The War

Ron just looked over at me and said, "Do you think you can take twelve more hours of this?" We've just finished watching the first installment of Ken Burns' new documentary about WWII, called "The War." It runs through Wednesday this week (7pm on PBS) and three days next week. This first segment covered roughly the first year of the US involvement, beginning in December, 1941, just days after Pearl Harbor was attacked.

This documentary, like Burns' other films, draws on the personal experiences of soldiers who fought in the dozens of theaters of war during WWII. In an interview segment on MSNBC, Burns said that ten years ago WWII vets still weren't ready to talk about their experiences of over 65 years ago. He says five years from now, no vets of that war will be alive. He says 1,000 WWII vets are dying each day. That begins to illustrate the magnitude of that war. It's impossible not to draw comparisons from the war over six decades ago with the war we fight today in Iraq. Burns said that in his travels over the past five years across the country doing research, he would ask audiences for a show of hands of people who knew/know someone involved in this war. He said, outside of military communities, if more than two percent of the people raised their hands he'd be surprised. During WWII, every town, every street, almost every family had a loved one overseas. In the first year of war, 35,000 Americans died. By the end of the war, in 1945, that number was multiplied by ten. Estimates place the total death toll from 50 to 60 million people, and most of those were civilians.

I would encourage you to take some time to watch this compelling story. I've seen "Band of Brothers" numerous times and each time am completely overwhelmed with emotion as I consider this life changing event that occurred during my parent's teenage years. My uncle was a paratrooper who landed in Normandy on D-Day. He still doesn't talk about it. I'll warn you, the footage and still images are very graphic and horrifying. This documentary will provide a much larger picture than "Band of Brothers," which focused specifically on the 101st Airborne Division and its involvement in France and Germany.

World War II has sometimes been called "The Good War." At the beginning of episode one, a vet remarked that he didn't think there was such a thing as a good war. "There are necessary wars, and even just wars, but no wars are good." God help us.