WKRLEM TV: World on Fire

I have been struggling to find stuff to watch as we are locked down these many months. Just recently I have come across this BBC production that is being presented by Masterpiece Theater.  It's called "World on Fire" and it is a pretentious soap opera that traces the beginning of World War Two. It is very well done and the production values seem top notch.

Now this is supposed to be highbrow but it has the typical soap opera touches that they would scoff at but still use to keep an audience. One of my favorite actors Sean Bean plays a great role where he has to hide his natural authority and play down his personality. He does a masterful job. Believe it or not Helen Hunt is pretty good too. Of course she plays a gold plated bitch so it was type  casting.

They had to throw in a gratuitous gay subplot but hey that's entertainment these days. Still and all it seems quite entertaining.

Highly recommended.

Happy Birthday

Alone and far removed from earthly care
The noble ruins of men lie buried here.
You were strong men, good men
Endowed with youth and much the will to live.
I hear no protest from the mute lips of the dead.
They rest: there is no more to give. 

So long my comrades,
Sleep ye where you fell upon the field.
But tread softly please
March O'er my heart with ease.
March on and on,
But to God alone we kneel.

Douglas Bader: A legendary man few have heard of

I stumbled across this man's story the other night; and I can't get it out of my mind.

Douglas Bader was one of the most successful British fighter aces of World War II.  He finished the war with 22.5 kills, despite the fact that he spent much of the war in German POW camps.

His aerobatics abilities were without peer.  He initially flew the Hawker Hurricane Mk 1, which was outdated even at the beginning of the war (it had a steel and wood frame, with a fabric skin), against faster, better-armed, more powerful all-steel-and-aluminum Messerschmidt ME-109s, and quickly rose up through the ranks to command a somewhat ragtag Canadian squadron, the 242.  The Canadians resented their new British commander, until they saw him fly; Bader whipped them into shape, and they went on to have one of the best kill ratios of any squadron in The Battle of Britain.  He was a proponent of the "Big Wing" tactic, massed formations of fighters, and he led formations of over one hundred Hurricanes and Spitfires against German attackers (early in the war) and then against targets within Germany.

He collided with a Messerschmidt over Germany and was captured in 1941.  After several escapes, only to be recaptured before he could get out of Germany, the Germans put him in the infamous Colditz castle prison.  He stayed there til the end of the war, when Colditz was liberated by the American First Army. After the war, he continued to work as a pilot for Shell Oil; he would go on to be knighted by Queen Elizabeth; and he would die at the age of 72 in 1982.

This is a remarkable life, and I've left out one small detail:

Douglas Bader was a double-amputee.  He had no right leg from just above the knee; and no left leg just below the knee.

And I'm not saying he lost his legs during the war.  I'm saying he started the war with no legs.