Having been born 11 days after Pearl Harbor, my early childhood memories were of war. It was hard in 1944, when my dad finally got called up as I knew he was gone. Shortly after the war there were many stories shared by my uncles with me about their exploits in Europe and the Pacific. Then there was the flood of war movies that appeared at the local movie houses in 1946 and 1947.
(My one uncle shared his war stories about the women he met as he traveled across the Pacific -- Hawaii and Australia were his favorites. Not sure if it was the locale or the women. Some 18 years later after the end of the war, I was headed to Midway Island. I happened to mention to my Uncle I would be passing thru and spending a couple of days on Oahu. He immediately suggested I visit some ladies he formerly knew. That was my Uncle Carmine!)
Later in life I began to collect some of those war movies that I actually had seen as a kid.
Who can forget Sands of Iwo Jima or The Flying Leathernecks. One movie, Airplane, chronicles a flight of B-17's headed for Hawaii on December 6, 1941. Then of course there is The Fighting Seabees and Wake Island. Another fav is They Were Expendable.
Having been on Midway Island in 1963 some of the WWII fortifications were still there and they looked just like the movie sets especially like in the movie Wake Island.
Many of the movies had actors that later were big stars like Gig Young, Robert Preston, William Bendix, Donna Reed, Ward Bond,
Anthony Quinn, George Reeves and Veronica Lake.
Here is a jacket cover from the They Were Expendable DVD. The movie has some real US Navy personnel in key roles like Capt. John Ford (Director) and Cmdr. Frank "Spig" Wead, USN Ret. (Screen Writer) and Lt. Robert Montgomery (one of the starring roles). So, look at this photo and tell me what is wrong?
Look Real Close
OK, the answer is they are out of uniform. The Uniform of the Day for Officers was the standard Khaki pants and shirts and brown shoes. The long sleeve shirts could be worn sans a black tie but if you were OOD then the black tie was not optional. What is awry is the "cover" (hat). When wearing the Khaki, the hat cover is khaki. If you were wearing "whites" or the Navy Blue, then the hat cover was white.
The DVD shows the khaki uniform with a white cover. Pure and simple Out of Uniform!
Now after all this movie talk there is a radio nugget for us. When troubleshooting Look Real Close as something may be out of uniform.
TYGNYB.
73's
Pete N6QW