Tag Archives: World War II

Movies About War at Sea: Bear With Me Here.

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            C.S. Forester (1899-1966)[1] was rejected when he volunteered for military service during the First World War.[2]  He tried med school, but left without the MD.  He tried writing.  This time he got what he wanted.  Forester discovered “write fast, send it off, and start something new—you’ll learn as you go.”  In 1922 he started a relationship with Methuen publishers that led to four popular history books.[3]  In 1924, he published two little noticed novels; in 1926 he hit pay-dirt with Payment Deferred; in 1927 he wrote two more little-noticed novels, and a third in 1928; in 1929 he hit pay-dirt again with Brown on Resolution; in 1930 and 1931 he wrote two more little-noticed novels; then in 1932 and 1933 he wrote two successful historical novels, Death to the French,[4] and The Gun.[5]  Then, suddenly, he was successful.  He got a contract to spend a quarter of each year in Hollywood working on screen-plays.  In 1935, “Brown on Resolution” became a movie[6]; he published both the still highly-regarded The General and The African Queen (and the soon-forgotten The Pursued).   In 1937 and 1938 he published the first three novels in the “Horatio Hornblower” series.[7]  These books launched a string of a dozen works that dominated his later career.  Not knowing this in advance, in 1940 he wrote To the Indies, about Spanish conquistadors. 

            Then the Second World War came.  He had missed “doing his bit” in the first war; he wasn’t going to miss it this time.  He couldn’t soldier, but he could write.  By 1938, he had created a series of British characters who were stolid, courageous, undeterred by adversity, and inventive about overcoming it.  He had mastered the action scene.[8]  The British Ministry of Information sent him to America.  “You’ve been there, you know them, make us sympathetic, eh what?”[9] 

            So he moved to the United States.  Lippity-lippity quick like a bunny, he wrote another novel about war in the Age of Fighting Sail.  This time, the Hero-Captain was an American during the War of 1812.[10]  It turns into a story of Anglo-American friendship developing in wartime.  Timely, huh?  Appearing in Summer 1941, it was a huge hit with critics and readers.  He wrote a magazine story about Americans flying in the RAF while the United States remained neutral.  It got made into a successful movie.[11]  He wrote a magazine story about Commando raids on occupied Europe.  It got made into a movie.[12]  In 1942-1943, the Royal Navy took him along on missions.  A trip on H.M.S. Penelope during a convoy to Malta resulted in the trim little fact-based novel The Ship (1943).[13] 

            After the war he stayed in America.  He continued the Hornblower series to completion.[14]  He also wrote a bunch of other stuff.  In part, he wrote a different kind of fiction.  The Sky and the Forest (1948) seems to me like the inspiration for Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (1958).  Or perhaps Achebe just reacted against the White man’s view of Africa, like he did with Joseph Conrad and Joyce Cary.  But that’s just me.  Randall and the River of Time (1951) is a bit of a head-scratcher, but it seems to me a riff on Ecclesiastes 9: 11-12.  In part, the cobbler returned to his last, writing The Naval War of 1812/The Age of Fighting Sail (1957) about the naval side of the War of 1812; and Hunting the Bismarck/The Last Nine Days of the Bismarck/Sink the Bismarck (1959).[15] 

Among that “other stuff” is The Good Shephard (1955).  The book brings together The Captain from Connecticut and The Ship.  That is, it is the story of an American Captain commanding the escort vessels of a convoy crossing the Atlantic in the face of ferocious U-boat attacks early in 1942.  From this novel came the movie “Greyhound.” 

[1] I think that I had read all his “Hornblower” books by the time he died.  I was then twelve years old. 

[2] Only a serious medical problem would get you rejected by the British Army in 1917-1918. 

[3] Victor Emmanuel II (1922); Napoleon and His Court (1922); Josephine, Napoleon’s Empress (1925); Victor Emmanuel II and the Union of Italy (1927); Louis XIV, King of France and Navarre (1928). 

[4] OK, this has a funny side to it.  In America, it was titled Rifleman Dodd and its central character is Rifleman Matthew Dodd.  He is a soldier in the 95th Regiment of Foot who becomes separated from his unit during Sir Arthur Wellesley’s retreat to the Lines of Torres Vedras.  There is also a Rifleman Matthew Dodd who becomes separated from his unit in the 95th Regiment of Foot during Sir John Moore’s retreat to Coruna.  He appears in Bernard Cornwell, Sharpe’s Escape (2004).  Not an accident. 

[5] Very loosely adapted as “The Pride and the Passion” (dir. Stanley Kramer, 1957).  Interesting back-story. 

[6] Forever England 1935 John Mills (youtube.com).  Later remade as “Sailor of the King” (dir. Roy Boulting, 1953)  Sailor Of The King 1953 (youtube.com) 

[7] The Happy Return/Beat to Quarters (1937); A Ship of the Line and Flying Colours (both 1938).  Warner Brothers bought all three.  “Captain Horatio Hornblower” (dir. Raoul Walsh, 1951) tried to squeeze all three into one movie.   

[8] Of course the battles are well done, but the towing-off of the dismasted flagship in Ship of the Line is memorable. 

[9] Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941 (2013) casts some light on the British information/influence operations. 

[10] Captain from Connecticut (1941). 

[11] “Eagle Squadron,” (dir. Arthur Lubin, 1942). 

[12] “Commandos Strike at Dawn” (dir. John Farrow, 1942).  Filmed on Vancouver Island because of the close resemblance to Norway.  HA! 

[13] On the background and significance for this convoy, see My Weekly Reader 14 June 2021. | waroftheworldblog 

[14] Commodore Hornblower (1945); Lord Hornblower (1946); Mr. Midshipman Hornblower (1950); Lieutenant Hornblower (1952); Hornblower and the Atropos (1953); Hornblower and the Hotspur (1962).  

[15] See: “Sink the Bismarck!” (dir. Lewis Gilbert, 1960).  Sink the Bismarck! 1960 Film in English Full HD, Kenneth More, Dana Wynter, Carl Möhner (youtube.com)  Gilbert seems unknown now, but he directed a bunch of interesting stuff.  Started with a short documentary on how cod liver oil is made.  Lesson for all young people there.  That same year, the country-western singer Johnny Horton came out with a song “Sink the Bismark!” (1960).  American theaters often ran the song as part of the trailer for the movie. Sink The Bismarck (youtube.com) 

Movies About War at Sea” Greyhound.”

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In 1939, Germany won the “Battle of Poland.”  In early 1940 Germany won the “Battle of France.”[1]  A German invasion of Britain required control of the air over the English Channel.  The British won the “Battle of Britain.”[2]  Then began the “Battle of the Atlantic.”  Britain imported much of its food and raw materials; it would have to send forces to its far-flung battle fronts by sea; no Britain as a base, no cross-Channel attack in 1944 or any other year.  To stay in the war, Britain had to control the shipping lanes of the world.  Hitler ordered his navy to strangle Britain through submarine warfare.  The critical phase of the “Battle of the Atlantic” ran from 1940 to 1943.  All the while, Britain’s survival hung by a thread.[3] 

  At first, the Royal Navy had only the help of the small navies of the Commonwealth countries and a few Polish and Free French ships.  After Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy joined the fight.  “Greyhound” (dir. Aaron Schneider, 2020) provides an absorbing account of the problems of convoy escorts during the critical stage of the “Battle of the Atlantic.”[4]  The movie tracks a 37-ship convoy bound for Britain.[5]  What do we learn? 

First, on either end of the voyage, the convoy is also protected by aircraft, armed with depth charges and searching a much greater area than can the escort vessels.  In between is the “Mid-Atlantic Gap” when the convoy is out of range of air cover.[6]  Then the convoy has only the escort vessels.  The German U-boats loved this “Black Hole.”

Second, modern science helped arm the escort vessels.  “High Frequency Direction Finding” (HFDF or “Huff-Duff”) could locate the source of the long-distance radio messages used by the U-boats to communicate with their bases.  ASDIC (now called Sonar for Sound Navigation and Ranging) allowed the escort vessels to locate U-boats at closer range.  Attacks on submarines used depth charges whose water-pressure sensitive triggers caused them to explode at pre-set depths. 

Third, the U-boats still had advantages.  On the one hand, ASDIC could tell location, but not depth and depth charges had to explode within 20 feet to damage a submarine; when on the surface they had a high speed through the water and a very low silhouette that made them hard to see.  Surface night attacks were common.  Get a ship burning and it illuminated other targets.  On the other hand, the Germans subs took up a picket line across likely convoy routes, then converged on sighted convoys to attack in “wolf packs” that could swarm the escort vessels. 

Fourth, Captain Ernest Krause (Tom Hanks), the commander of the U.S.S. “Keeling,” represents the whole US war-effort in the early period after Pearl Harbor.  The Americans would exert an ever-increasing weight in the Anglo-American alliance as time went by, but the British had been at war for two years already.  Krause relies on his long years of service in a highly-trained and unforgiving Navy and upon an imposing personal sense of duty to cross his own “mid-Atlantic gap.” 

Fifth, words like “success” and “victory” had only a relative meaning.  Six of the merchant ships and one of the escort vessels are sunk by the Germans, and the “Keeling” is damaged.  Still, 31 merchantmen and three escorts survive.  It was a “tonnage war” and much more got through than was lost.  As Krause, exhausted by 52 straight hours on the bridge managing the complex battle trudges toward his cabin, he hears the crews of the merchant ships cheering. 

[1] An umbrella term for conquering Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, and driving the British Expeditionary force off the Continent at Dunkirk.  

[2] See “The Battle of Britain” (dir. Guy Hamilton, 1969).  It is historically accurate and the flying scenes are thrilling.  Based on Derek Wood and Derek Dempster, The Narrow Margin.  The Battle Of Britain (1969) (youtube.com) 

[3] There are a host of good books on this subject, but one might start with Samuel Eliot Morison, The Battle of the Atlantic, September 1939—May 1943 (1947), a volume in Professor/Admiral Morison’s Official History of U.S. Naval Operations in World War II.  Morison knew the sea and how to write readable history. 

[4] Other Good-to-Great movies on this subject include: “San Demetrio London” (dir. Charles Frend, 1943); “The Enemy Below” (dir. Dick Powell, 1957) The Enemy Below 1957 (youtube.com); “The Cruel Sea” (dir. Charles Frend, 1953); and, from the German side, “Das Boot” (dir. Wolfgang Peterson, 1981).   There’s a documentary as well: “U-Boats vs. Allies” U-Boats vs Allies – WWII: Witness to War – S01 EP3 – History Documentary (youtube.com) 

[5] East-bound convoys had an “HX” designation (originally for leaving Halifax, Nova Scotia). 

[6] Both the RAF and the USAAF prioritized strategic bombing of Germany in allocating long-range aircraft, stinting convoy protection.  Eire remained resolutely neutral and denied Britain the use of ports and airfields in Western Ireland that would have greatly eased the situation.  Had Britain fallen to Hitler,… 

War Movies 7: “Battleground.”

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The Second World War made a deep impression on Robert Pirosh (1910-1989).  He came from a well-off Baltimore family.  Desiring to be a writer, after graduating from high school, he spent time in Europe.  After this he got into the movie business.  Pirosh proved himself adaptable, which Hollywood likes.  On the one hand, he co-wrote two Marx Brothers’ hits (“A Night at the Opera” (1935) and “A Day at the Races” (1937)) then adapted an Ayn Rand play (“The Night of January 16” (1941), then went back to comedy with “Rings on Her Fingers” (1942).  Then the war came along to derail his nice little life.  Pirosh got drafted into the 35th Division.  The 35th Division landed in Normandy a month after D-Day, but then saw a lot of fighting in the break-out from Normandy and pursuit of the Germans.  Pirosh rose to be a sergeant.  The 35th Division helped relieve Bastogne, with Pirosh leading one of the first patrols to enter the town.  After the war, Pirosh went back to writing, directing, and producing movies.  We owe him some of the best of the movies about the Second World War: “Battleground” (1949); “Go for Broke!” (1951); and “Hell Is for Heroes” (1962).  Each movie focuses on a squad of soldiers and treats them as real human beings, rather than as ideal types.

“Battleground” recounts the week-long siege of Bastogne by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge.  The 101st Airborne Division was rushed from peaceful, if not cushy, quarters in France, to defend the vital crossroads town.  Ill-equipped for winter weather, short of ammunition, and with dense cloud cover keeping Allied air forces on the ground, the men hold off the Germans because…well, because “we’re the 101st  Airborne and this is as far as the bastards are going.”  The squad at the center of the movie fights the Germans in a dogged, un-dramatic way.  They complain about each other’s about various little quirks, complain about the food, and complain about the Army Air Force (“London this morning, Berlin this afternoon, headlines tomorrow”).  None of them wants to be there.  One guy was supposed to go home on a dependency discharge (wife at home was sick and he had to go help with the kids).  One guy got out of hospital and was headed to Paris on leave when he got pushed into a truck and driven to Bastogne.  One guy is a newly-arrived replacement, worried that no one will learn his name before he gets killed.  One cracks during an artillery bombardment and runs away; another is wounded; another is killed.  There is some shooting, but not a whole lot.  Eventually, the cloud cover clears and the Army Air Force rains down destruction on the encircling Germans, then the tanks of George Patton’s Third Army show up.  The ragged survivors are ordered to fall in on the road forward toward the front.  Resentful and grumbling at the new demands on them, they reluctantly do as ordered.  Their sergeant then gives the order to “About Face” and they march away from the war as well-equipped and fresh soldiers march up to take their share of the burden.  As they approach the FNGs the men unconsciously adopt a more military bearing that reflects their pride in who they are.

The movie is historically accurate.  Pirosh wanted it that way.  He wrote from what he had seen.  He had twenty veterans of the 101st hired to train the actors and serve as extras.  They shot the movie in cold, wet conditions in CA, OR, and WA.  It was a big hit with audiences.