An American Soldier In The European Theater, 1945 [?]

Naturally, like a lot of you (I hope), I've been watching "The War," a program The New York Times criticized for being too Americocentric. While I could see their point, that the Brits and the Canadiens and the Ruskies and a whole host of others were fighting alongside us, from a dramatic standpoint I think Ken Burns and his crew made the right decision, and I'm sure they made the practical decision, for the vantage of selling the series to their sponsers.

When "The War" started, the video images, the home movies, the newsreels and the

battle footage, were disconcerting. Of course I thought that "The Civil War" series was the greatest thing ever, and as you know, I'm a a still photo, black-and-white kind of guy. With the moving image, you're not really left with anything---it comes and washes over you and moves on---you might say that a moving image is an experience, and a still picture is a moment of stais, a stilpunkt (forgive my German spelling), a denkmal, a interaction in a way the moving image is not.

But those were my thoughts before the series ran its course. Having watched almost every second now, I feel overwhelmed, traumatized, emotionally devastated.

When you write short stories, you discover that there are scenes you have to write, scenes that can't be avoided, scenes the challenge of which you must write up to.

I thought this series did "The Obligatory" scenes very well.

The series had one over-riding theme, Death, and the pounding relentlessness of Death, Death Death became almost unbearable, at times.

Wasn't that the point? Wasn't that the daily reality for our fathers and mothers (well, your grandfathers and grandmothers)? My stepfather went into North Africa, and got bogged down with the 38th Texas Infantry at Montecassino. My mother spent the later half of the war years down in Florida, at the requisitioned Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, where she ministered (as a very pretty young woman) to the wounded soldiers and fended off sixteen marriage proposals.

"The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude," Willie Morris says. But Ken

Burns brought plenty of grief to "The War," and it seemed altogether fitting. He has a contract with PBS through 2026, or something like that, and the last leg of his war trilogy is going to be Viet Nam. I hope that I live long enough to see it. One can imagine someone, someday, making "The Iraq War," when our pride in our country [and the nobility of our leaders] will be replaced with unending nausea.

The back of this photo has a censor's stamp, and the number "45," which may, or may not, refer to the date. It looks more like Germany than Okinawa, but who knows.

 

 

Done