Sunday, April 13, 2025

Movies In History, The Six Triple Eight.

This will be the third time I've tried to publish this review. The prior two times it outright disappeared.

Uff.

The 6888 on parade in honor of Joan d'Arc.

The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion is a unique U.S. Army unit that served in Europe during World War Two.  Deployed in February, 1945, the unit was tasked with straightening out a massive mail backlog in the ETO, and by all accounts did yeoman's work doing it.  The unit was all female, and all black, including its officers the only such unit to be deployed to Europe during the war.  The unit not too surprisingly encountered racist opposition, which is a large part of the theme of the film.

The film is quite well done, featuring dramatizations of real characters for the most part.  The story, as noted, is dramatized, but with one exception, it does not depart massively from the actual events. The sole exception is a romance between a  rich white Jewish young man and one of the black female characters, before they join the service, which seems to take place in the American South, and which features a desegregated high school.  Desegregated high schools would not have existed in the South, making this an odd error, and while such a romance could have occurred, it would not have taken place more or less openly as depicted.

Material details are very well done, including the depiction of M1943 Field Jacket Liners in use as jackets, which did occur but which is rarely depicted in film.  Indeed, I can't recall it ever being depicted in another film.

Well worth seeing.

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