Originally posted by: BoomerD
Saving Private Ryan is one of the few movies I have a hard time watching.
We Were Soldiers is another.
So few movies do a proper job of showing the horrors of war that we see the usual tripe offered by Hollywood and think, "gee, war isn't so bad."
Then you see something like the two I listed above...even they don't truly depict the horrors of war...but they do a pretty good job.
I spent 2 years in Vietnam as a rifleman in a Marine rifle company...I've seen some shit that still wakes me up at night...35 years later.
My Dad was a WWII vet. He joined the Navy and was on the hospital ship Hope. He'd thought he'd pulled some pretty good duty until he found out his job was to pick up body parts after battles. What he saw haunted him the rest of his days.
My Mother said he woke up
every single night screaming in terror. I just can't imagine that. He was also in the second boatload ashore after the Hiroshima blast. He had a host of really unusual diseases his whole life that he never got a true explanation for. Radiation exposure would be my guess.
My mother said he would never talk about his experiences in the war. He didn't start saying anything about it at all until about 6 months before his death.
BoomerD, I respect the sacrifices that you and others have made. But I'm not ashamed to say that I'm glad it's something I never had to experience for myself. My year of birth more or less put me between wars. I could have volunteered for Vietnam right at the end. I registered and had my number, but the draft lottery ended shortly after I graduated from High School. My folks were adamant that I not go over there.
I didn't want to either.