Stardate 20040527.1703

(On Screen): My grocery store sells a lot more than just food. It used to have a small section where it sold computer supplies. And occasionally there are DVDs offered. On Monday while I was restocking the larder, I ended up buying a couple of DVDs.

One of them was "The Battle of Britain", one of the better war movies ever made. It was released in 1969, which was far enough from the war so that they didn't feel the need to make all the German characters seem like evil, sadistic animals, but still early enough so that the film makers were not infected with post-modernist multiculturalist mindset and didn't need to try to portray Hitler and the other top Nazis semi-sympathetically. (Or to try to figure out some reason why it was actually America's fault.)

Actually, the film isn't really about political leaders, or the larger events of the war. Churchill shows up in the film but only briefly; Hitler only appears once, making a speech. Göring probably has more screen time than any other top political leader, and he is not portrayed very sympathetically. What the film is actually about is the people who really fought the battle on both sides, and the utter horror they went through. It shows the terrible destruction caused by the bombing of London, but shows it through the eyes of an RAF fighter pilot on leave.

The British are the good guys, of course, and in particular it is the pilots of Fighter Command who are the heroes of the film. But the pilots and crewmen who flew for the Luftwaffe are treated sympathetically; they're men, not monsters. When a squadron of German bombers is jumped by RAF fighters, with no German fighters around, quite naturally the Germans got butchered. There's a scene of a German bomber pilot whose plane has already been shot up, surrounded by the corpses of his crewmates. His oxygen mask covers all of his face except his eyes, but his eyes are full of naked fear as he sees a Spitfire swing in directly in front of him and begin shooting, moments before he, too, dies.

No matter who starts a war, and no matter why it is being fought, death is the same for every man. And though the film doesn't emphasize this, it's important to remember that the majority of the Germans who fought in WWII were not party members or zealots for the Nazi cause.

This film was made near enough to WWII so that a lot of the locations they needed were still available and could be used after cleaning the weeds away and using a bit of paint. There were still quite a large number of WWII warplanes available in flying condition which could be borrowed for the film.

Some of the special effects used in it were quite well done. A lot of the images of planes being destroyed in the air or crashing into the ground or the sea were done with miniatures, but they used large enough miniatures so that it wasn't terribly noticeable.

Some of the special effects were pretty cheesy. This was before Industrial Light and Magic, and some of the mid-air "explosions" were animated, rather badly.

But the most important special effect in the film, the one I think sticks most in the memory, wasn't actually a special effect. It wasn't created by makeup artists. It was real.

There's a minor character in the film named Squadron Leader Tom Evans. He only appears in the film twice that I noticed. The first time he was part of a group shot of RAF officers being briefed on the British system for controlling their fighters, that permitted them intercept the Germans instead of missing them in the air.

Later, he is introduced to Section Leader Maggie Harvey, played by Susannah York. She is a bit shocked by his appearance but controls it and greets him warmly.

And then they gave him a closeup.

They even let him speak a couple of lines. He has a very pleasant voice. He mentions that he knew her husband, because they served together in a fighter squadron before his "little escapade with a burning Hurricane" fighter. Shortly after this scene, her husband's Spitfire is shot down and he, too, is terribly burned.

This man's real name is William Foxley, and that is really his face. During his closeups, he blinks his eyes a couple of times. Or rather, he blinks his eye. Only the left eye blinks.

This is the only movie he's ever appeared in. The film makers wanted to include him or someone like him, in part to preserve for us the price some men paid in order to protect their country.

Bill Foxley wasn't a fighter pilot, but he did serve in the RAF during WWII. He may still be alive; he was alive and active in 2001.

His story, and that of many others like him, was told better in this from 1999 than anything else I could find online.

Ties that burn
By Richard Horn, SUN Staff

The Guinea Pigs are bound together by the pain of horrible injuries and the inspiration of a medical pioneer.

It's an exclusive club with an immense adm