My husband is a retired Navy Supply Corps Officer. The nickname for a Supply Corps person is ‘Pork Chop’ – because their oak leaf insignia looks kinda like a pork chop, and also because they are in charge of (among other things) food. Anyway, my husband is always joking that someone needs to make a movie about the Supply Corps and call it Top Chop.
In WW2, the China-Burma-India theater never got much attention. Between the Burmese jungles and the Himilaya mountains, you could have some spectacular visuals. Political stuff with the Americans, British, and Indians would make for some great human interest stories.
Come to think of it, has anyone ever made a movie about the Gurkhas?
The army Signal Corps in WW1. Stringing telegraph wires between HQ and the front lines, and taking care of carrier pigeons.
How about a movie about the Zulus or the Fuzzie-Wuzzies, told from the African point of view?
I always thought this was a cool concept - could make a great movie: Q-ship - Wikipedia
The hell you say?!? I thought “Kelly’s Heroes” was a documentary! 
Don Rickles aka Crapgame: Then make a DEAL!
Telly Salvalas aka Big Joe: What kind of deal?
Crapgame: A DEAL, deal! Maybe the guy’s a Republican. “Business is business,” right?
I love that movie. Sorry for the hijack. Carry on with your regularly scheduled post.
I thought the movie Zulu! was very good. While it was about the soldiers at Rourke’s Drift, it treated the Zulus with respect and showed what a formidable fighting army they were.
Kelly’s Heroes MAN!
Kelly: Well Oddball, what do you think?
Oddball: It’s a wasted trip baby. Nobody said nothing about locking horns with no Tigers.
Big Joe: Hey look, you just keep them Tigers busy and we’ll take care of the rest.
Oddball: The only way I got to keep them Tigers busy is to LET THEM SHOOT HOLES IN ME!
Crapgame: Hey, Oddball, this is your hour of glory. And you’re chickening out!
Oddball: To a New Yorker like you, a hero is some type of weird sandwich, not some nut who takes on three Tigers.
Kelly: Nobody’s asking you to be a hero.
Oddball: No? Then YOU sit up in that turret baby.
Kelly: No, because you’re gonna be up there, baby, and I’ll be right outside showing you which way to go.
Oddball: Yeah?
Kelly: Yeah.
Oddball: Crazy… I mean like, so many positive waves… maybe we can’t lose, you’re on!
Fantastic movie.
I was wondering if anyone would remember Sand Pebbles. I had people tell me that the main character reminded them of me. I like machinery.
Hell, even nowadays, it’s rarely exciting. According to a buddy of mine who got back from his Iraq deployment a few months ago (he’s a battalion S6), it was dull, and he played a lot of Xbox and watched a lot of Sportscenter, except for the occasional mortar attack.
Yeah, but come on . . . carrier pigeons! There has got to be some comedy gold in there somewhere!
On a more serious note, I think that the pigeon Cher Ami deserves a biopic.
Look no further! Valiant (2005) - IMDb
they could join the field bakery dudes I found the german ones, but I know the US had the same …
My father refused to eat anything that could be made with bread, powdered eggs, dried chipped beef and powdered milk [ir shall we say stuff like french toast and shit on a shingle and scrambled eggs] because by fucking damn, they had no hot water, barely potable water but they had freaking bread trucks and powdered milk, powdered eggs and dried beef … Got to love the well meaning but mislead person who though hot fresh bread in the field for a combat unit was a great idea [ww2] when they would have preferred a hot shower, and hot coffee that wasnt boiled up in a helmet…and apparently the gernams would target them, so orders came down that they had to spend valuable sleeping time standing extra watch to guard the damned things.
heh, i have a falcon tattoo, and one of my eve online pilots is named selous falk and flies a hund class ship=)
I read somewhere that either during WWI or WWII, the Germans tried to use hawks (or some other predator birds) to hunt the Allied carrier pigeons, but they had to stop doing so, because the hawks would also hunt the German carrier pigeons. So that could be an amusing side plot in such a movie.
I remember reading that B.F. Skinner, the psychologist, was hired to teach pigeons to fly in unmanned drones, recognize when the drone was over target, and peck a button to release payloads.
Graves Registration or the true cost of the war.
We used to say 'You kill ‘em, we chill ‘em’, or ‘Baggin’ and taggin’ and sending 'em home.
Prior to that, I actually ran a field service bakery making bread in 400 lb batches. Intersting. Entirely self contained equipment, but set up in a metal warehouse with a concrete floor by the time I got there.
I’d imagine that you could make a pretty emotionally gripping movie about the guys who have to send word of soldiers’ deaths to loved ones, or the Marines whose job it is to escort the bodies of dead Marines home.
You might want to name it Taking Chance. Just brainstorming.
I remember reading a particular section of A Higher Form of Killing, an otherwise somber book about chemical and biological warfare, in high school and thinking it would make a great black comedy. It details the exploits of Stanley P. Lovell and his team at the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. They were charged by “Wild Bill” Donovan with the task of coming up with new and inventive “underhand tricks” that the enemy would never expect. I’d say they succeeded, at least in that respect.
One has to wonder what this group’s planning sessions were like. I envision something like Mythbusters, but gone horribly, horribly wrong.