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Sep. 23rd, 2007 10:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vivienI am, and always have been, a history geek. My husband is even more of one. We are history geeks who love documentaries, so whenever Ken Burns rolls out a new one, it is a red letter day for us.
Tonight we watched the first installment of The War, featuring the experiences of people in four towns in the US during World War II. The War, so far, is an excellent piece of work. I watched with tears in my eyes, and I learned several things I didn't know.
See, my grandpa was a WWII veteran - he was an Army Warrant Officer in the Pacific theater. I thrived on his stories of the war, although he didn't really talk too much about it, unless asked. Even then, I only got the surface stories, like how the Australian soldiers were party animals and how loud the guns on the ships were and how he got a jungle fungus on his elbows that he fought well into the 1970's. He never really talked about the battles, though I know he won a medal for unloading a ship on a beach under enemy fire (he was in supplies and so was not in the infantry or anything). From watching the footage, which is a great deal more raw than anything I've seen, I think I understand why.
We glamorize WWII because it was a "good" war, but Burns shows us through interviews and amazing footage that there is no such thing as a good war. Some are necessary, though. This one was.
Even if documentaries are not your thing, and you will never watch this one, I want to ask you to do something. If you have a grandparent or other family member who served in a war, ask them about their experiences over this upcoming holiday season. Or thank them for what they did. Talk about them here, if they're no longer with us. I'm interested in their stories.
Because, man, every time I see one of these, I realize how very much our soldiers sacrifice, no matter which war, no matter which time period. There is no way I could have done what they did. No way at all.
Tonight we watched the first installment of The War, featuring the experiences of people in four towns in the US during World War II. The War, so far, is an excellent piece of work. I watched with tears in my eyes, and I learned several things I didn't know.
See, my grandpa was a WWII veteran - he was an Army Warrant Officer in the Pacific theater. I thrived on his stories of the war, although he didn't really talk too much about it, unless asked. Even then, I only got the surface stories, like how the Australian soldiers were party animals and how loud the guns on the ships were and how he got a jungle fungus on his elbows that he fought well into the 1970's. He never really talked about the battles, though I know he won a medal for unloading a ship on a beach under enemy fire (he was in supplies and so was not in the infantry or anything). From watching the footage, which is a great deal more raw than anything I've seen, I think I understand why.
We glamorize WWII because it was a "good" war, but Burns shows us through interviews and amazing footage that there is no such thing as a good war. Some are necessary, though. This one was.
Even if documentaries are not your thing, and you will never watch this one, I want to ask you to do something. If you have a grandparent or other family member who served in a war, ask them about their experiences over this upcoming holiday season. Or thank them for what they did. Talk about them here, if they're no longer with us. I'm interested in their stories.
Because, man, every time I see one of these, I realize how very much our soldiers sacrifice, no matter which war, no matter which time period. There is no way I could have done what they did. No way at all.