The Leopard's Limb, TH 07/21

Following up on conversation from yesterday and before . . .

Sir Christopher Lee: O.T., I enjoyed those Peter Cushing/Christopher Lee films. They really refined the vampire genre. I remember Cushing having a tough time in one of them, actually gets bitten, but cauterizes the wound with a red-hot knife or similar, escapes being inducted into the Undead. Later, he dispatches a vampire (Lee?) by pushing the blades of a moonlit windmill so that they cast the shadow of a cross upon the unfortunate night critter. Quick thinking!

Internet accuracy: I tend to agree with your assessment of the accuracy of Internet "facts." I recall seeing lists of purported facts circulating some years back. I don't receive such now, probably because email has been supplanted to some extent by Facebook et al. One list claimed to explain the origin of various phrases, such as "the whole nine yards," meaning "complete." One explanation had it that the phrase originated from air combat, because the length of a fighter plane's ammunition belts was nine yards. Pilots who expended their ammunition on a target supposedly said, "I gave him the whole nine yards." This is unlikely, as pilots were more likely to refer to how long the machineguns' bursts lasted, as in "I gave him three seconds" (for a typical American fighter--Mustang or Hellcat--that would be around 270 shots--15 shots/second X 3 seconds X 6 .50-cal. MG's). By my calculation, the length of an F6F-5 Hellcat's belts totalled around 16 yards, btw.

Lee's "commando" career: that was not an Internet "fact." I was quoting "LOTR" director Peter Jackson, who reported Lee's supposed familiarity with stabbing death in a "making of" feature that accompanied the extended DVD version of "The Two Towers." Perhaps both Lee and Jackson enhanced Lee's wartime service a bit. Either that or things got a bit rough in the SOE office.

John Wayne, Lee Marvin, Iwo Jima: Supposedly John Wayne said, "Life is tough. It's tougher when you're stupid." in "Sands of Iwo Jima," but that is disputed in various places in that compendium of "facts" known as the Internet.

The encounter between Marvin's backside and a Japanese bullet reminds me of my CA ex-wife's dad, who was a very reluctant WW2 veteran. So reluctant, in fact, he went AWOL before shipping out to the Pacific. His mother, more patriotic than her son (and with less potential exposure to bullets), turned him in to the authorities. He rejoined his unit, and was part of the Iwo invasion. He won a Purple Heart. Like Marvin, he was shot in the posterior. One wonders that he might have been shying from combat when hit.