How accurate is Kellys Heroes?

NapoleonXIV

Banned
Given that the characters and events are prolly a little "exaggerated":rolleyes: how accurate is the overall plot? I've heard opinions from scurrilous slander to dead on. I have read somewhere that at this time the movie was set in, (shortly after D day and just after the Hedgerows , I think) from 11 tto 20 thousand men were AWOL at any one time from the Allied Armies and many formed roving gangs which specialized in hijacking trains.
 
Matt

Matt

NapoleonXIV said:
Given that the characters and events are prolly a little "exaggerated":rolleyes: how accurate is the overall plot? I've heard opinions from scurrilous slander to dead on. I have read somewhere that at this time the movie was set in, (shortly after D day and just after the Hedgerows , I think) from 11 tto 20 thousand men were AWOL at any one time from the Allied Armies and many formed roving gangs which specialized in hijacking trains.
Click to expand...

It's accurate in one regard. By the close of World War 2 there were over 19,000 GIs AWOL in France, dubbed the "Lost Division."
 

carlton_bach

From everything I've read it's probably a more accurate portrayal that many earlier WWII movies. Property crime (though usually of minor proportions) was common, discipline often tenuous, chickenshit rife, and coordination and communication more often than not defective. Some estimate that US Army AA units accounted for more Allied than German planes over Normandy, and a major paratroop landing operation in Sicily was badly shot up when its planes passed over panicky US navy craft. Still you have to keep in mind it is a comedy and badly exaggerated. I highly suggest looking at Bill Mauldin's 'GI Joe and GI Bill' cartoons for a footslogger's perspective on the war. They can be found in the book 'Reporting World War II' by Samuel Hynes. An even bleaker perspective is offered by Paul Fussel's 'Wartime' and Michael C C Adams' 'The Best War Ever'.
 

Michael B

Interesting point on the music that Oddjob's tanks play when they came out of the tunnel. It is a Hank William's number from the fifties.:eek::eek:
 

The Dean

The American quartermaster charecter and the artillery unit bribed to lay down a barrage by mistake then the staff congratulating the speed of their advance all strike a chord with things I have seen in my time in the military so I am sure in the fog of war incidents such as this could have happened.

After all the early Sharpe books by Bernard Cornwall generally strung together from genuine incidents placed around one character and unit.
 
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