a5c7b9f00b Shot from the Sky tells the real life saga of B-17 pilot Roy Allen. Shot down over occupied France. Befriended by the French Resistance, betrayed to the Nazis, Roy becomes one of one-hundred and sixty-eight Allied airmen who are imprisoned at Buchenwald Concentration Camp. In the heart of the Nazi Empire. In the most deadly place on Earth. The only thing that can keep them alive is each other.
If there's a place to find heroes, it's in stories like this one. Shot From the Sky is a combination of many threads. I have watched a few times and, even though I know how it will end, I'm on edge every time I watch it, wondering how Roy will get out of each situation he finds himself in.<br/><br/>Roy and his crew have faced dangerous missions before and lived to tell the tale. But only a few days after D-Day in June 1944, their luck ran out as German fighters couldn't be shaken and their bomber was shot down in still-occupied Nazi-held French countryside. Would Roy Allen ever return home to his wife and family?<br/><br/>It's a story about a young man, Roy Allen, whose courage, determination, skill, luck, loyalty, and stubbornness eventually led him home.<br/><br/>It's about the men that Roy served with and those who were prisoners with him. They tell how Roy affected their lives.<br/><br/>It's about the many people who helped Roy through his journey: the young schoolteacher and her family; the French Resistance (how they operated and how they aided the Allies); the squadron leader who showed determination, standing up to the guards and insisting on military discipline; the young flier who spoke to the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) officer (who helped get the American pilots out of the camp eventually); the French doc who constantly moved Roy from one bed to another in the prison "medical" center; the man who dared give Roy a pot of hot soup to share with the other fliers.<br/><br/>It shows the brutality of the Nazi regime. They didn't care who they picked up and put into concentration camps; American pilots were supposed to be treated under the rules of the Geneva Convention. The SS soldiers - and the criminals they employed as guards in the camps - used intimidation, then force, whenever they felt like it - using machine guns, baseball bats, and wood blocks. They crammed prisoners into poorly ventilated boxcars. Buchenwald was a concentration camp that was way overpopulated; death was everywhere; new prisoners were thrown outside with the elements; starvation and sickness was running rampant.<br/><br/>For anyone who enjoys a combination of oral history, historical backdrop, a realistic cliff-hanger movie, and meeting interesting people, Shot from the Sky is highly recommended.
Roy Allen's story is well told in this documentary. For those interested in finding out more and also putting it in the context of other airmen who were with Roy in Buchenwald you might check out the book published by Art Kinniss and Stan Booker (two other survivors) titled "168 Jump Into Hell." Art is still alive (December 2008) as is Joe Moser who also survived and whose story is now being written as "Joe Moser: Buchenwald Flyboy."<br/><br/>Roy was one of the few who got left behind when the main group was rescued from Buchenwald on October 20, 1944 because he was still in the hospital. He was very fortunate considering what happened to many in that hospital. I agree with a previous commenter that while the story focuses on Buchenwald and the treatment there, the five day train ride in cattle cars and then the death march from Stalag Luft III in minus 28 degree weather was as torturous and dangerous as perhaps anything else. Another important detail is the August 24 raid of 129 B-17s on Buchenwald that these guys miraculously escaped from--an exceedingly close call.