Pam had a “ladies night” with the White girls last
night. They do this every couple of months or so. This time it was to celebrate
Lori’s birthday. It’s the sort of thing that sounds dreadful to me, going out
to some restaurant and talking for three hours. But they always have a great
time together and it keeps the sisters close making it a worthwhile endeavor.
For me these ladies nights mean that I must feed and
occupy myself for the evening. Most of the time I eat dinner at Big Al’s and
watch a game. Last night, I decided to go see a movie that I’ve wanted to see
but that I know that Pam would hate…The
Fury. Best decision I’ve ever made. Pam would have spent the entire time in
the fetal position.
As a History major, I have always had a certain obsession
with World War II. Everything about that conflict and that time fascinates me.
The dominant personalities, the ideologies, the grand sweep of the thing
captivates me. Add to that the fact that my mother’s oldest brother John drove
a tank for Patton’s army, and you can understand perhaps my desire to see this
movie about one Sherman tank crew in the final days of the war, despite the presence
of the talentless Brad Pitt.
The film was gut-wrenching. Five men inside a Sherman
tank is the stuff of claustrophobic nightmares. This particular crew, having
survived together all the way from North Africa to the waning days inside Nazi
Germany, is as grizzled a group of men as I have ever seen depicted on film.
The horrors of the war have transformed them all, almost completely taking away
their humanity. They have come to the dark place of rabid hatred for the enemy,
a natural disposition I suppose for one’s lucky enough to survive more than the
average 26 combat days lifespan for tank crews. Although their souls have been
hollowed out by their experiences, they summon the courage required to make a heroic
stand at the end. Their sacrifice wasn’t simply for each other, but for
something that they all sensed was bigger than themselves. Knowing that they
were all doomed, one of the characters says, “This is a righteous thing we’re
about to do,” then quotes from scripture, “And
I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send and who shall go for us?
And I said, here am I. Send me.” It’s the most moving scene in the film.
As I watched, I couldn’t help but think of my Uncle
John. My mother used to always tell us that John was a different person when he
returned from the war, totally transformed in personality and disposition. No
freaking kidding! The fact that John came home at all was nothing short of a
miracle, the fact that he didn’t end up in an insane asylum, a tribute to
mental toughness on a scale with which I am not familiar. Instead of being declared
a victim of PTSD, he came home, got a job, got married and raised a family, all
the while harboring private, unspeakable nightmares that must have plagued him
for the rest of his life.
There is a line in this film that sticks with me this
morning. Pitt’s character takes his new 18 year old replacement gunner into the
living room of a wealthy German family in a freshly liberated town. All four aristocratically
dressed Nazi party members had shot themselves in the head rather than be taken
by the Americans. The kid asks WarDaddy, “Why are you showing me this?” WarDaddy
answers, “Because ideology is peaceful, history is violent.”
It is the conceit of
many in this generation to believe that we as a species have somehow evolved
away from brutality. Some politicians are fond of saying that war is a remnant
of a bygone, less enlightened era, so twentieth century. My understanding of
history tells me otherwise. The vast majority of man’s story is one of
violence, and conquest. Our experiment with representative democracy is but a
mist in the wind of human history. War and warriors will always be with us. To
think otherwise is vanity. But, to pursue war, to glory in it is an
abomination. 
