In Honor of My Father's Generation
I watched Flags of Our Fathers yesterday. It is Clint Eastwood's movie in honor of the Greatest Generation- my Dad's generation and a perfect movie for Memorial Day. It is, I believe, almost as good as Letters from Iwo Jima but a little more nostalgic and even preachy. That probably explains why Flags was not given the honors that Iwo Jima was.

As with Saving Private Ryan, Flags does not beautify the horrors of war. Nor does it make bigger-than-life heroes. Based on a true book by the son of one of the men who raised the flag in Iwo Jima in the now iconic picture, it is as much a son-father love story as it is a war story. It puts the war into the all-too-familiar world of politics which even WW II, the great war that saved western civilization, fell. It is even there the same political grayness that all wars produce.

It is a story about our need for heroes and how we manufacture them out of people like you and me. In reality it tells us, they were heroes for far different reasons than raising a flag. They were heroes because they went and did what they had to do when placed in life and death situations. Like the book and HBO series Band of Brothers about the war in Europe, this reminds us that, while they were fighting for their country and freedom, they were fighting for their friends.

Eastwood uses his soundtrack beautifully as the good composer and musician he his. He weaves a tale with flashbacks and voice overs that become a little confusing - or a little too preachy from time to time. Yet, above all else, he uses his considerable skills to demystify the war yet elevate it to a whole new level- the level of human beings placed into awful, truly horrific situations- and somehow manage to carry some dignity into their post-war lives. Even the tragic figure of Ira Hayes is, through it all, a man who lives a dignified humanity when all around him and even within him is falling apart.

My father was a medical corpsman in Europe at the Battle of the Bulge. He died when I was still a teenager, but I doubt I would ever have heard any of his stories, like the narrator in the movie commented about his dad, "Doc" Bradley. Watching Ryan Phillipe bring Bradley's hell to life, I had an even deeper understanding of my father and the private hell he lived with for nearly 20 years. In fact, he died just a couple weeks shy of the 20th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge in 1964.

The movie does not make war any more palatable. It is brutal and awful and beyond the imagination of anyone who has never been there. I never have. Today I give thanks for those who have and who have helped keep this nation free. Back during Vietnam many made the mistake of blaming the soldiers along with the politicians. What an awful, awful mistake! Today I remember again what they all have gone through and how much it changed them- and keeps us free to be the nation they fought for.

Thank you to all of you.

And Dad, thank you.