Monday, July 25, 2011

Battle of Old Wankha - Wakahaung (1989) Video

This is almost 10 minutes long footage of Burmese Army's video of attack on the Wakahaung Camp aka Old Wankha Camp on the Thai Burma borderline in 1989. The footage was almost like a propaganda but I believe it was a film taken to be used as a training film for the Burmese recruits.

From my experiences Burmese Army has a traditional practice of using even the Hollywood war movies (including the Saving Private Ryan) shown to the troops for the dual purpose of entertainment and training.

For example the Burmese Army’s training version of “Saving Private Ryan” I once saw came complete with Burmese subtitles, the regular pauses with the narrator’s clear comments of what to do and what not to do in similar situations, and the slow-mos and the repeats of particular scenes so that the viewing soldiers could clearly understand what the hell was going on.

The long bloody scenes of German MG42 crews mowing down US infantry on the Normandy beach was repeated three times just because of the fact that Burmese infantry uses the German MG3, the modified version of old MG42, as their GPMG.

Anyway it is a rare footage and I hope you will enjoy it!

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