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My favorite stepfather was in the Navy on a destroyer and went through several famous battles in the South China Sea. Then he was stationed in Nagasaki Bay.
I could never get him to talk. Whatever it was it was he sure hated the Navy. His brother went in the Air Force and stayed through Vietnam as a recon photographer. My uncle was an artillary captain from North Africa to Germany's post-war early reconstruction. He stayed in Germany an extra year and did relocation interviews. He said the worst time was sending people to the Russian sector.
My first journeyman carpenter when I was an apprentice was a boy in Hitler Youth Corps which was where he started as an apprentice. Kids playing with the huge piles of munitions in fields near their small town routinely got blown up. The town mobilized to force the Russians to clean that up and take it away.
I've never seen or read anything about WWII or any war that I thought was honest until recently. Robert Fisk and Chris Hedges seem pretty good. I worked at a shop where all the other four guys had been in Vietnam, including a Vietnamese guy who had been in ARVN as a truck mechanic. They were still fucked up in strange ways I didn't understand. The ARVN was the worst. We hated eachother. `
I've watch The Best Years of Our Lives several time and it doesn't get anywhere near what I remember of the late 40s when I was just beginning to become aware of the world around me. But I agree with Agee, you want it to be a good movie, but it just isn't.
Hey, ironies. I got a call last night from a screenwriter who wants to talk about the disability rights movement. God only knows what will happen to this story. Heart warming success ... what a crock.
CG