Combat Bulletin No. 6 (film #3 on tape #1 of This Film Is Restricted Boxed Set (Marathon Music & Video, 1997)). [Category: Military & Propaganda]

"Beachhead Operation" is a celebration of the various support personnel who make it possible for the GIs to fight at Anzio. Like bakers! Army bakers who knead huge vats of dough while bombs fall around them and produce hundreds of huge loaves of bread which are loaded into big cotton sacks and transported to the front where they are devoured by hungry GIs! Or accountants! Army accountants who toil away in a bombed-out basement at their huge manual adding machines to get the GIs' pay out on time! Or mapmakers! Or telephone operators! Or those guys who stretch out those long coils of barbed wire over the countryside (can't have a war without 'em!)! This is one of my favorite films in the whole This Film Is Restricted series. Because it focuses on the jobs in the "unsung hero" category, it's full of unusual and fascintating images. There's something almost poetic about it after awhile, a sort of Master Hands quality, especially the ending, done to the tune of anti-aircraft guns blasting away into the night. What a lost treasure this film is.

Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ***. Weirdness: ****. Historical Interest: *****. Overall Rating: ****.