Actors who fought during wartime

[edward_n_kelly]

DIRK BOGARDE
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001958

In 1940 Derek Bogarde joined the Queen's Royal Regiment as an officer. He served in the Air Photographic Intelligence Unit and eventually attained the rank of major. Nicknamed "Pippin" and "Pip" during the war, he was awarded seven medals in his five years of active duty.

Actually he was commissioned into the The Queen's Royal Regiment (West Surrey). He received 7 campaign medals (War Medal, Defence Medal, etc) - they are not awarded nor are they for other than "being there" for the prescribed time. Actually he was awarded none.

Apart from his portrayal of soldiers in movies he was a poet and wrote of his service in that form as well as in painting and his autobiography.

Edward

[Sewer King]

Bogarde also took part in D-Day (June 1944) and Operation Market Garden (September 1944).

Was he, then, was the only cast member of the film A Bridge Too Far who had actually participated in MARKET-GARDEN?

Although John Addison, who composed the film's memorable score, had fought there with a Hussars unit in the XXX Corps' drive across Holland and wrote the music as a tribute to his comrades.

In April 1945 he was one of the first Allied officers to reach the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, an experience that had the most profound effect on him and about which he found it difficult to speak for several decades afterwards. ...

There is a often-reprinted photo sequence of Bergen-Belsen commandant Jozef Kremer being taken into custody by British troops. An enraged officer tells Kremer through an interpreter that he wishes him a slow execution. Bogarde was probably not far from that scene, which also saw the common film of a British Army engineer bulldozing corpses into the mass graves.

Ironically, three of his more memorable film roles would be playing a German, one of them as a former SS officer.

I assume the latter was his role in The Night Porter (1973). Although I have never seen this film, there was some controversy over it at the time. It is sometimes said that actors may gravitate to playing the opposites of their real-life personas.

Coincidentally, the name "Bogarde" is the origin of "Bogart".

[Peter H]

Esmond Knight:

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=96589

[Peter H]

The Lone Ranger,Lee Powell:

http://www.b-westerns.com/trio6a.htm

Sgt. Lee Powell lived through some of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific War. But then, on the same day that the Tinian battle ended, he died of acute poisoning. Newspapers at the time assumed he had been killed in action, but Sergeant Powell's USMC files report not only the alcohol poisoning, but some sort of "misconduct", the nature of which was "undetermined". Hypothetically, it must have had something to do with cutting loose a bit too much after having survived the hellish battles in which he was involved, perhaps by celebrating with vast quantites of methyl alcohol. Even small amounts of this highly toxic substance can kill; it can only be hoped that the courageous and successful warrior at least got to have one last good party with his buddies.

But the United States's erstwhile masked man carried the mystery to his grave. He was buried in the Marine Cemetery on Tinian and later, at the request of his father, moved to the National Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.

Sergeant Powell, age thirty-five when he died, was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart, the Asiatic-Pacific Area Campaign Medal with two stars, and the Victory Medal World War II. The latter two awards were sent to his widow in September, 1948."

[Peter H]

Peter Finch:

http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A140174b.htm

Enlisting in the Australian Imperial Force on 2 June 1941, Finch served as a gunner in the 2nd/1st Anti-Aircraft Regiment in the Middle East (1941-42) and in Darwin (1942)

[Peter H]

James Arness--US 3rd Infantry Division, wounded at Anzio 1944.

[edward_n_kelly]

Bogarde also took part in D-Day (June 1944) and Operation Market Garden (September 1944).

Was he, then, was the only cast member of the film A Bridge Too Far who had actually participated in MARKET-GARDEN?

If Audrey Hepburn had accepted the role for her she could have been rated as one of the "participants".

She was a civilian aid at the hospital set up in Oosterbeek to tend the British wounded. She may have met Terence Young (director of the early Bond films) there - he was wounded at Arnhem.

Edward

[Peter H]

Sterling Hayden:

http://classicfilm.about.com/od/profile ... e10186.htm

He enlisted in the Marines.Hayden tried to avoid any star treatment by legally changed his name to John Hamilton. After boot camp he was accepted into Officer Candidate School (OCS) at Quantico, Virginia and serviced with Bill Donovan’s fledgling spy operation The Office of Special Services (OSS) in Greece and then Yugoslavia running supplies through the German blockade to a partisan held island off the Dalmatian coast.

[Peter H]

All US Navy veterans---Ernest Borgnine,Rod Steiger,Kirk Douglas.

[Peter H]

Art Carney:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Carney

...drafted as an infantryman during World War II. He participated in the Battle of Normandy and was wounded in the leg by shrapnel. He walked with a limp for the rest of his life.

[Annelie]

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[Annelie]

..ops read thread wrong