On previous holidays I have immersed myself in old TV Shows: Red Dwarf, The Office (two name but a few)
This year, it is two old TV Shows from the 1960s: 12 O’Clock High and Combat!
As a young’un, my parents kindly let me watch these shows in the 1970s. These shows left me with an enduring interest in WW2 history.
12 O’Clock High depicts the 918th Bomb group in Europe during WW2 and stars Robert Lansing. The first episode follows a similar story thread of the 1949 Acadamy Ward winning movie of the same name starring Gregory Peck. Combat! shows US soldiers in the European theatre of operations, post Normandy.
A sobering sight in our 2004 trip to the US where these two monuments: (note, the panels shown is only a small selection)
Outside the American Air Museum, inside the Imperial War Museum, Duxford there are many panels etched with a mini picture depicting each of the 7,032 American aircraft lost during WW2.
In the lower levels of the museum, a series of American building is a list of over 30,000 Americans lost during WW2: (note, the panels shown is only a small part of the total panels)
The reality is nothing like the TV show. Then again, what would I know.