Right now watching this movie on AMC. Have seen it many times before but still a good movie. Has Steve McQueen and Candace Bergen in it. Set amidst the Chinese civil war of the 1920s as a US gunboat tries to protect American lives and interests amidst the conflict while stranded at low tide.
McQueen's character falls for Bergen, who is married to this older educated gentleman. The ending packs a wallop and should be watched. McQueen is ordered to lead a landing party to rescue this American couple before the gunboat finally leaves. Well Bergen's husband refuses to leave and waves in front of McQueen's face this piece of paper. It declares this couple to no longer be American citizens, but international citizens and the genlteman goes on to say the local warlord has promised them protection. Well the warlord's soldiers attack the compound and this deluded man waves that paper and declares them protected. He is shot dead. McQueen and his shore party have to fight the soldiers and in the end he orders his men to take Bergen back to the gunboat while he holds the enemy off.
I can see people like those in CODEPink, after the American Caliphate comes to being, wonder in a confused voice wonder why are they being tied to poles in front of a firing squad. That they sympathized with the people and helped them so why this treatment. Just like that man waving that piece of paper in front of the warlord's soldiers availed him naught since he was a foreigner speaking an ungodly tongue, all that CODEPink and other like them did to help the Jihadis will not matter in the end becuase to the Jihadis all non-believers are the enemy and should die.
3 comments:
We saw the movie while I was on a ship in Vietnam. I swear that there wasn't a dry eye on the mess decks at the end of that movie. I just recently got the DVD and watched it again, and after almost 30 years, it illicited the same reaction
AndyJ
Watching this movie while part of the Tonkin Yacht Club must have been surreal.
It is a good movie though and I probably should get the DVD.
Well, we were not part of the Tonkin Yacht Club. We plied our trade up and down the Mekong River in the south. As the astute student of history that you are, you might be interested in the only green ships in the Navy and the brown water navy. The site below is the site of my ship and it has links to the 9th infantry division which we were so closely associated. It's a pretty interesting hisory, which is linked with the ironclads of the civil war.
http://www.ussbenewah.com/
AndyJ
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