Word: castans
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...marks a break from the past. And that may reflect the fact that a country that has viewed war with deep suspicion for the past half century is now beginning to send men into combat in faraway lands. "This would not have been possible ten years ago," says Joachin Castan, author of the 2007 biography of the flying ace, Der Rote Baron. "It is now possible to ask the question in Germany, 'Can there be a war hero?'" (The film was shot in English and will probably be released outside of Germany sometime in the next year...
...filmmakers employed some poetic license: The movie's love affair is fictional - "complete rubbish" says biographer Castan. "The historical Richthofen was the James Dean of World War I, an idol of his time," says Castan. "[But] he had no affairs with women. He also did not drink and did not visit brothels...
...ground rather than shooting them out of the sky. (In one case, seeing that an enemy pilot's gun had jammed, Von Richthofen waved him down to the ground, jumped out, shook his hand and then took off again.) But in other respects, Von Richthofen was "cold-blooded," says Castan. "He was mainly interested in his strike rate. He did not try to conceal the fact that he was aiming to kill...
...official pacifism, German soldiers are once again seeing action outside of the country, notably in Afghanistan. The government is even considering resurrecting the Iron Cross medal as a symbol of valor. At the same time, many Germans still feel a deep ambivalence about the German military. "The film," says Castan, "provides a fundamentally German perspective on World War I, with certain heroic elements. But [the Red Baron] is an ambiguous hero, who at the end sees war in a negative light. It shows how we look at war today. The tragic thing about Von Richthofen is that...
...trampled and rubble-strewn glacis about double the size of a basketball court" -an Air Cav platoon led by Sergeant Robert L. Kirby, a slight, solemn, 29-year-old Los Angeles Negro, was ambushed by a full company of North Vietnamese. With the platoon was Look Editor Sam Castan, 32, working on a story about "the thoughts of men facing death." Kirby managed a quick radio call for help before taking four shell fragments in the head that somehow failed to kill him or even knock him out. Most of the platoon, though, was wiped out in the first assault...
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