Lox, I had the book in front of me as I wrote. I checked.

I don't see the quoted dialogue as humor, unintentional or otherwise. I see it as a screenwriter's failed attempt (there were several screenwriters) to fill in Dave's background, point out the high RAF casualty rate, and to emphasize dangers of combat flyingthat civilian audiences might not have thought of: in this case, a parachute failed. At the same time, the writer is trying to make it all sound like natural conversation. The woodenness of the acting made it worse. IMO.

Now that I'm old I can play the age card. When I saw TLD on the big screen in 1962, I too thought it was magnificent. I hummed the theme song for days.

As the years passed, though, and passed, my appreciation dwindled. The last time I tried to watch the whole thing (about ten years ago), it was too painful. It seemed more like a feel-good movie, with tragedy and laughs thrown in, than like a realistic portrayal.

Stephen Ambrose wrote that he loved the movie because it made him feel proud. One result, decades later, was that he later wrote Band of Brothers. If you haven't seen the HBO miniseries of that, you really should. It's brilliant all the way through, especially, I think, in the final episode. Unlike TLD, it's better than the book.