it - using machine guns, baseball bats, and wood blocks. They crammed prisoners into poorly ventilated boxcars. Buchenwald was a concentration camp that was way overpopulated; death was everywhere; new prisoners were thrown outside with the elements; starvation and sickness was running rampant.
For anyone who enjoys a combination of oral history, historical backdrop, a realistic cliff-hanger movie, and meeting interesting people, Shot from the Sky is highly recommended.
Roy and his crew have faced dangerous missions before and lived to tell the tale. But only a few days after D-Day in June 1944, their luck ran out as German fighters couldn't be shaken and their bomber was shot down in still-occupied Nazi-held French countryside. Would Roy Allen ever return home to his wife and family?
It's a story about a young man, Roy Allen, whose courage, determination, skill, luck, loyalty, and stubbornness eventually led him home.
It's about the men that Roy served with and those who were prisoners with him. They tell how Roy affected their lives.
It's about the many people who helped Roy through his journey: the young schoolteacher and her family; the French Resistance (how they operated and how they aided the Allies); the squadron leader who showed determination, standing up to the guards and insisting on military discipline; the young flier who spoke to the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) officer (who helped get the American pilots out of the camp eventually); the French doc who constantly moved Roy from one bed to another in the prison "medical" center; the man who dared give Roy a pot of hot soup to share with the other fliers.
It shows the brutality of the Nazi regime. They didn't care who they picked up and put into concentration camps; American pilots were supposed to be treated under the rules of the Geneva Convention. The SS soldiers - and the criminals they employed as guards in the camps - used intimidation, then force, whenever they felt like it - using machine guns, baseball bats, and wood blocks. They crammed prisoners into poorly ventilated boxcars. Buchenwald was a concentration camp that was way overpopulated; death was everywhere; new prisoners were thrown outside with the elements; starvation and sickness was running rampant.
For anyone who enjoys a combination of oral history, historical backdrop, a realistic cliff-hanger movie, and meeting interesting people, Shot from the Sky is highly recommended.