I spent Thanksgiving alone; it was a sunny but cool day with promise of snow, a perfect day for gazing out the windows and contemplating upon people no longer in this time and place.
I watched movies all day long. It was great.
The first one was MacArthur from 1977, starring Gregory Peck.
There were increased secretions of the lachrymal glands when I was listening to the late General’s final speech to the cadets at West Point in 1962, but actually the tears really flow when I’m reading—not watching, but reading—his deathbed scene in the biography by William Manchester.
I wonder if Harry Truman, who was pretty old but still mobile then, went to his funeral in 1964. And Dwight Eisenhower. I wouldn’t fault either of them if they hadn’t, but it would’ve nice if they’d buried the hatchet, and gone.
The second movie was Patton from 1970, starring George Scott.
Then I watched The Darkest Hour recently made, left wondering what happened to those guys abandoned (although there was no other choice) in Calais.
The fourth movie was Dunkirk from 2015, the most recent one.
The fifth movie was Dunkirk from 2004.
The sixth movie was Dunkirk from 1958.
The most-recent Dunkirk borrowed much from the oldest one. Those two were essentially about everybody trying to get back to England from Dunkirk. The middle Dunkirk was basically about everybody trying to get to Dunkirk so they could be carried away.
Incidentally, the same time the evacuation at Dunkirk was going on, there was another evacuation further north, bringing guys in from newly-abandoned Norway to Scotland; of course this was far overshadowed what was going on in Dunkirk, but one wonders if any movies might have been made about that.
There’s just something inspiring, looking at people who refuse to give up, who refuse to die.
The seventh and final movie was Sink the Bismarck from 1960.
I’d forgotten what I’d read before; the HMS Hood, once struck, went down in less than three minutes. In the movie even, it was there, and oops, a split-second later, it was gone.
As big as that ship was, it must’ve made a Hell of a bang, possibly even being heard as far away as Oslo and New York City.
So anyway, that’s what I did Thanksgiving.