Facing War

During this past week, the professor and I watched the last few episodes of The War produced by Ken Burns.  It is a seven part documentary about World War II.  I started watching with him on the episode that covered D Day - June 6, 1944.

A review from Slate talks about the sentimentality and one sided view of the war:
"What The War provides ... is a harrowing portrait of war from the bottom up, as described by worried siblings, imprisoned civilians, and others who had little control over its direction. Burns focuses on the experiences of front-line soldiers—"our boys," in the anxious words of home front observers—who found themselves caught up in the "meat grinder" of national service."

I found the series interesting.  It did not always portray the American troops favorably.  It may not have shown the war from the view of other allied nations or their enemies.  While in Finland we found out that the majority of Germany's loses took place on the Eastern Front fighting against Russia.  This is a side of the war that we as Americans rarely, if ever, see.  About 3/4 of the deaths of the German military occurred on the Eastern Front.  

Despite any failings on the part of Burns in depicting the war accurately or from a biased view, I was fascinated by the two hour long episodes.  I was born in 1949 and in so many ways the Second World War and the Cold War dominated my life.  I felt as if half of the movies available were about the war while the other half were about cowboys.  

Since then I have become a big mystery reader.  I have read about all of the gruesome ways that a person can die and decompose from gun fire.  However, it was revealing to me to actually see black and white footage of people who had half of their heads blown away.  With a son in the US Marine Corps, I have learned that many of the deaths and traumatic injuries result from the impact of explosions.  A person does not have to be hit by shrapnel but can die simply from being thrown away from the explosion because of brain injuries that are unseen.  

One of the stories that was told was of a young girl whose American family was imprisoned in the Philippines.  One of the items that the young girl mentioned was that her mother breast fed her brother for three years.  At the time of their liberation, her mother weighed 73 pounds and could hardly move off her bed because she was so weak.  While in the Philippines many years ago, we met an American diplomat who had this very experience as a child during the war.  It was another foreign service office who told us about their internment.  Needless to say, this segment rang very true for me.  

I struggle to be non-judgmental but continually fail.  I had a difficult relationship with my father.  Part of my criticism stemmed from his service during WW II.  He was an aircraft mechanic.  He served in England repairing airplanes that returned from bombing or fire fighting with damage to the bodies of the airplanes.  One of the difficult challenges that he faced was that he did not return to Canada following the war until about April of 1946.  By the time he returned there were no jobs left and no farmland available to buy.  He faced many of the challenges of returning servicemen.  

However, I have been told by my mother's family that when he returned he was angry and he hit my mother and he hit their two year old son.  My grandfather Toole went to an attorney to see about filing for a divorce.  He was told that my mother had to come in and file herself.  She never did.  I have been told that my father continually told her that if she ever left him, he would keep the children.  Being young and naive, she never questioned his word.  The reality was that in that era, men very seldom had custody of their children.  They were always left with their mother.  

As an adult, I asked my father about his experience upon returning from the war.  He excused his violence and anger by saying that he had suffered during the war.  No doubt he did.  However, when I mentioned that he never saw combat, he rationalized that he had many friends who died.  

After watching The War, I have mixed feelings about my father's rationalization of his behavior upon coming home to his family.  Years later my mother still remembered his stinging remarks about the weight that she had gained and about the shape of her mouth and smile following extensive dental work.  She was not the girl he had left behind.  She was still nursing my ten month old sister and he soon put a stop to that.  He could not believe that she was actually breast feeding such an "old" child.  

Who am I to criticize anyone who lived through a war that had no end in sight?  Service people today are suffering from physical and mental wounds from the current wars that we have been involved in.  
And the infantry remains the same.  Only about ten percent of the military were actually involved in combat during WW II.  But the horrors that they saw and endured were almost unbelievable.  How did they manage to return to "real" life and adjust to "peace."  

Ken Burns' documentary may have had a definite American slant to it, but it left me feeling incredible compassion for all combatants and anger that anyone in a position of power should count human life so cheaply.