Last night after dinner my wife and I watched “Saving Private Ryan”.   Like most women, she is not a fan of war movies and the violence they necessarily dwell on.  War is, after all, about killing people and destroying things.  There is no gentleness about it.  That said, there are noble things done in wartime, and the 1998 movie produced by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks, backed up by a stellar cast, tells a fictional story about an example of that concept.

I won’t bore you with the details of the film, except to say that many of its scenes are extremely graphic.  As General Sherman commented “War is Hell”, and that concept is underlined from the first frame to the last.  Watching the movie, it is almost unbelievable that men, many of them only teenagers at the time, were able to overcome the ravages of D-day, particularly on Omaha Beach, and not be driven back into the sea.

But they did, and continued fighting and dying for nearly another year until Germany surrendered in May of 1945.  I would like to believe that the current generation of fighting age Americans could rise to the challenge if the world again faced total domination and subjugation by a foreign power.  Sadly, that is questionable.  Certainly, the brave and patriotic members of our current volunteer armed forces could be the backbone of such an effort, but would those drafted into the military, which would surely be required, have the same sense of moral clarity and duty?

Memorial Day, which we observe today, should not be a celebration in the traditional sense.  Instead it should be a reflective day, honoring all those who have died to keep this country free.  They gave up all their tomorrows, so we and our loved ones could have ours in their place.  Last night, when the movied ended, my wife looked at me and said “Every American should be required to watch this movie every Memorial Day”.  She’s right, lest we forget what war, and courage, are really all about.