September 29, 2004

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  THIS   MEANS   WAR

  
  

  Last night I watched the 1949 Republic Pictures World War II film “The Sands of Iwo Jima” starring John Wayne, John Agar, Forrest Tucker, Marty Milner, with appearances by the three remaining Flag Bearers who actually participated in the historic photo raising the American Flag on the island after the battle was won (replicated above in a still from the movie.) “Sands” has always been one of my favorite films, and I owned an old CED videodisc of the movie back in the 80s. It tells the story of one squad of Marines through training camp and two major Pacific theater battles. It’s low budget, but has John Wayne (as the gruff Sgt. Stryker) and the studio shots match the actual WWII footage pretty well.  I’ve actually watched about four “war pictures” in the past month or so, and got to thinking about my personal “history” concerning the subject of America At War. Especially since the polls and pundits have been discussing the service careers (or lack thereof) of our Presidential Candidates. At 51, I belong to the back end of what has historically been called “the baby boom”, which occured after the returning soldiers from World War II came back from Europe, Asia, and North Africa in 1944 and 1945. My father was a veteran of the North African and Italian campaigns, and though I always say I have few regrets in life, one of them is that since he died when I was younger, I never really had the chance to talk in depth to him about his experiences in the “Big One”. While I and my little brother were growing up, in the early sixties, WWII was still fresh in the conscience of the country. America had been adamantly opposed to “fighting Europe’s war” and stayed home for the first three years of the European campaign. We chose to fight only in 1942 in retaliation for the attack on Pearl Harbor, in which nearly 3000 Americans were murdered by the Japanese. WWII has historically been called the last “good” war, in that the lines that were drawn were pretty solidly on the side of “right” and “wrong”. “Wrong” was the Axis plan to “take over the world” and “right” was the fight to stop the Axis from completing this plan. There are still many arguments as to whether “we” should have bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atom bombs, but the alternative, in 1945, was an actual invasion of Japan, and the thought at the time was that many more lives on both sides would have been lost. My brother and I loved to watch the television show “Combat” which aired for five years starting in 1962, when I was in the second grade. We always watched with my dad, who would point out the truths and inconsistencies apparent in the broadcasts. I just found out that the first season is on DVD and I’m sure I’ll purchase it. The shows are in B&W, were obviously shot on a studio backlot, and my bro and I called Vic Morrow’s Sgt. Saunders character “Super Sergeant Saunders” because with everything that happened to him every week, he should have suffered injury or even death, but all in all the show was a realistic, gritty accounting of the campaign in France, even though at five years, the program ran a couple of years longer than the actual war. Along with enjoying the show, my little brother and I had a lot of the full size “war toys” including guns, helmets, canteens, backpacks, and we played “war” even to the point of using sheets tied to the clothesline (this was before automatic clothes dryers were popular) as “tents” and “camping out” overnight during summer. The “G.I. Joe” “action figure” (boys never called their G.I. Joe dolls “dolls”) was pretty popular in the mid sixties, and we had four or five of them as well, and when they were “on leave” they got to visit our sister’s Barbie and Tammy dolls. For a good part of our young lives, the Idea of the American Soldier was an upright and solid thing to be thinking of. Vietnam changed all that relatively quickly.

  
  

  The “Peace Movement” occurred between 1967 and 1971, which pretty much dovetailed with my high school experience. I can remember reading about Vietnam in the Scholastic Reader during school while in the third or fourth grades around the time John F. Kennedy was in the White House. Vietnam  was called the “television war” because it was “brought into our living rooms” on the 6 o’clock news for many (too many years). I became a “peacenik” on campus, and opposed the war in Vietnam, which was not a “right versus wrong” war like WWII but basically a civil war in which the United States was taking over the fight for the Colonial French, who had occupied the country prior to our involvement. Thankfully, the draft ended in 1972, and we pulled out. That was the first year I was classified as “1A” and would have had to serve.

  
  

  I find it interesting that the “war picture” is not a staple of moviegoing anymore. There weren’t too may “Vietnam War Pictures”. Only “Platoon”, “Apocalypse Now” and “Full Metal Jacket” come to mind plus a few minor films from the 80s. There is a war film about the first Middle East conflict, the David O. Russell film “Three Kings” made in 1999. I wonder if someone will ever make a film about the current conflict in Iraq? What values would it portray? War is not what it used to be. The lines aren’t so solidly drawn. I read an article yesterday afternoon where even young Palestinians are admitting that the latest intifada (the fourth anniversary was yesterday) might have probably been a mistake, and suicide bombings are not helping the cause. In an age where “terrorism” happens daily, and so do the deaths of American soldiers in a far away land, we cannot be as “gung ho” as back in the days when “Combat” and “The Sands of Iwo Jima” portrayed American Right as the “heroes” quashing the Global Villians. The Global Villians still exist, of course, only the countries of their existence change, and American Right still exits, but has been shredded into an almost unrecognizable state. I still consider myself a patriot, and I still honor our fighting men, but things will never be as “clear” as they were in WWII, and while young men will “die for the cause” on a daily basis, sometimes that cause isn’t as neatly described as it was forty years ago.

  
  

   

  • 8:23 am
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