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101. #101
     On October 27th, 2007 at 11:12 am, Tantor said:

     You know, the anti-war movies pretty much suck. They’re tedentious and contrived and nearly unwatchable. They don’t age well because they pander so heavily to particularly prejudiced and immature audience that has mostly moved on.

     But, you know, the pro-war movies pretty much suck, too. First, they play war up as a big fun adventure and strip away the seriousness of it all. When John Wayne visited some wounded Marines in the Pacific during WWII, they booed him from their hospital beds. From their perspective, he had sold them a false picture of war that they had foolishly bought which got their asses shot.

     Now, I love John Wayne flicks as much as any other red-blooded pro-military conservative, but at the same time I recognize they are full of ****. They are a confection, an entertainment, not a true picture of war. It’s jarring when I talk to wounded soldiers back from Iraq at Walter Reed standing on prosthetic legs, hear them tell their stories, and recognize that they are trying to fit their narrative into that John Wayne template.

     I’ve never fought in a war. My experience was flying fighters as a navigator/weapon system officer in the Air Force. The war in the air is a much cleaner, more discrete event than the war on the ground. Casualties tend to be a Boolean event: you either escape unscathed or are completely consumed. There tends not to be much wounding. In that sense it’s cleaner than the ground war where you can be mangled by combat in an infinite number of ways. The army requires far more hospitals than the air force does.

     My experience of ground combat is all indirect, from reading and talking with veterans, but war movies don’t correspond to my understanding of war. First, in a war movie, everyone knows what’s going on. In war, the average grunt doesn’t know anything. I was struck by a line from a US Army officer in the Korean war who said that they never knew what they would encounter when they moved out, that they never had any accurate intelligence down at the infantryman level of what enemy faced them on the other side of the trees. They were always walking into the unknown.

     Many vets don’t understand the battles they fought in until after the war when the historians have explained it to them because, at best, they’ve had a bug’s eye view of the action. The fact that movies have a story line distorts the experience most combat soldiers have of pure violent chaos in which they live one heartbeat at a time.

     Other things tick me off about war movies, too. Every combat soldier in every war movie I’ve ever seen looks entirely too well-bathed and well-laundered. For Pete’s sake, the Union soldiers in “Gettysburg” looked like they had their pants pressed. The real civil War soldiers wore their clothes until they fell off. It took about six months.

     When I read EB Sledge write about how he huddled in a foxhole on an island in the Pacific for two weeks fighting the Japanese, that sounds like a considerably slimy, dirty, and unsanitary war. Movies do not convey this adequately because nobody wants to pay nine bucks to see somebody live in filth on screen. They must prettify war to sell tickets and popcorn.

     The thing most glaringly absent from war movies is fear. Pure mind-numbing, crap-your-pants, paralyzing, electricity corkscrewing up your backbone, metal taste in the mouth fear. Everyone looks entirely too confident and resolute in war movies. After the battle at Gettysburg, scavengers found muskets with multiple loads in them, one with more than twenty loads in it. How crazy out of your mind with fear and excitement must you be to forget you loaded your musket a minute ago and twenty times before that? I don’t recall seeing that fear portrayed anywhere but in “Band of Brothers” with Private Blithe. The fear of being killed and also of killing is rarely addressed in any war movie.

     I also resent the dumbing down of the military work into a dumb jock cowboy portrait. War is basically a problem of applied engineering requiring professionalism and discipline to direct it. Yet, most war movies make soldiers look like uniformed gangs. I remember John Wayne in “Flying Tigers” briefing his flight like a football huddle then telling them “Takeoff in ten minutes!” Sheesh! It took us an hour to brief up a flight of F-4 Phantoms. There also seems to be a lot of unprofessional bickering among officers in war movies, especially commanders. I never saw that in the military. Ever.

     So, if I must pick good war movies, they are all flawed. “Glory” is good, but a bit too dramatic. Ken Burns “The Civil War” is great, but too poetic. “Band of Brothers” is the gold standard for war movies, but even it is processed and prettified. It may be that the experience of combat can not be communicated except by experiencing it.

102. #102
     On October 27th, 2007 at 11:22 am, trinitytim said:

     Good points DL,

     Ahhhh!!! Lee Marvin…

     Lee and “The Duke” were my two favorite actors. I loved “The Green Berets” which, along with my Dad, had the biggest influence in my decision to join the military.

     And I was proud to have served in the Big Red One in Vietnam, made famous by Lee Marvin’s movie of the same name.

103. #103
     On October 27th, 2007 at 11:36 am, trinitytim said:

     Tantor,

     Very good post. For someone who never saw ground combat you sure nailed it.

     I loved the interviews with the men of Easy Company. They were real. Even today I tear up when I recall certain events from Vietnam and those memories are 37 years old.

     I always told my kids there is no glory in war and when you get right down to it, the real reason we fought was for survival and to protect our buddies, and that my friends, is the truth. It’s kill or be killed, plain and simple.

     I have a love in my heart for my buddies who fought by my side that far exceeds anything I ever thought possible.

104. #104
     On October 27th, 2007 at 1:25 pm, DesertLover said:

     trinitytim

     I can relate … I am the only member of my family ever to go to the Marine Corps … my late father used to ask me why I went there instead of one of the others like the rest of our family … my answer was always that he let me watch too many John Wayne movies growing up … He always laughed at that …

105. #105
     On October 27th, 2007 at 2:57 pm, dakine said:

     Roger that post Tantor…you nailed it.
     Also, I think it’s worth pointing out that there’s a pretty strong correlation between the relative puplic support for a particular “war” and the kinds of movies produced about that war.

106. #106
     On October 27th, 2007 at 5:02 pm, yohannbiimu said:

     I agree with Tantor. As far as war movies go (well, it was a short series, but it was a really EPIC series), Band of Brothers really stands on its own above the rest. For one thing it’s about real flesh-and-blood members of a company and regiment in the 101st Airborne Division, and what really happened to them. Another is that these men took part in many of the battles that really helped decided the war in Europe.

     It’s truly an extraordinary 10-part film. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a must-see.

107. #107
     On October 27th, 2007 at 10:40 pm, Mr_Conservative_Cat said:

     Whenever I hear anyone say “end the war!” I tell them that yes, we should, it’s simple to do and that since they are so passionate that they should do it: Fly to various points in the middle east and convince the terrorists to stop hating and trying to kill us. Don’t whine and yell about this and that, just get on with the job and do it. Simple.

     It’s amazing how quickly that shuts up the majority of them. Mental Illustration: *stupid-looking fellow with egg on his face.*

108. #108
     On October 28th, 2007 at 2:30 am, tpierce2 said:

     Tennessee Dave;
     Right On: Band of Brothers is one of the best series I’ve ever seen. Like you I am fascinated with these hero’s.

     My black list of hollywood dingbats is so long that I have to watch John Wayne and other heroes associated with WW Two that it almost impossible for me to watch a modern movie. Hollywood is a liberal mess! Modern liberalism is a mental disorder.

109. #109
     On October 28th, 2007 at 8:01 am, graysonret said:

     I agree that “Band of Brothers” was excellent. I recently watched “The War” by Ken Burns and admit I started to watch it with some reluctance. I wasn’t sure how Burns would show WW2; whether in a neutral theme or anti-war theme. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was well done, and I enjoyed it. I would like to add it to my collection soon.

110. #110
     On October 28th, 2007 at 12:47 pm, Ignorant Mensan said:

     “Patton” is magnificent! I can watch it over and over. Wish we could resurrect him.

     Also watched “The War” series. Great. I never understood the Battle of the Bulge where my uncle Harold died until I watched The War.

     One great movie, makes my hackles rise, not essentially a war movie - Yankle Doodle Dandy. Every liberal should be forced to watch it until they get the message.

111. #111
     On October 29th, 2007 at 10:31 am, Numenorean said:

     Feel free to share your own.

     Mrs. Miniver. The last scene in the church where the son goes over to the old lady’s pew and the vicar’s speech and the planes overhead…powerful stuff.

112. #112
     On October 29th, 2007 at 5:25 pm, carstairs38 said:

     It’s funny. I was watching some Donald Duck cartoons from World War II this weekend and thinking about how times have changed. There’s no way he’d be joining the army and fighting the enemy these days. Granted, they cartoons do have stereotypes. But even a realistic enemy would be too much.

113. #113
     On November 8th, 2007 at 9:38 am, Straight_Talk_Luigi said:

     It’s getting harder and harder to find a movie without some kind of bad reference to republicans.

     It’s funny. I was watching some Donald Duck cartoons from World War II this weekend and thinking about how times have changed.

     Yeah, it’s because most liberals still think Cold-war style warfare, mainly because they are stuck in their 1960’s time chamber. They also have no idea about the changing winds of global power and that today’s enemies are even more dangerous than our Cold War ones because they didn’t want to get blown out of the sky.

     I should also note that’s what al quedia wants.

114. #114
     On November 21st, 2007 at 12:42 pm, ArmoredCAV said:

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