D-Day The Unheard Tapes

[Dan Gould]

Did anyone catch this last night on the History Channel or on the BBC?

The producer's took tape recordings of veterans, digitally "de-aged" them and then filmed actors (who resemble the veterans in their younger days) lip synching their words.

There is a family connection to this - my brother-in-law sat down with his dad sometime in the 90s and asked questions about his war experience and let him talk and talk and the tape was sent to a museum eventually.  His dad's name was Harry Parley and his doppelganger and his words are the first ones seen and heard on screen.  I can't say for sure how closely the actor resembled Harry since I never saw pictures of him but I suspect it was very close.

(When my wife and I moved to Delray Beach in 2004 we had no idea that Michael's father lived not five minutes away so I became the designated helper for Harry when hurricanes threatened or if he needed help for other things. Very nice man but I never had or took time to ask him about his experiences. And while thinking about Harry I have to mention something that was so funny, and so weird in its way, about him that was discovered after he passed: He was a little obsessive/compulsive and when banks switched to sending out scans of cancelled checks, he would cut each tiny scan into its own mini-check, and glue-stick it to a another piece of paper.  Nobody knew of this habit but we all said it was "very 'Harry'. And there were boxes and boxes of them to dispose of.) )

 

I only made it thru the first two hours last night and will have to watch the second half online or catch it in broadcast but it was a very effective and affecting production.

https://www.history.com/shows/d-day-the-unheard-tapes

[Kevin Bresnahan]

The few men I knew over the years who had seen live action, never really wanted to talk about it. One was my late father-in-law, who saw action in Korea. I remember asking him what it was like and he really didn't want to talk about it. I asked him if it was because he had to kill people and his response was, "I assume that I killed the people who stopped shooting at me after I shot back". Another was a guy I worked with when I was a teenager. He had been in the jungles of Vietnam & he was really messed up by it. He had all kinds of physical ticks, especially when there were loud noises. He stuttered when he swore, which made us all laugh but he said it started when his tent-mate blew himself up with a grenade right next to him. We never laughed at him again. I guess that might make me stutter too.

The worst case of PTSD I knew personally was my grandfather. By the time he died at the age of 97, his waking moments all took place in a WWI foxhole, with his friends getting killed around him all the time. It was so sad to watch. That was one of the few deaths where "his suffering is finally over" really fit the situation.

[Ken Dryden]

Medal of Honor winner Audie Murphy slept with a .45 pistol under his pillow. I remember reading that he also didn't respond well to being awakened suddenly.

I can't imagine what horrors combat veterans witnessed and I believe most of them are trying to purge them from their minds versus talking with anyone who never were in combat themselves.

I need to revisit the World War II museum in New Orleans, they've added a lot since I toured it when it was still the D-Day Museum.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

15 hours ago, Ken Dryden said:

I can't imagine what horrors combat veterans witnessed and I believe most of them are trying to purge them from their minds versus talking with anyone who never were in combat themselves.

Probably true, particularly in the case of my grandfather. I never even knew he fought in WWI until his dementia took over and it started spilling out non-stop. Up until then, he was just my grampa.

When I was a kid, me & my friends used to play a game we called "Army", where we all ran through the woods with plastic guns yelling " Bang" and "killing" each other. Back then, it was a bunch of boys having fun. I even had a fake BAR and whoever had that gun would go by "Kirby", named after the character in the TV show "Combat!". I cannot imagine that would ever happen today.

[Ken Dryden]

I think that Saving Private Ryan took a lot of the fun of kids playing army after seeing the violence depicted on Omaha Beach. There's nothing glorious about a lingering death from being disemboweled by a shell or mission gun

[sidewinder]

I attended a local beacon lighting on the evening of the 6th (hosted by local residents with bar and barbecue) There was a chain of beacons lit right across the South of England, areas that were used as training and embarkation bases. Must make a visit to Tarrant Rushton, where gliders took off for the parachute drops and still largely unchanged from that time.

Edited June 8, 2024 by sidewinder

[Brad]

I recently read “Company of Heroes: Personal Memories About the Real Band of Brothers and the Legacy They Left Us,” interviews with and recollections by family members about their relative who had served in Easy Company and some of them had difficult lives after WW II: divorce, heavy drinking, PTSD and so forth.