During WWII Corporal Francis Seibert of Defiance, Ohio was stationed in Amarillo, Texas as an Air Force instructor training men to become aircraft mechanics for the B17 and B29 bombers. Being his first time away from home he wrote to his family almost daily. To make his letters “more exciting” he began to illustrate the envelopes with cartoons. His mother saved all 610 of these letters and envelopes. This documentary takes the 82-year-old Seibert through a historic journey as he revisits those letters 60 years later. The letters cover topics as diverse as Mother’s Day; his first Christmas away from home; first learning of the D-Day invasion; and his impressions of the dropping of the first Atomic Bomb. For a young man of only twenty-one, Corporal Seibert had extraordinary vision of what the future of the Atomic Bomb would mean to the world. In his letter he already saw the full significance of what such a devastating weapon would have on life from then on. He knew that it would very likely turn out to be instrumental in ending the war and saving thousands of lives, but it scared him. Through all these letters the underlying message is how important family is. How we take for granted what we have until it is taken away from us, and how often it takes a tragic situation to express how we really feel. The most rewarding part of making this film was to take this journey with Corporal Seibert. We hope that the audience will feel the same. |
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Ratings: | IMDB: 8.8/10 | |
Released: | June 24, 2005 | |
Runtime: | 38 min | |
Genres: | Documentary Short | |
Cast: | Francis Seibert Mary Ellen Seibert | |
Crew: | Mark C. Bonn | |
kerfy : I am losing interst in it now.. too much feeling talk and crap, not much actual show..