Happy 65th Anniversary!!

[Captain Pyjama Shark]

Originally Posted by jumjum

Yep, I enjoy it too, but it's hard to watch the soldiers cheering as they run full speed up a nice sandy beach. Cheering - yeah, like that happened.

Oh, you might know this bit of trivia about Richard Todd. He plays then-Major John Howard, who led the Ox and Bucks in the glider attack to capture the bridge over the Caen canal near Bénouville, now known as Pegasus Bridge of course. In the movie, he's the British officer you see in a glider, and we hear a voice-over repeating his orders about the bridge: "Hold until relieved. Hold until relieved!"

The neat thing is in real life Howard was an officer in the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and actually was part of the force which fought to hold the Pegasus Bridge on D-Day! And Todd is still alive IIRC.

They gave him the opportunity to play himself, but he denied that, claiming he didn't actually play a big enough role in the real thing, so they let him be his CO, and let another man have some screentime as him!