It's Veterans' Day. That means that our younger daughter is engaged in one of her favorite rituals with her dad - doing an all-day movie marathon of war movies. They do this every Veterans' Day. It's daddy/daughter bonding time.
Recently my daughter did a story for the Houston Library about their ritual. In her entry, she posted a couple of pictures of her father as a very young, very skinny soldier attached to the 101st Airborne in Vietnam. If you follow one of the links she gave (Battle of Hamburger Hill), you can read an account that that young soldier wrote about that dreadful battle. You can also follow her links to see a list of favorite World War II movies. It's these movies that make up the bulk of their movie marathon and there are some really good ones there.
As for me, I don't do war movies anymore. As a young girl, I used to watch them with my father, the World War II veteran, so history is repeating itself in our household. But then I grew up and along came Vietnam and I spent many years watching that war on television news every night. Along the way, I lost some friends and acquaintances in that conflict and that quelled my appetite for ever again watching war movies.
But it is important to have rituals, and it is important to remember and to honor the service and sacrifice of members of our military both past and present. And so, on this Veterans' Day, I salute my favorite veteran, who is now happily ensconced watching WWII flicks with his daughter, and all veterans, as well as those still active in the military. Stay well. Stay safe. And thank you.
(Cross-posted from The Nature of Things.)
I'm in your camp. War movies are more sorrow than entertainment to me.
ReplyDeleteGreat post.
I've long been bemused and maybe a bit confused, Kathleen, to observe that the veterans in my life seem to LOVE war movies! You would think that they especially would be repelled by them, and yet, these (very gentle) people seem to gain, not enjoyment perhaps, but closure by watching these movies and the war documentaries on the History Channel. It's an interesting phenomenon, this desire of some veterans who have been through a war or wars to continue to experience the conflicts through film.
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