Greatest Movie about the Greatest Generation

A sobering experience-The World War II Museum. Stephen Ambrose started the whole thing - another Montana/Louisiana connection. The location is right off Lee Circle so we took the streetcar. It's housed in a couple of huge industrial type buildings that give you the feeling you are on a ship (no-nonsense metal stairs,etc.) The video below is about the Higgins boat, without which Eisenhower said the war could not have been won.

We went to a 4D movie hosted by Tom Hanks which was awesome. I guess what made it 4D was that the seats vibrated when you were "on a plane", real objects like the plane nose or a radio came up on the stage, a jungle smell rose when we were in the Pacific, and beautiful snow fell during the winter scene. It was beautifully done with many quotes and the info on the person saying them at the bottom of the stage.

Another feature I enjoyed was the little booths all through the exhibits with 2 minute oral histories of 3 or 4 people telling about their experience (a woman who worked as a riveter,d-day experiences, etc) One man told of his arrival int England to set up troops. He said that when he went to the Town Clerk to request permission to use an area as a drill field, the man looked concerned and said he had a place that would be more suitable. The first place he requested was their Cricket Field. They all said everyone was very welcoming to the Yanks -I guess they should have been. Imagine-when we entered the war, the US military was ranked 18th in the world.

We remembered Ivy Garon, Boo's father, who served in the Marshall Islands in the Navy and my father Fred Sheffield, who served in the Coast Guard here in New Orleans. I remember Ivy telling how he and his friend were chosen to go out on the beaches to pick up the bodies of their fallen comrades because they were the "older" guys.

We ate lunch at John Besh's restaurant there. I had shrimp/sausage gumbo and Boo had fried oyster po-boy. I didn't miss those 89cent 5 layered burritos Boo brings me for lunch at home.