British WW2 tank veteran discusses the movie "Fury"

A tank veteran on Fury: 'Very realistic, but it can't show the full horror of war' (Spoiler alert)

"Bill Betts, now 91, was a radio operator on Sherman tanks during the second world war. He talks about the memories reignited by Fury, which stars Brad Pitt as a Sherman tank commander leading his team through Germany in 1945."

I was in the Essex Yeomanry, a territorial regiment. All the crew were from Essex except me. It took us a while to get along but then I trusted them implicitly with my life. We fought along side the Americans in their Sherman tanks and I found them to be very brave. We didn't write the name of our tank on the barrel like they did in Fury or plaster the inside with photographs but we were just as proud of our tank. Ours was called Beverley and her name was written on the turret.

. . . "As the film makes clear, a Sherman tank was a lightweight in comparison to a Tiger. The Sherman weighed 33 tonnes and had a 75mm gun, compared to the Tiger's 54 tonnes and a 88mm gun. A Tiger also had 3.9 inch thick armour, so shells from a Sherman literally bounced off it. In response to an attack from a Tiger, Wardaddy yells: "It will end soon. But before it does, a lot more people gotta die." Again, says Bill - quite right. Though the film can't go far enough." . . .

Fury shows just how vulnerable you were fighting in a Sherman tank. There is a lot of blood and gore in the film but nothing can really come close to the true horrors of tank warfare. I saw people being blown up and burnt alive. Going to see Fury you don't get that dreadful, nauseating smell of burnt flesh. That will stay with me forever.

 

The corpses certainly mount up in Fury, particularly in the final scene. This was the only part Bill felt lacked credibility.

I thought the film showed accurately how tough life could be in a tank, but the final scene where the crew hold out against a battalion of Waffen SS troops was too far fetched. The Germans seemed to be used as canon fodder. In reality they would have been battle-hardened and fanatical troops who would have easily taken out an immobile Sherman tank using Panzerfausts (an anti-tank bazooka). They also seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of ammunition and fuel. A Sherman tank only does five miles to the gallon so I think they would have run out long before the final showdown.

Here's How They Made Fury's Fiery Tank Scenes Look Real
"When you see the exterior of the Fury in Brad Pitt's new World War II movie, out today, you're seeing the real thing. But shooting the interior of a tank required a little more creativity."

Sherman Tank

But the Sherman couldn't stand up to the Panther and Tiger  Video.

The angry Queen Hillary still rules

"Hillary Clinton testifies in Congress today on Benghazi, for which she’s denied all wrongdoing and deleted e-mails. Life’s a circle. You start out your career on a House committee investigating Richard Nixon and you end up your career in front of a House committee channeling Richard Nixon." Comedian Argus Hamilton 

 

The Liberal Media

More commentary on the Benghazi hearings

clashdaily

Lies Hillary Got Caught on at hearing
. . . "Jim Jordan of Ohio asked her about the story she spread for almost a week after the attack that the attack was because of the 12 minute video and the protests that arose thereafter.  Hillary blamed mixed signals from intelligence.  But no sooner than she let loose with that lie than Jordan charged in with emails and communications Hillary had with the President of Libya, the Prime Minister of Egypt and her daughter Chelsea.  She told each one right out that the attack was planned by terrorists.
"The email to Chelsea (Diane Reynolds, her alias) is most telling:

. . . "Hillary tried to distance herself from Blumenthal before Gowdy pointed out that at the time that Blumenthal was working for the Clinton Foundation, collecting a siz figure salary. He also worked for Media Matters, the propagandist site founded by David Brock and Hillary Clinton and Correct the Record, another propaganda site that spins the truth about Hillary in a way her undereducated voters would love." . . .

Post-Benghazi Hearing narrative: “I think that put her in the White House.”
"Democrats are are gleeful over Hillary Clinton’s performance at the Benghazi hearing on Friday. Her fundraising is up, she’s received a big labor union endorsement and two of her Democratic rivals have dropped out of the race."

Looks like Biden didn't like Hillary very much after all

"Warm in Public, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton Have Been Intense Rivals in Private"

NY Times

. . . "Meetings with his foreign policy aides veered into lengthy discussions about Mrs. Clinton’s hawkish stance. At dinners with donors, Mr. Biden expressed astonishment at her handling of the controversy over her private email server. Those close to him say the mere mention of her name could make him fume, and he viewed her family’s potent, sometimes punishing political machinery with growing resentment."  Continue reading the main story            

                           

Islam comes to Kansas; US destinations for Muslim immigrants UPDATED

Muslim immigrants being shipped into heartland locales ... like Wichita

. . . "Wichita is a “preferred community” for “refugee resettlement,” which makes it an epicenter for invaders. (To see who the outside contractors are who rake in money as they facilitate this disaster, see here.)
"So let me give you a brief tour of Wichita, Kansas, in the heartland of America.
"As reported at World Net Daily:

The Wichita school district…is now trying to cope with a new influx of immigrants from Central America and the Middle East. The new arrivals don’t speak English or Spanish, requiring costly interpreters and tutors to be brought in to help the immigrants learn. (snip)

Because federal law requires schools to provide information to parents in their preferred language, an Arabic speaker is on call to help teachers and others communicate with families….

…students speaking languages from Africa and the Middle East have increased dramatically in recent years…refugees from camps in central Africa, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan.

Islam comes to Kansas

We want very much to see Islam this way and to welcome them as such. . .

Yet somehow this is the image of our fears:

And it will take more than some self-righteous liberal leftists to erase this from our thoughts.

The Tunnel Dweller

UPDATE: We are all Slovenians now

"It can be hard to visually imagine the kinds of numbers involved here.  So I invite AT readers to view some short videos that depict scenes of this mass invasion, otherwise known as hijra.  The videos are recent footage of young Muslims males invading Slovenia like an army.  Slovenia is a small country sandwiched among Austria, Croatia, Italy, and Hungary.

Little Democrats; First Democrat Debate

The Clock Ticks On

Mark Steyn   "The world divides into those who sincerely believe in that "Coexist" sticker and those who think it's a delusional evasion. After all, if it weren't for that big Muslim crescent "C" at the front, you wouldn't need a bumper sticker at all:

"That peace-symbol "O"? It's Muslims, alas, who kill secular hippie pacifist backpackers in Bali nightclubs.

"That equal-rights "E"? It's Muslims who take girls as their sex slaves in Nigeria and kill their own daughters and sisters in Germany because rape has rendered them "unclean".

"The star-of-David "X"? It's Muslims who are currently stabbing and running over Jews in Jerusalem and then celebrating by passing out free candy.

"In India, it's Muslims vs Hindus. In southern Thailand, Muslims vs Buddhists. The world is a messy, violent, complicated place, but as a rule of thumb, as I said all those years ago in America Alone, in most corners of the planet it boils down to: Muslims vs [Your Team Here].

"Millions of complacent westerners genuinely regard Islam as merely another exotic patch in the diversity quilt, but I find it hard to believe that the leaders of liberal progressive political parties can be quite that deluded. Nevertheless, there was Justin Trudeau at his victory rally at the Queen Elizabeth in Montreal last night:" . . .

Hillary and Trump on 9/11

Bokbluster

"Hillary told Chelsea, via email on the night of 9/11 2012, that the Benghazi attack was a planned terrorist attack. Yet two days later Suzan Rice appeared on 5 Sunday talk shows claiming it was an angry reaction to a movie. Hillary then promised parents of the dead she would hunt down the movie maker.

9/11

"Dr. Krauthammer says, “We’re living in an age where what you say and its relation to the facts are completely irrelevant.”

"Meanwhile, Donald Trump is driving Dan Henninger up a wall at the WSJ by implying George W. Bush was responsible for the original 9/11:

Just as Mr. Trump suggested responsibility for 9/11 lies somehow with former President Bush, Mrs. Clinton’s view has been that responsibility for the failure in Benghazi is so diffuse that no one is responsible, that asking questions about what happened is a political attempt to “come after me. ” …
What a spectacle it would be to have America’s highest office contested next year between these two.

Benghazi hearings, including a chronological review of the deception

Yes, Benghazi Was About Politics: Hillary's Own  . . . "It was about politics, all right: How her politics trumped competence in office." . . .


Hillary and the Video Lie  . . . "The Benghazi attack shortly before the 2012 election didn’t fit the administration narrative that the war on terror was over and that al-Qaida was on the run. It endangered President Obama’s reelection chances and Hillary’s chances to succeed him. That is why she invented and propagated the Benghazi video lie and told it to the parents of the Benghazi dead in front of their son’s caskets." . . .

Hillary to Benghazi Committee: You Need to Learn ‘Lesson’ of the YouTube Video

Benghazi Committee Bombshell: Clinton Knew ‘Attack Had Nothing to Do with the Film’ . . . "Our old friend Byron York thinks this is already “priced in” in the public’s mind: “The documents were still more evidence that the blame-it-on-the-video story was lies and spin. But the public has known for a while that it was lies and spin. It seems unlikely to strike many Americans as very big news.” If the American public knows that it was lied to about a terror attack, and doesn’t really care… then maybe we are doomed." . . .

The Complete Chronology of the Benghazi Deception

"(Clearly, much remains to be filled in by the select committee. Numerous questions and lines of inquiry are prompted by the above. The chronology is based on congressional testimony and reports from, among others, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the New York Times, the New York Post and Fox News, and the reporting of Steve Hayes and Jennifer Griffin.) "  Read more

Obama punked by the Clock Boy

http://comicallyincorrect.com/

Weekly Standard  . . . "But none of those options are available to Ahmed because he has two very big strikes against him—he’s a foreigner and he’s black.  In the intensely hierarchical scheme of Gulf sheikhdoms, this puts Ahmed somewhere on the pecking order only a little bit above the Asian guest workers, who the Qataris treat like farm animals. In time, Ahmed and his siblings will learn that Qatar isn’t like America at all.

"It’s hard not to feel sorry for the boy. The family’s announcement of their decision to move to Qatar, a day after meeting with Obama, suggests that the episode was part of some bizarre scam engineered by Ahmed’s father, Mohamed al-Hassan Mohamed. As our friends at Powerline have shown in their excellent coverage of the story, it’s pretty clear that Ahmed’s clock was designed to look and sound just like what the boy’s teacher and the Irving, Texas police department believed it was—a bomb. Given that many Americans are apparently willing to tear up the second amendment for fear of teenage psychopaths opening fire on their classmates, it’s hard to see how the police overreacted by bringing the boy downtown for questioning. 

"The interesting part was how another storyline trumped the school shooter narrative—Islamophobia.

"To wit: Ahmed’s teacher and the police weren’t concerned he was some adolescent loser looking to murder as many people as possible with an explosive device, they’re just racists who think that every Muslim is basically a Bin Laden biding his time. By playing the two narratives against each other, Ahmed’s father, perhaps unintentionally, highlighted something disturbing about the country he is leaving for Qatar—the Americans say how much they love their children, but threaten to expose them as racists and you can put them in a hard place. 

"Anyway, it wasn’t a real bomb. No one got hurt. We just got played for suckers, especially Obama. It’s instructive that the president of the United States got played worse than anyone since it’s a typically American story, in spite of the Middle Eastern flavor. "

Krauthammer: Iran marches, Russia rules, Obama watches

Charles Krauthammer
. . . "Does the bewildered Obama administration finally understand what Russia is up to?" . . .
. . . "Shoring up a rump Alawite state secures Russia's naval and air bases in the eastern Mediterranean. Add to that Russia's launching advanced cruise missiles from warships in the Caspian Sea to strike Syrian rebels 900 miles away and you have the most impressive display of Russian military reach since the Cold War.

"For Obama, of course, these things don't matter.
. . .
"What has happened since the signing of the deal in July? Iran convicts an American journalist of espionage, contemptuously refusing to offer even the most minimal humanitarian gesture. Iran brazenly tests a nuclear-capable ballistic missile that our own U.N. ambassador said violates Security Council resolutions. And now Iran's most notorious Revolutionary Guard commander takes control of a pan-Shiite army trying to decimate our remaining allies in the Syrian civil war.

"Obama's response to all this? Nothing. He has washed his hands of the region, still the center of world oil production and trade, and still the world's most volatile region, seething with virulent jihadism ready for export. When you call something a quagmire you have told the world that you're out and staying out. Russia and Iran will have their way.
. . .
" '60 Minutes" asked Obama: Are you concerned about yielding leadership to Russia? Obama responded dismissively: Propping up a weak ally is not leadership. I'm leading the world on climate change.

"Upon hearing that, anyone in any conflict anywhere who has put his trust in the United States should start packing his bags for Germany."

While Benghazi defenders were under fire, Obama tried to connect the attack to the video

The Gateway Pundit
"US Hero David Ubben Suffered 20 Hours in Benghazi Before Help Arrived – While Obama Called YouTube & Went to Campaign in Las Vegas

"Diplomatic security agent David Ubben, like former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, ran into the Special Mission Compound (SMC) to help save US officials under siege in Benghazi. Ubben was struck by a mortar round that killed Woods and Doherty. His leg was shredded. Ubben was forced to wait twenty hours before a plane was sent to pick him up.

"After a good night sleep Obama flew to Las Vegas to campaign on September 12, 2012. (Zimbio)

"New documents released this week show the Obama White House was working to link the terror attack to a YouTube video — WHILE AMERICAN HEROES WERE STILL TRAPPED ON THE ROOF.

"The White House reached out to YouTube just three hours after the initial reports of the attack — Before they had even recovered Ambassador Stevens’s body.

‏@JudicialWatch Oct 20

BREAKING: New State Documents Show Quick White House Effort to Link Benghazi to Internet Video: http://jwatch.us/sKFzep  via @JudicialWatch