Word: breakthroughs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1950
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Fare: $700. The U.S. 24th Infantry and 1st Cavalry Divisions were now stationed on the perilous right flank, replacing the fearfully mauled U.S. 2nd Division. Caught on the shoulder of the great Communist breakthrough, the 2nd would have to be reconstituted before it could fight again. It had lost a third of its combat strength in killed, wounded and missing; its 9th Regiment, first and hardest hit in the Red onslaught, was almost completely destroyed. The division's 237 officer casualties included five doctors and two chaplains...
...Kunu crossing, farthest inland and closest to the breakthrough zone, was the toughest. A 2nd Division regiment, commanded by Colonel Paul Freeman of Roanoke, Va., fought a rearguard action at Kunu to save as much as possible of an eight-mile vehicle train. Said the colonel: "We will go down the road on trucks, if we can. Otherwise we will destroy the trucks and go over the mountains, shooting backward every step of the way. We've gone through miracle after miracle, and we need one more...
...Breakthrough (Warner) travels with a rifle platoon of the ist Infantry Division into the Normandy invasion, the hedgerow fighting and the Saint-Lô battle that launched the Allied blitz through France. From Twelve O'Clock High it borrows the problem of the commander who cracks under the strain of identifying himself with his men; from Battleground, the familiar roster of civilian-soldier types; from Sands of Iwo Jima, the technique of intercutting its scenes liberally with real combat footage and battering its sound track with thunderous explosions...
...grease paint proves much stronger than the smell of cordite. All the fog of war cannot hide the writing and acting shortcomings in the characters of the picture's command-weary captain (David Brian) and his young platoon leader (John Agar). Unlike Battleground, which it most resembles, Breakthrough makes no bones about recruiting its soldiers from Central Casting and assigning them to spell the carnage with a few vaudeville turns. One infantryman is a vaudevillian who does imitations of movie stars; another is a musclebound health faddist whose casual rejection of a man-eating mademoiselle's advances comes...
While feigning a respectable amount of civilized horror at the exigencies of battle, Breakthrough romanticizes the hell out of war. On the level of a shoot-'em-up action film with some coincidental resemblance to the events it pretends to depict, it is a well-staged, workmanlike job. As any kind of memorial to the men who died in its newsreel clips, it is a great deal less...