[Info-vax] OT actors being treated as their screen character Was: Re: Nice

[Paul Sture]

On Sun, 12 Aug 2012 18:27:50 +0200, Dirk Munk wrote:

> Paul Sture wrote:
>> On Thu, 09 Aug 2012 16:04:05 -0500, Bob Koehler wrote:
>>
>>> In article <9vddf9-5e31.ln1 at news1.chingola.ch>, Paul Sture
>>> <paul at sture.ch> writes:
>>>>
>>>> It made me realise that those of us whose countries weren't occupied
>>>> don't fully understand what occupied countries went through.
>>>
>>>     I've heard stories about French complaining that American tourists
>>>     act like the French still owe us for coming to thier rescue.
>>
>> The British don't take kindly to that either.  Certain Hollywood
>> interpretations grated on my parents' generation.
> 
> Like the film where brave US navy men captured an Enigma machine, while
> in fact it had been a Royal Navy lieutenant.

It goes back further than that.  One of John Wayne's film came in for a 
lot of criticism.

>> I never saw any of the ones in France but I did visit one in Holland. 
>> It was a very moving experience.
> 
> That must have been Margraten, in the very South of the country. Every
> grave there (or almost every grave) has been adopted by a family in that
> area.

Yes it was in the South.  I was involved in a project at Computer Centrum 
Limburg in Heerlen at the time and at weekends I would go exploring.
 
> In September we remember the Battle of Arnheim. Schoolchildren will lay
> flowers on the graves of the British and Polish soldiers in Oosterbeek.
> British veterans will visit the events, and there will be parachute
> droppings over the former battlefields. The Polish soldiers helped to
> evacuate the British, but the Polish commander general-major Sosabowski
> had foreseen the debacle and had told Montgomery the operation would
> fail. As a result he was blamed for the failure by the British. He died
> as a forgotten man. Just before he died prince Bernhard of The
> Netherlands gave a television interview where he mentioned the grave
> injustice done to the general and the Polish troops. He pleaded to
> correct this, and after some political debate in 2006 the 1st
> Independent Polish Parachute Brigade was awarded the order of William
> (the Dutch equivalent of the Victoria Cross), and general Sosabowski was
> posthumously rewarded with the Bronze Lion, a decoration just below the
> order of William, and the same decoration the British general Urquhart
> got.

I spent a couple of evenings in Arnhem and it probably was September. I 
met some then currently serving British soldiers who were also visiting - 
it wasn't just veterans.

The Polish also played a key role in the Air Force IIRC.  After WWII a 
lot settled in the UK; my local town had a very strong Polish community 
and even their own newspapers when I was young.

> The North of the country was liberated by British, American, Canadian,
> French and Polish forces. However the Canadians stayed after the war
> ended to help us out. The Dutch just love those Canadians. In 1995 they
> came over to remember the 50 year anniversary of the end of WWII. These
> veterans expected a bus tour to the battlefields and war cemeteries.
> Instead they got the same reception as when they liberated the country.
> They couldn't believe what was happening. And they returned in 2000,
> 2005 and 2010. No such event is planned for 2015 because just a very few
> will be alive by then, and they will be very old. But some of them visit
> us at liberation day (May 5th) in other years as well.

Thanks for the details.

-- 
Paul Sture