Life goes on and we change

I decided to sit back, relax and watch a bit of television this evening, we pay all that money for cable we need to see what is on once in awhile. I wanted to put all thoughts of war, my growing outrage against the media and thoughts of the day behind me with something entertaining. Therefore, with that last statement fresh in my mind I will confess that I watched Saving Private Ryan for the fourth time. Yes, that really took my mind off the present events of our world.

Saving Private Ryan is perhaps one of the most realistic WWII movies ever filmed and the story it weaves of the tribulations of the Rangers in their quest to salvage one soldier’s life from the devastation of war is mesmerizing. The opening scene reminded me of so many of the D-Day photographs I have viewed over the years and I have often surmised that Steven Spielberg studied them deeply prior to filming.

I first saw it with an old friend of mine. We were sitting in the theater quietly watching the movie when the scene where the Ranger’s medic is hit by machine gun fire began playing out. Our combined moods instantly changed, it was totally devastating to each of us, too realistic, far too close to home, when the medic began crying for his Mother and begging to go home we both had to walk back to the lobby only to find a half dozen other veterans standing there emotional as well. We all stood quietly, then spoke for a spell of days past, of friends not present, collected our thoughts and returned.

I never actually viewed the entire scene until quite some time later when I watched it on video at home. Perhaps the relaxation, the privacy or simply the fact that I was older, alive and sitting in my own living room allowed me to watch it without my personal demons showing themselves.

This led me to think of our young military men and women now standing in the dark meeting their new personal demons who will haunt them in years to come. Their own personal thoughts they will carry on through their lives and I wondered if it will change them, harden them, turn them into something they never desired as it did some of my friends, many of our friends. The only answer I could come up with that allowed me to change my thoughts was no, they will be fine and not because they are different, not because they are smarter, harder, more trained, but because we cannot allow that to happen.

We cannot allow them to become anything other then a functioning member of society. We cannot allow it because so many of our friends did not make that transition to normalcy and wondered around searching for sanity in an alcoholic or drugged haze, or that small change to make their minds whole once more, or came home with their body less than they left, or did not come home at all.

We cannot allow it… We cannot.