Kilgore Trout

History of conflict. It's strange how it can be somehow comforting, even as one watches old films of horrendous violence in an archived NBC television show like 'Victory at Sea', or the BBC's(I think) 'World at War'. To think about how the people involved, in those times, on all sides, well, they were in many ways just like me and you. For the most part, they were pretty clueless about what was happening around them, either responding to orders, and/or being affected by orders of those somewhere else. Never quite sure what the hell was happening at the time.

I've read a few things about some of the television and movies that were produced around the world following WWII. It almost brings tears to my eyes to think of men and women around the world in the 1950's as they sat in movie theatres, or in front of black and white televisions with their families and watched the "big picture". Recall all of the WWII movies that came out in the U.S. in the 50's and 60's, and 70's too. If one had been a 20 year old PFC in 1944, you'd have been 30 and most likely a civilian family man in 1954. How odd, jarring, cathartic, it must have seemed to them to see their ship, or their post in the sand or woods, or their type of aircraft, as it was briefly described and shown in the "big" picture of the War. To see strategy, or have a soundtrack put to what at the original time was pure terror and misery.

Grateful to those that came before. Of all sides.

Take heart. Be brave and thankful. People just like you and me have walked treacherous paths.

atpwannabe

Cub, I agree with you 1000%. I watched the series with my Dad as well and in doing so it had a huge impact on me.


Kilgore:

You know I've thought about the same thing. Those soldiers, regardless of what side (Allied or Axis), where under and following orders. Watching those who were impacted by the soldiers and commanders carrying out their orders can be heart wrenching and very hard to watch at times.

Watching the "World At War" series gave my an appreciation for human life. The show was very graphic at times. Americans mistreated Germans and Japanese prisoners and civilians alike and vis verse. I can remember seeing the pain in some of the people's eyes as they were being affected by "orders being carried out".

I'm blessed and a much more compassionate person for having viewing such programming.



atp

Cubdriver

It seems to me the human collective psyche has adjusted to having shooting wars in various parts of the globe as an ongoing feature among modern nations. They are no longer the pressing, all-out national emergencies of WWI and WWII. Those wars taught us that if you want freedom to survive you had better pick up a gun or go to work to get enough supplies out to the soldiers. This shift in consciousness is a result of several things. Tv news first brought daily images of carnage in Vietnam never seen in the American home, right into the living room. By the mid 70's people were tired of it, bored by it as long as it stays over there, and were tuning it out to watch Hollywood. You can't blame them really. What could they do about it? No one cared about war so much any more and it became a distant reality. It just didn't hit home like when your brother died overseas or when your youth was spent working in a bomb factory.

Another thing was how the change to an all-volunteer army underscored the function of choice in deciding whether or not you wanted to fight and pay attention to war as a daily reality in your life. You could now decide to distance yourself from world events if you wanted to, with no need to really pay attention. You no longer had to fight for anything, we had a volunteer Army to do that. Your freedom was handed to you. To go to war must have meant you liked war... or so the defective reasoning went. The collective psyche took a step back in this country from the reality of war and how it can affect our lives.

I never performed military service, never stood on the front line for America in an armed conflict with another country. And most Americans these days have not. My father stood on the front lines in South Korea in the early 50's, he dodged bullets for several years there. He has a greater sense of the value of life and the meaning of national service than I did as a young man. In my youth we had the invasion of Iraq, the one where Saddam Hussein had a very nasty army built up out of oil revenues. For a while in 1989-90 there was talk of reinstating the draft to supply soldiers to defeat him. A renewed draft would have hit me for sure if it happened. I became more conscious of that the freedoms we enjoy as Americans are first class, and that many have died for our nation in this pursuit.