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Let Me Stay in My Comfortable Life of Freedom

Tom Hanks captivated me with his performance in “Saving Private Ryan,�� which starts out with a group of soldiers approaching “Omaha Beach.�� They are trembling and shaking and puking. Then the door drops. Then the shit goes down. Then my heart is ever captivated by the heroes of World War 2. I watched this first in surround sound and I cussed so badly my friend protested. It changed my life. I couldn’t believe this had really happened.

Stephen Ambrose, the author of this book, “The Band of Brothers,�� was also fascinated with World War 2, having heard the legends and stories growing up, he ended up doing 40 years of traveling, interviewing and research. Out of those years came several books, such as “D-Day: June 6, 1944�� and “Citizen Soldiers.�� These books are fascinating, but more so they are extremely sobering. For me they eventually became depressing, as I stopped my journey with Ambrose back in 2012 after reading of a troop of Germans who were shot up and killed on Christmas day in 1944 while they were singing Christmas carols (Citizen Soldiers).

I may finish the book soon.

Dick Winters, the Leader of the “Band of Brothers,�� called Ambrose to ask him if he would be interested in their story. You see, he led his troops even after the war ended, calling them all year after year for a reunion. They are still a Band of Brothers. Even as I write this and recall the story, I feel my heart stirring and my eyes getting strangely damp. The book covers their time together in training, when they volunteered for the 101st Airborne, called Easy Company, of the U.S. Army. It follows their training through flight school, where they learned to parachute. It follows them as they parachute into German territory on D-Day all the way through to the Battle of the Bulge.

This is a powerful, beautiful story, full of action and reality, a story of brotherhood, of pushing the limits of the body, mind and spirit. Even writing this, feeling the pain, remembering the story of a group of soldiers who took part in one of the most horrifying world-wide tragedies in the history of humanity, I want to close my eyes. Yes, that is a confession, something I’m really not proud of, but it hurts like a motherfucker. If anyone knows pain, hell on earth, mental anguish, the darkest sides of life, it’s a veteran of war. I once knew a veteran of WW2, used to visit him often. He was an anti-aircraft gunman. He told me he would walk what seemed an eternity. He told me of his guilt at having shot down his own men because of bad intelligence, of getting a girl pregnant while he was there, of playing his own part, and feeling insignificant. Maybe I should drive to his house again.

It hurts to share another’s pain.