canyonwalker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
canyonwalker) wrote2023-01-30 09:49 pm
canyonwalker) wrote2023-01-30 09:49 pm
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Band of Brothers: Where Do They Go from Here?
Most true-life stories, and even a few fictional ones, end with a "Where Do They Go from Here?" scene. Band of Brothers is no exception. Especially because all of its characters are real-life people, and many of them were interviewed for the movie.
One thing I liked about BoB's "Where Do They Go?" montage at the end is that not everyone Lived Happily Ever After. In popular glorification of WWII and the the men who fought it there's a trope that they returned from victory on the battlefield, took jobs, and became captains of industry. They're dubbed The Greatest Generation. The idyllic America they supposedly built in the 1950s and early 60s is the one conservatives mean with their slogan, "Make American Great Again!" Yes, some of the soldiers of Easy Company went on to public success in their post-war lives. Others went on to success on a smaller scale. And some genuinely struggled.
Seeing that range of lives described in this widely publicized retelling is significant to me, personally, because the one relative of mine who served in WWII did not springboard from it into great things in life. He came home from the Pacific scarred from battle emotionally. He almost never told war stories. He'd fought in countless battles and considered virtually all of them too painful, too barbaric, or both, to recount. Instead of becoming a captain of industry he took a quiet job with an insurance company and supported his mother until her death decades later. He never raised a family. He died at age 92 in the same house he was born in. In his own way he did what was right; it's just not the stuff of popular lore.
One thing I liked about BoB's "Where Do They Go?" montage at the end is that not everyone Lived Happily Ever After. In popular glorification of WWII and the the men who fought it there's a trope that they returned from victory on the battlefield, took jobs, and became captains of industry. They're dubbed The Greatest Generation. The idyllic America they supposedly built in the 1950s and early 60s is the one conservatives mean with their slogan, "Make American Great Again!" Yes, some of the soldiers of Easy Company went on to public success in their post-war lives. Others went on to success on a smaller scale. And some genuinely struggled.
Seeing that range of lives described in this widely publicized retelling is significant to me, personally, because the one relative of mine who served in WWII did not springboard from it into great things in life. He came home from the Pacific scarred from battle emotionally. He almost never told war stories. He'd fought in countless battles and considered virtually all of them too painful, too barbaric, or both, to recount. Instead of becoming a captain of industry he took a quiet job with an insurance company and supported his mother until her death decades later. He never raised a family. He died at age 92 in the same house he was born in. In his own way he did what was right; it's just not the stuff of popular lore.