Photo Not Available's video: War and Remembrance: Part XII Drama

The trials of the Henry and the Jastrow families amidst the events after the U.S.'s entry into World War II. - IMDb Video uploaded In memory of my Uncle Nick, killed in action aboard the New Orleans-class heavy cruiser USS San Francisco (CA-38) during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, 12-13 November 1942, in World War II. Approximately 189 casualties: killed, seriously injured or missing. All gave some. Some gave all. Rest in peace. This was my second acting job. That's me at 1:07:24 as a Technician in the Trinity Control Center, 20 miles from ground zero, 0527 hours, Los Alamos, New Mexico, July 16, 1945, in the TV mini-series broadcast on ABC from 1988 to 1989. 'Twas an all-night shoot in 1987 in a World War II-era Quonset hut in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere at Fort Irwin, first developed by Gen. George S. Patton and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as a training center in 1942. As is typical, the weather was cold and windy in Southern California's high desert, which made it especially challenging for Craft Services, located outside, as well as the cast and crew. I remember sitting in a bus outside in the dark in silence with my fellow actors, listening to the wind, trying to stay awake, and waiting for hours to go on set. Earlier in the evening I sat next to Mike Connors in a trailer and listened while he conversed with the women in hair and makeup. He was personable. In addition to the scene above I worked in one deleted scene with Connors as Col. Harrison 'Hack' Peters and other members of the cast. Carrying a document, I walked down a metal stairway from an elevated platform where I was working. As soon as I reached the concrete floor I walked across the room to an office with windows, and knocked on the door, which was closed. He said, "Enter." I entered the office, closed the door, walked up to Connors and his scene partners, handed him the piece of paper, and we did a brief unrehearsed pantomimed ad-lib. I was an inexperienced and untrained actor so mainly I just listened. The director, Dan Curtis, had us do a few takes. I am a nonsmoker, but my character smoked unfiltered cigarettes à la 1945. Eventually, I felt nauseated after inhaling a copious amount of nicotine and smoke. At the time I had a full-time day job as Command Information Officer, Public Affairs Office, U.S. Army National Training Center, Fort Irwin, which is how I learned about the shoot. Simultaneously I served as a weekend warrior in the U.S. Army Reserve and, before I bought a house in Apple Valley, then the home of Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, and the Roy Rogers Museum, my girlfriend and I were living in a kitchenette at the Sage Motel on Main Street, part of the original Route 66, in downtown Barstow. After we wrapped In the wee hours of the morning I drove from Fort Irwin, 37 miles northeast of Barstow in the Calico Mountains in San Bernardino County, back to the motel. Trying not to wake my girlfriend, I quietly changed from my civilian clothes into a freshly-laundered battle dress uniform, packed my gear, and then loaded my duffel bag and a suitcase into the trunk of my car. While struggling to stay awake I drove 122 miles south on Interstate 15 in the dark in my 1965 Chevelle Malibu SS from Barstow over the Cajon Pass to Los Alamitos Armed Forces Reserve Center. From there I rode with the members of my unit in a passenger van from Orange County to Los Angeles International Airport, boarded a commercial plane, flew nonstop to Miami where we had a brief layover, and then flew nonstop to Central America without any sleep. To say that I was exhausted when we landed at Howard Air Base in the Panama Canal Zone would be an understatement. I felt like The Walking Dead, 23 years before the TV series first appeared on cable TV. We spent the next 17 days training in Panama and Honduras.   In Honduras, with high temperatures and high humidity, I developed a 24-hour case of heatstroke. "A man's got to know his limitations," said Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan in Magnum Force (1973). Quoting Olivier Martinez as Paul in Unfaithful (2002), "There is no such thing as a mistake. There are things you do, and things you don't do." I would do it all again.