♪ [music] ♪
- [Narrator 1] What's different about this picture?
Not the field, which is just like hundreds of others in the Southwestern United States.
Not the plane.
You've seen a Curtiss P-40 before.
But there is something unique in the picture.
It's the pilot.
He could be Dick Brown from Sioux City, or Frank Jones from Springfield, but he's not.
He's Li Yen, from Chongqing, China.
- [Li] [foreign language]
- This man is a Chinese air cadet, one of hundreds over here to take a postgraduate
course in aviation, combat aviation.
First class, English.
Tough?
Just as tough as it would be for any of us to learn Chinese.
But these fellows take it in their stride.
- [Female 1] ...in your hand, and blow as you see me do, everybody.
- [Together] [blowing]
- I have written a sentence here using the letter "P" wherever it was possible.
So I'm going to have you say for me, after listening to me, say this sentence with me,
"The pilot will presently place the plane properly."
All together...
- The pilot will presently place the plane properly.
- And every day, these G.I.s from Shanghai, Nanjing, and Hankou bone up on the finest,
most modern equipment.
You won't find a gold brick in this crowd, because they come from a country which held
off the Japs for six years with rusty rifles, obsolete planes, and plenty of guts, but now
they're getting the best.
Now equipment like the Norden bombsight is an everyday experience to these men.
And believe me, every cadet who looks through that I.P. sees Tokyo below, like that.
Yes, it's a little different for these fellows.
They come overseas to train and go home to fight.
Hi, Xiang.
Hello, Lin.
You can't wear out these guys.
They fly the clock around, piling up hours, experience, and skills.
Their training wasn't in Tennessee with red and blue armies, they trained like all the
cadets.
On the burning fields of China, the Blue Army was the deadly efficient Jap war machine.
You can't stop these boys.
They know the importance of a crack Air Force, and they didn't learn it from headlines or
news reels.
Sure, they're hot on the end of a gun.
Why not?
They grew up with their forefingers curled around a trigger waiting for a Jap to cross
their sights.
As they soar over our land, they remember the Jap ships that zoomed down at them, strafing
their mothers, and fathers, and brothers.
And they remember the whistling of bombs and the sight of their homes and towns in flames.
So they fly from sun up to sun down, ceaselessly, tirelessly learning.
Blasting away at the targets, waiting for the day when they can return to China, and
with the force of the United Nations behind them, hurl themselves against the Japs.
[plane engines] [gunfire]
These are angry men, but they're free men.
And they sing of a new world they're making.
♪ [music] ♪
- [Together] [singing] [foreign language]
- But in the few hours off, their thoughts, like all soldiers, turn to home, to their
family, if they're alive, and to their commander-in-chief, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.
Finally, it's graduation day.
Proud?
You bet.
But more than that.
Take a look at them.
There are no smiles on the faces of these men who are going home with a purpose.
The wings of the United States Army Air Force to the Air Force of China, that tells the
story.
And soon these wings will be flashing angrily across the skies of the far East.
Flyers and fighters, every one of them, going back to take up the fight...their fight, and
our fight.
Start diving for those foxhole soldiers, if you can.
Start building those bomb shelters, citizens of Tokyo and Yokohama.
These guys have a message for you you'll never forget.
So long, fellows.
Give them hell.
♪ [music] ♪
- [Narrator 2] Any time anybody tells you an army moves on its stomach, I think you
know what to tell him he's full of.
An army moves on its feet, and you know it.
Feet inhabit shoes, and you know that, too.
Shoes are a traveling man's home address, but it looks like I'm getting the
bum's rush from these physicians and surgeons at the cow [inaudible] hide at the United
States Army Shoe Shop in Buford, Georgia, who are salvaging shoe casualties, sorting
according to size, disinfecting, and treating chemically for fungi.
While they do their work, I'll do mine.
A good shoe is a nice place to stand around in, an effective weapon when attached to a kick.
Tough on the outside, homey on the inside.
Pleasant to throw, and good to eat in a pinch.
As far as the Army is concerned, once a shoe, always a shoe.
No matter how dark and sinful the past of a shoe may be, it gets a bright and hopeful
future at this shoe heaven, where wrecked shoes are pulled over the last, rough-rounded,
rubber-stitched, fiber-fastened, sole leveled, heel attached, heel shaved, scoured, seated,
inked, and burnished.
Then they are edge trimmed, side lasted, full crowned, upper trimmed, low in-seamed, welt
button tacked, welt beat and slashed, hard shanked, bottom filled, and sole laid.
According to Webster, who had two pairs, a shoe is a covering for the human foot.
But Webster wasn't much for poetry, and left out a few important details.
Bright, new shoes like these don't protect the foot alone.
They protect the whole man.
They give the naked foot a happy destination, the body balance an equilibrium, the spirit
a comfortable feeling about the future.
A barefooted man never conquered anything outside a bedroom.
Sooner or later, a man's gotta put on his shoes and truck on down.
♪ [music] ♪
- [Natasha] My dear friend in America, Mrs. Anna Sattoria, third officer [inaudible],
New York City.
Unexpected pleasure was letter from young woman from America, woman soldier, for which
take thanks from the heart.
We both wives and mothers, and we must help our men with work.
My husband, Boris, he is Sergeant in [inaudible] and two times decorated.
I work in factory.
It is new, working in factory, but we are in war and all for the front.
They need it.
When factory moved few hundred kilometers inside the Andorra Mountains, I too went with
my children.
All my friends did same.
Some went to mines.
My best friend Olga now a miner.
Very many working in hundreds of Russian war factories making guns and shells, even learn
how to shoot.
My two [foreign language], what you say "girlfriend," fight in Red Army.
We do what is good for Motherland, whether make weapons or use them on Hitler beasts.
It's similar for us all.
♪ [music] ♪
- From Boris today, I receive a letter.
You must hear it.
- [Boris] My little wife, once more we have stopped in our advance and I have time to
write.
It is no longer cold.
Already the green leaves provide good camouflage.
We have just eaten.
It is good to be alive.
Still, as always, we attack.
Yesterday, my colonel told us the Red Army defends by incessant attack.
Behind us, tank reserves are moving out.
[explosions]
♪ [music] ♪
Within our lines now is much of the ruined land, still smoking, set on fire by the Germans
as they withdrew.
Poor fools.
They cause so much suffering, so much waste, so much hate for nothing.
They're proud that 4 millions of us already have died defending the Motherland, as if
we had nothing to die for, Natasha.
Like Petra Vasilovich has four sons, who when the Hitlerites had taken their village,
fought the invaders in the streets with any weapons they could find.
They died.
And now Russia lives.
- My husband, he writes well.
The papers say our tanks attack again in this sector.
He is back in battle, but he says he is glad for he knows the importance of what he does
every day is still alive.
We also behind the lines fighting the same as Russian men and women in trenches.
"Still," my Boris, he writes, "Work still harder, Natasha.
Work still harder."
So many in Russia lost their homes, like me, and wait to go back home to peace.
For if my Boris alive, someday he will be great engineer, doing much to reconstruct
our motherland, left in ruins by Nazis.
Though already 6.5 million Nazis dead or prisoners, still they fight for no good reason, while
we fight for every decent reason on Earth.
They are wrong.
We know we are right.
♪ [music] ♪
- [Man 1] See that young fellow getting out of that bomber?
Just an ordinary young American with a kind of ordinary American name, Levin, Meyer Levin.
Born in Brooklyn 26 years ago.
They said he wasn't much at school, but he won the Navy Cross just the same by bringing
down a lot of Japanese planes and sinking a couple of ships, too, with a guy named Kelly,
Colin Kelly.
This is the last time you're ever gonna see Meyer because he's dead now, knocked out by
the Japs.
It's a good thing somebody had a voice recording set up out in the Pacific and asked him, "What
was your most exciting adventure, Meyer?"
- [Meyer] Well, I've been on about 50 bombing missions.
I think my narrowest escape was when I was flying with Captain Colin P. Kelly in the
Philippines.
We just sunk the Haruna and were on our way back to our home base.
We were attacked by two Japanese pursuit.
They came up from below and behind us, got on our blind spot behind the tail and stayed there.
They were throwing everything they had at us, cannon, armor piercing, tracer and incendiary
bullets were pouring through the cabin.
They set the ship on fire.
When the control cables burned through, the pilot called over interphone and told us to
bail out.
I got down to the escape hatch and found my navigator, Lieutenant Joe Bean, struggling
with the door, trying to get out.
It seems that the emergency release had frozen.
Well, I realized we didn't have much time to waste, so I kicked the door open with one
foot and kicked him out with the other.
Then...well, I guess a man gets super human strength at times.
I tore the door off the hinges and went out with it...counted eight, pulled my ripcord,
and the good old chute blossomed.
Well, that made me pretty happy for a minute.
The picture changed, though, rather quickly.
Two pursuit shot our plane down, set it on fire, came around and started to strafe us.
They made eight separate passes.
The tracer bullets coming all around us, looked up at my chute and see them going through,
see them going around my legs.
One stream of tracers caught my right pant leg and ripped it up to the knee.
Managed to get down okay.
I guess I'm pretty lucky, I haven't been hit yet.
♪ [music] ♪
- [Pvt. Snafu] I just learned a secret, it's a honey, it's a pip.
But the enemy is listening so I'll never let it slip.
Because when I learn a secret, boy, I zipper up my lip.
[zippers] Now the military's secret that I carry in my brain, I keep in a safe deposit
with a padlock and chain.
You bet I got a secret.
- [Man 1] Oh, I bet we find it out.
- [Together] But the soldier's got a secret but I bet we find it out.
- Hello, Ma, I got a secret.
I can only drop a tip.
Don't breathe a word to no one, but I'm going on a trip.
- Shh, don't breathe a word to no one, but he's going on a trip.
- Hey, give me some magazines to read for when I'm on the ship.
- Don't breathe a word to no one, but he's going to go by ship.
- It's a cinch to keep a secret if a fellow just takes care.
- [Moose] He's sailing on a troop ship. Now we've got to find out where.
- I'm a sound and silent soldier, just as steady as a rock.
Here's to my little secret, with its chain and pad-a-lock.
[swigs]
[slurs speech] Hello, baby, hi-ya sissy?
Say, you're a nifty trick.
I hope I meet some babes in Africa as cute as you are.
[hiccups]
- [Dove] This message is important. I must fly it double quick.
- It's been a wonderful evening and I'd like to stay some more, but I got to get a move on now, I sail at half past four.
- [Man 2] He's got to get a move on now.
He sails at half past four.
Heil, the troop ship bound for Africa pulls out at half past four.
- [Hitler] Calling all Wolfpacks!
Calling all Wolfpacks!
The transport ship for Africa pulls out at half past four.
[trumpets] - Heil!
[trumpets]
♪ [music] ♪
- Full speed ahead!
♪ [music] ♪
- Now who in hell do you suppose it was that let my secret out?
- What was that I heard you say my little sauerkraut?
- He wonders who in hell it was that let his secret out.
[laughs]
♪ [music] ♪