Movie critic seems to be a history lesson short

Re: American revisionism revised, Jamie Portman column, July 28.

Those who ignore or are ignorant of the lessons of history are condemned to write embarrassingly ill-informed newspaper articles.

I agree with the professed target of his piece, namely the shameless disregard for historical accuracy often shown by American filmmakers over the years. Unfortunately, his article is thoroughly discredited by the writer’s adoption of the same cultural bias and appalling historical ignorance in his discussion of the film A Bridge Too Far.

He writes “a key scene … was reworked to focus on the heroics of a fictional American portrayed by Robert Redford.”

Redford did portray the man who led the first wave of the American assault across the Waal River, but he was anything but fictional. He was major, later colonel, Julien Cooke of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division. His courageous leadership of the American airborne troopers during the daylight crossing of a heavily defended river is well-known to informed readers. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and was knighted by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands in 1945. He died in South Carolina in 1990.

The author also writes that the scene involved the “British Grenadiers.” I’m not sure who he is referring to here as there was no such organization in the British order of battle, nor were British forces directly involved in the river crossing. The 2nd Armoured Battalion of the Grenadier Guards, the Guards Armoured Division, were involved a short time later in the bitterly contested capture of the Nijmegen Bridge over the Waal River.

As a movie critic the author is most certainly entitled to his critical opinions. He isn’t entitled to his uninformed historical inaccuracies. Robert Stanley, Vancouver