:07:02
"This is an unhealthy place."
:07:05
And there was no retreat,
no way to go back.
:07:08
So you either stayed and got killed
:07:11
or did something about it.
:07:13
What happened was over here
a captain, here a lieutenant,
:07:18
down there a sergeant who had
men whose names he didn't know,
:07:22
the confusion was so great.
:07:24
He said,
"l ain't getting killed here.
:07:27
"l'm going up there to take some
Germans with me. Who's coming?"
:07:32
They had to cross
that expanse of open beach
:07:35
with that blistering gunfire
from all directions,
:07:40
and to wade through it,
some of them survive,
:07:44
and go on and achieve
the monumental moment D-Day was.
:07:51
It was a watershed that will be
focused on in history forever.
:07:56
It's not hard to imagine
what it looked like.
:08:00
What it must have felt like, however,
:08:03
is something guys like myself
will never know. Never.
:08:14
I've had an obsession
with World War Two.
:08:18
It originated with my father,
who fought in WWll in Burma
:08:23
and came back to tell all the
stories about what happened.
:08:28
He was in the Air Force,
:08:30
and he was the radio operator
on board a B-25.
:08:36
I saw some 16mm movies
my dad took while he was there.
:08:40
So I grew up with pictures of
him cleaning his machine gun,
:08:45
him on a bicycle, everybody
bicycled in that region.
:08:49
And stories about his buddies
and the friends he made.
:08:54
My dad planted the seed in that
when he told war stories,
:08:59
he wasn't trying to dissuade me
from being interested in war.