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Was Major Falconer right in defending the castle?

posted 16 years ago by jeffyoung1
2 replies | jump to latest

I want to start a debate.

WAS MAJOR FALCONER RIGHT IN DEFENDING THE CASTLE?

I will start by saying that I admired Major Falconer for his courage, strength of personality and character, and very competent military technical and tactical expertise. But he had no right to turn an undefended castle manor with just a handful of soldiers into a battleground, expecting to even slow the impending German advance of multiple panzer and panzergrenadier divisions. This decision is typically reserved for corps level and higher military brass. Captain Becker was right. Knowing a vast German armored juggernaut was advancing their way, that isolated group of American soldiers needed to rejoin the main body of the army.

But I've written before that CASTLE KEEP is a deeply philosophical and existential movie with overt and subversive religious overtones that could be interpreted as a series of dreams within a dream. Nothing depicted in the movie may have been meant for face value.

[–] R011DaveAAA 10 years ago

It worked. It caused the advancing forces to deploy and seems to have held up the advance of a battalion sized force for at least a few hours. That would be considered worth sacrificing a platoon sized force. Mind you, normally, a platoon of unsupported odds-and-sods acting as infantry would be no more than a speed bump.

[–] OIF-Retread 10 years ago

-SPOILER-

I think he was right. He took the initiative, and even though he was outnumbered and was eventually overrun, it was a good defensive position that allowed his small group to slow up a much larger force.

In the real Battle of the Bulge, dozens of small actions (probably not as dramatic as shown in the movie, although a 20 man I&R platoon from the 99th ID held off a German battalion for a full day at Lanzerath) resulted in the German timetable being thrown off enough to cause it to fail.

Besides, Falconer was probably trained to believe that unless given orders to the contrary, it's a soldier's duty to fight the enemy.