ORIGINAL: RevRick
I don't know, guys. I'm a little older, and my Dad served in the So Pac in the Corps. I've known a lot of parishioners who are now talking, very quietly about their experiences, including a number in the ETO. A lot of them talk about the things in Private Ryan being all too real - including shooting prisoners, on both sides. And one thing that those who had seen the movie also said was that the opening scenes were almost realistic enough to take them back - but you have to multiply it over 9 km or so.
I am currently reading a book about combat veterans of World War 2. One of the things that the author did mention is the fact that if POW’s survived their initial capture their chances of survival were pretty good on both sides in the ETO at least. A church that I attended as a kid in California had a pastor that was a B-24 pilot in WW II. He got shot down over Romania and was captured by some very angry Germans who lined him up against a wall. He said eight guys pulled the trigger four times and not one round fired. He decided right there and then that the big guy had a plan for his life and swore that if he survived the war he would devote his life to God. My Grandfather who was a Korean and Vietnam War vet often spoke with him about his war experiences some of which I found out later haunt him to this day.
He said something very profound to me after I graduated basic, ‘It doesn’t do you any good surviving a war if what you did to survive kills your soul.” I took me a while to understand what he meant and thankfully I never fired a shot in anger while I was in the Army so I never had to cross that bridge.
On a lighter note another book I read was about a member of the 101st Airborne during D-Day. A group of about thirty paratroopers attacked a fortified position held by a company of German soldiers. The Germans broke and fled because they were convinced that they were under attack by a force that outnumbered them. So the final battle scene in SPR is not completely out of the bounds of possibility.
My favorite war movies, 12 O’clock High, Das Boot, Band of Brothers, All Quiet on the Western Front, We Were Soldiers, Black Hawk Down, When Trumpets Fade, and The Longest Day.
I hated, The Thin Red Line, Platoon, Patton, and Sands of Iwo Jima.