From the photos any small country town could sub for Arnhem except in the beginning show photos of Arnhem landmarks from tourist brochures or whereever.
Try borrowing short footage from the British military as introductory or from the movie 'BridgeToo Far'.
Not realistic. The bombings are at night. The parachutist lands on the trees and injures himself but manages to get down. Tries to hide the parachute by folding roughly and dumps it in hollow of bushes or rocks and hides in some bushes, cave or under covering of loose leaves. Sleeps. Woken up by boy and morning light. Checks scenery to make boy is alone then jumps him from behind and cover his mouth. Looks at the boy and with fore finger across mouth signals 'shhhh'. The starlted boy looks at him. Theinjured parachutist points at his insignia and stammers "American!" Then points a this blood-stained injured leg.
Okay.... the bombings were at night.... but... he is barely concious... he could be hanging there until morning can't he? why not?
Howsabout he gets caught in the trees with a badly injured leg, manages to free himself from the harness, and the parachute gets blown away by the wind, before he has a chance to bury or destroy it ?
Well.... in a forest... it doesn't really have anywhere to go without getting caught in something.... making it very easy for anyone to catch it.
But it's a forest on the edge of fields...Think of the visuals. Think Red Balloon.
The American Army Airforce flew mostly daylight missions.
Talk's idea that the parachutist has gotten down from the tree and made some effort at concealment works.
The German's probably wouldn't ask about searching a shack in the woods, they'd just do it. With the evidence in hand that an injured flier was in the immediate vicinity they wouldn't take any chances. What I mean is they wouldn't probably be out of one another's sight, and they would be getting reinforcements before doing anything risky. Blood on the parachute and blood on the child, would raise their alertness even more. Allied fliers weren't entirely unarmed, almost all carried sidearms and could be very dangerous. On the other hand, an injured Allied flier might well surrender because other options would be limited. The Germans would tend the flier's wounds and take the him off to a POW camp where he would sit out the remainder of the war.
This scenario you've presented seems less probable to me. The Mother and child are left with a couple of dead Germans, a sure death warrant. The flier has no where to go and is handicapped by wounds. BTW, why give the time and place in a caption? Films are about telling a story through moving pictures, and with dialog.
(Off the record, anytime you can get Asherman, Paasky, Walter, and Setanta into a thread, it's a sign of two things...
1) You asked a good question.
2) You are going to learn a lot.)
Carry on, gentlemen and bravo !
How about hiding the bodies of the German soldiers with the help of the injured flyer or agents who come later as there are always Dutch spotters looking out for downed flyers and from secret underground radio messages?
Audrey did mentioned that there were a lot of co-operation as she gave messages to various people and about radio contact with Allied forces.
Okay, so now you're saying that the germans wouldn't kkill the american right away? But rather give him a chance to surrender? But wouldn't they kill the women for nursing the american pilot? So isn't that reason enough for the pilot to not surrender and try to fight?
All the stuff about the german not askign tos earch the shed and just doing it..... fine... that coould be changed.... also.... the idea that they wouldn't check the shed, they woud get backup is soemthing that... in a movie... i think i culd just ignore and say that the german checks the shed anyway.... the other soldier stays outside to keep an eye on the women.... Why not?... the shed is small and someone SHOULD be keeping an eye on the women at all times, shouldn't they?.....
Okay... so the pilot leaves the women with two dead Nazi's..... So what? as far as anyone is concerned, there was a shootout and the women was no involved at all... also... It is kind of a desperate situation... he can't take the bodies with him... the bodies are there whether any of them like it or not....the only other option was to die themselves
In my other story... the two german soldiers would be playing cards as they watched the belgium or dutch lady plant flowers... then the lady would drag the soldier from the forest to the back of the shed ,meanwhile the nazi soldiers are still off in the distance playing cards.... kind of risky i think... no?
i was considering keeping the story how I explained it in my last post, but only the different ending would be this: The lady has much less warning that the soldiers are arriving... the boy runs out of the shed to try and stall the nazis... they see the blood on the boy's cloths and immediatly check the shed.... they see the american soldier and immediatly shoot him... then the women assures to her son that everything is fine and to run off..... when the boy is far away enough.... he hears a gunshot... Fade to black... the end....
What do you like better? the sad ending or the 'I wonder what happens from here" ending?
Okay, I have to get my hands on this audrey heprin (is that the spelling?) thing.... I hear a lot about it.... is it a film or a book?
Also... talk... i guess i can add a little ending clip of the pilot finishing helping bury the sodlier's bodies and then taking off... Does anyone else think this would help? or would the pilot want to get the hell out of there asap.
Drew22,
Go back to page one of this thread, and read through the whole thing, when you have the time... But do it slowly.
I think you are in such a hurry, that you are missing out on a lot of the wisdom and opinion that has been shared here.
That being said, this has been one of my favorite threads in a long time.
Welcome to A2K !
(Audrey Hepburn, btw)
Interesting scenario, lotsa ways to go with it. Any time after late September of 1940, British bombers and reconnaisance planes, as well as the occasional escort fighter, regularly overflew Holland - and Belgium, largely but not exclusively at night. From late September '42 on, American bombers overflew the area as well, chiefly by day, though in '42, only a couple dozen US bombing missions were flown from England. Untill early '44, escort fighters, British or American, hadn't the range to go much beyond Holland, Belgium, and an arc of Western France, but they were not uncommon in the airspace there at the time, and as '44 wore on, they came to rule the European skies (a rather bitter joke among German forces of the time went: Q - "How do you tell an Allied plane from a German Plane?" A - "If you can see it or hear it, its an Allied plane").
As Setanta mentioned, it wasn't untill 17 September '44, with Montgomery's ill-fated Market-Garden debacle, that any Allied troops parachuted into Holland. Absolute accuracy isn't really that big a deal ... and prolly would get in the way of your story. For one thing, the German discovery of an Allied parachute, whether by a patrol or by just a couple soldiers wandering around ijn the woods (itself an unlikely scenario; partisans and all), would call for a general alarm and an organized search along prescribed general orders; the parachute most likely would have remained where it was, undisturbed and under guard, until the area and every road surrounding it was more or less swarming with troops - which would have taken very little time.
Still, that needn't be a big bother to a yarn-spinner - its a story, after all, not a memoir. One thing war movies as a genre typically lack is accuracy.
Hi Drew,
I do not know what the scenery looks like where you will be filming. If you want the story set in Holland you should look for very flat land with streams and ditches and rows of (poplar) trees. There the story could take place between 1942 and 1945.
If you go for the Ardennes, you would be looking for steep wooded hills, the populace would be French speaking, the time slot there would be between 1942 and summer 1944 (the area was liberated in September-October), or it could be set during the Battle of the Bulge (When the Germans temporarily reoccupied part of the Ardennes), but then you would need winter conditions.
If the film really should be the Ardennes, the population their mainly speaks German (therfore German is the third national language in Belgium) in the St Vith, Malmedy and Eupen region, only around Bastogne was a French speaking population.
Interestingly, when Hitler's army invaded and the Reich annexed Eupen, Malmedy and St. Vith in World War II, many local residents initially welcomed their "liberators" and even joined up to fight on the German side.
To be fair, quite a few also fought against the Germans and in the resistance. St. Vith, Malmedy and Eupen were completely destroyed during the 1944/45 Battle of the Bulge. After the war, they were reabsorbed into Belgium.
Malmedy and Stavelot became part of the French-speaking region after the war, while St. Vith, Eupen and other towns retained their German character.
The German-Speaking Community of Belgium [Deutschsprachige Gemeinschaft Belgien, DGB] is today one of the three federal communities in Belgium, with a 'Minister-Präsident' (prime minister) as head of the governing body.
As a boy I spent several summer holidays in Eupen and Malmédy, but the Ardennes stretch as far West as Liège/Luik and Namur/Namen and South into France, so the area is much bigger than the German speaking strip on the border.
Correct. I've lived there some time.
One thing about the Ardennes - it has a military history going back to the Roman Legions ... if an army is gonna be surprised in Europe, the Ardennes is a likely place for it to happen
timberlandko wrote:One thing about the Ardennes - it has a military history going back to the Roman Legions ... if an army is gonna be surprised in Europe, the Ardennes is a likely place for it to happen
Though the Latin name
Arduenna Silva covers a larger region than what is called 'Ardennes' in more recent history, you are complete correct, timber. (And that is known to history profs as well - at least one paper during every history student's life about this region here :wink: )
