{"id":28616,"date":"2020-06-17T16:20:12","date_gmt":"2020-06-17T23:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/behindthelensonline.net\/site\/?p=28616"},"modified":"2020-06-17T16:21:05","modified_gmt":"2020-06-17T23:21:05","slug":"returntohardwickreview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/behindthelensonline.net\/site\/reviews\/movies\/returntohardwickreview\/","title":{"rendered":"RETURN TO HARDWICK is a powerful and moving testament to the 93rd Bomb Group in WWII"},"content":{"rendered":"

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John L. Sullivan was a bombardier and navigator for the 93rd Bombardment Group during World War II.\u00a0 The first B24 unit to arrive in England, the 93rd was based at Hardwick Aerodrome 104.\u00a0 The most decorated, most traveled, and most effective bomb group in the 8th Air Force, the 93rd completed 396\u00a0 missions.\u00a0 On D-Day, as part of “Operation Overlord”, they carried out 94 missions.\u00a0 After D-Day, the 93rd carried out relief work air-dropping supplies to the troops. In July 1943, the group was on the cover of Life magazine. The 93rd\u00a0 also suffered some of the greatest losses by a bomb group when in August of 1943 during the “Tidal Wave” mission which involved flying to Ploesti, Romania from Africa to bomb out oil fields, plans went awry.\u00a0 178 planes went out.\u00a0 88 never returned. 446 men were killed.<\/p>\n

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Today, Hardwick is long abandoned.\u00a0 There are green fields surrounding empty overgrown runways.\u00a0 Many of the buildings still stand, rusted out, broken down with crumbling concrete while others have nothing left but a concrete base where a doorway to a quonset hut once stood.\u00a0 But the 93rd is not forgotten.\u00a0 There is a reunion group of veterans and their families, second and third generations, who gather each year and share memories, photos, scrapbooks, not only as a catharsis for themselves but as a means of passing the torch to future generations so that not only is the sacrifice and bravery of the men and women of the 93rd not forgotten, but that the reasons for that sacrifice, for their dedication to their country and to democracy is not forgotten.<\/p>\n

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Filmmaker MICHAEL SELLERS is a third-generation member of the Hardwick 93rd Historical Group.\u00a0 He is the grandson of John L. Sullivan.\u00a0 Long hearing about his grandfather’s time and exploits in the 93rd, Sellers and his family eventually went to Hardwick for the annual Hardwick reunion of veterans and their families.\u00a0 Michael Sellers was hooked; not only being in awe of his grandfather and his grandfather’s brothers in arms, but from a filmmaking standpoint.\u00a0 Their stories needed to be documented.\u00a0 Chronicling the 2015 reunion at Hardwick, Sellers began his labor of love with the full support of the men and women of the 93rd.\u00a0 That labor of love started as merely documenting history for the group and for sons and daughters and grandchildren to look at it in the future.\u00a0 But it didn’t take long before the idea grew into that of a feature documentary.<\/p>\n

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Working on the documentary over the course of almost five years, RETURN TO HARDWICK was born.\u00a0 Completely self-financed by the members of the 93rd Bomb Group, through it all, they had one mandate for Sellers – tell our story,\u00a0 focus on our history.\u00a0 Fortunately, the 93rd not only has a historian who already has long maintained many records and is instrumental in the annual reunions for next-generation kin, but a museum.\u00a0 But Sellers has met their objectives.\u00a0 He has focused on their history.\u00a0 He has focused on the stories of the 93rd.<\/p>\n

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Finding a cinematic throughline starts with an entre into the film through three individuals:\u00a0 John Marx, the nephew of pilot Robert Marx who was killed in action on December 19, 1944.\u00a0 Marx learned about his uncle and the crash that took his life from veteran Leland Spencer, after joining the 93rd group and coming to a reunion; Gail Mailloux, the daughter of Helen MacDonald, a professional secretary who enlisted with the Red Cross and was assigned to Hardwick and the 93rd.\u00a0 It was at the 93rd that Helen not only met her husband but married him.\u00a0 And how teary will you get as Gail finds the church where her parents married and with a picture from the wedding, is able to go through the now long-remodeled church and stand where her mother stood.\u00a0 \u00a0But Gail also has hundreds of letters her mother wrote home, all neatly typed and filled with stories of her day-to-day life on the base; and then there’s George Jung.\u00a0 George’s father died when George was 15 and never spoke about the war or the 93rd, but through the 93rd historical group, George has learned about his father and others.\u00a0 Through each of them, we intersect with history complete with newsreel footage, home movies from the base, photographs, cards, letters, historical military documents, and interviews with many of the men and women who served in the 93rd.<\/p>\n

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A war story unlike any others we have seen to date, there is a homespun and heartfelt, yet polished, scrapbook styling to RETURN TO HARDWICK that is warm and welcoming.\u00a0 We are being invited into the memories and hearts of these soldiers and are now going along on the journey with their loved ones, keeping the flame alive for these brave men and women.<\/p>\n

Narrated by Michael Cudlitz, known best for his portrayal of Bull Randelman in Band of Brothers and as Abraham Ford in The Walking Dead, you feel the depth of his conviction and somber gratitude from the getgo, setting the tone for what is to come.<\/p>\n

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The stage is set thanks to a\u00a0 prologue that takes us back in time with a meld of archival footage from 1943 dissolving into present-day and the abandoned airfield.\u00a0 We see bombers in the distance behind a cloud cover while aerial gunfire and B24 engines roar.\u00a0 We hear the reading of a piece written by Ed Reilly, a 93rd veteran, after he visited Hardwick in 1975.\u00a0 And then Sellers takes us to Pearl Harbor.\u00a0 December 7, 1941.\u00a0 Archival footage fills the screen with images we know all too well after these almost 80 years.\u00a0 But that leads us to newsreels of the Grand Central Air Graduates and the 8th Air Force and the 93rd.\u00a0 The 8th Air Force was created to fly over Germany on bombing missions.\u00a0 Buck Schuler, former commander of the 8th talks as do pilots Fernley Smith and William Brown, gunner\u00a0 George McLean, radio operator Leo Bates and Willard Hunzeker, all recalling the excitement generated by the arrival of the 8th Air Force and the 93rd Bomb Squad.\u00a0 America had arrived.<\/p>\n

This is the story of the 93rd Bomb Squad through the eyes and ears of the men and women who lived it and their families who now embrace it.<\/p>\n

RETURN TO HARDWICK is an important addition to our cinematic history as it preserves a chapter of history important to the world, and to the families of these men and women.<\/p>\n

Writer\/Director: Michael Sellers<\/p>\n

by debbie elias, 06\/09\/2020<\/p>\n