Memorial Day Movies

[FfNJGTFO]

Originally Posted by FfNJGTFO

My "favorite" isn't really a film (it's a Peanuts cartoon, actually) and it's not precisely Memorial Day but close to it. Charles Schulz did a cartoon on "Operation Overlord" called "What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown?".


Basically, the film picks up after the end of the larger full length feature, "Bon Voyage Charlie Brown" about Charlie's visit to France. Charlie and the gang go to France to visit a family that his father knew from his WWII service. As that film ends, this film picks up. Charlie and Sallie are looking through his picture album of his trip to France. He tells the story about how the gang, while still traveling around France, wound up camping overnight. Linus wakes up for a Midnight stroll and suddenly realizes where they've been camping.





He wakes everyone up in the morning to tell them they were sleeping on the cliffs overlooking Omaha Beach.






The end of the film involves Linus reciting the first stanza of the John L McRae poem "In Flanders Fields."






When I think of Memorial Day, I think of this cartoon.


PS. Schulz himself actually recorded an "Intro" to the cartoon before it was first broadcast on TV that you don't see on the DVDs or anything. I guess this story is appropriate for Memorial Day as Schulz says the original broadcast was
on Memorial Day (05/30/1883).

As a side note, I've actually been to a lot of the places mentioned in "What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown?". My first trip to Europe in Sept., 1984 (shortly after the first airing of this cartoon), found me in Belgium and France. I actually visited the City of "Iper" ("Ypres" in French) which is where Linus first sees the fields of poppies. Iper is in the Flemish section of Belgium towards the west. While still staying in Belgium, I took a couple of "day trips" into France via the TEE express train (Now Eurostar) where I actually then rented a car (the only "automatic trans" car they had was a Mercedes 190E for which I paid dearly)! But it enabled me to drive all the way up through Normandy. I saw all the beaches (Sword, Gold, Utah, Etc.) and ended up precisely where Charlie's group camped, seeing Omaha Beach (and getting some sand from it) as well as Pointe Du Hoc, etc and the US Natl. cemetery at Omaha.