Captured on film

Please excuse the ad for Hungry Howie's, for the love of Pete, but I think this video is really worth seeing. It's the story of a man who was a tail gunner in a fighter plane in World War II.  The plane was shot down, but by a miracle, a navy ship was close by and rescued the crew of the airplane.  Aboard the ship was an officer who happened to be shooting a film that day and caught everything.  You'll see it all when you click on the video link above.

But it brings two things to mind.

One, these days there is video of just about everything. Malls, stores, street corners, all have cameras rolling.  Most of the time, when a crime occurs, police have a variety of surveillance videos to go through before getting hi-quality images of the evildoers.  If not that, why just about everyone is carrying a cell phone around that turns into a tiny video camera in a second, and when it starts raining beer or something, whoop! out come the phones, and the video is on YouTube in about ten minutes.  So, for that navy guy just happened to have the Bell & Howell film camera going that sunny wartime day, that was something, all right.

The other thing that comes to mind is, how come it took all these years for this film to come out.  I don't want to spoil the story for you; they tell you, when you watch, that the film was stored away, but I wonder why the naval officer did what he did.

Unless it was that when he got home, he was just sick of the images of war.  Yes. I think that was it.

Watch, and think of how it must have been to be there.