What is not to like about James Mason. To me, he will always be Rommel. I understand he was so good in the role, he played Rommel in a few other movies too.
The saddest role he was in was a plantation owner in Mandingo. He of course was good as usual, but it was hard for me to wrap my head around Rommel owning a plantation.
Yup, it was James Coburn who said it to Maxamillion Schell, after Sgt Steiner's (Coburn's) entire squad was wiped out due to some friendly fire and trickery on Schell's part. He grabbed him and said, " you are my squad now. Let me show you were the iron crosses grow ". Schell said, I accept your challenge and off they went.
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I do not know how they did it, but there is a scene early on when the Russians attack, and they finally get their MG-42 back in operation and chewed the Russians up with it. How in hell they got it to look like that? It was about as realistic as all get out. The MG-42 was an awesome weapon indeed, and fired that 7.92 ammo at about 1200 rounds per minute as I recall. How they got it to look so real, was amazing.
Once I was watching a news report about fighting international piracy, and they were talking to a Dutch sailor on his ship, and in the background, mounted on a rail was an MG-42!
As I understand it, the machine gun was so good, there was no need for any other to be designed, so all they did was rechamber it for the 7.62 NATO round.
Light, reliable, quick change barrels, and a high rate of fire. What's not to like. One day I may drive to the Big Sandy machine gun shoot just to fire one. It might cost me $200 to fire a belt of ammo, but hell, why not...just once. A not-so-cheap thrill.
