[After a mild start, it ended up being a long, cold, very wintry winter. But all winters end, metaphorically as well as seasonally, and in this week’s series I’ll be AmericanStudying a few cultural and historical such American thaws—leading up to a crowd-sourced weekend post on what Spring means to you in literature, culture, history, and more!]
On an amazing
moment of wartime humanity.
I’ve written many
times here about the toll that war takes on all who fight and encounter it,
and most especially about the way it requires
a loss of humanity that is as damaging to those who lose it as it is to
those they attack or destroy. A few years back, for example, I had a similar
response to Clint
Eastwood’s new film American Sniper,
and specifically to the bigoted
and hateful perpectives of the real soldier, Chris Kyle, on whose
autobiography that film was based (and in which he expressed those perspectives
clearly and proudly). Without excusing Kyle’s individual responsibility for his
own perspective and words, that is, it seems clear to me, as I wrote in a
Facebook post on Kyle and the film, that he was, in those perspectives as
much as in his talents as a killer, “perfect for war. Which makes a perfect image
for how horrible war is and always will be.”
I would stand by
that perspective, on the film and its subject and more importantly on war
overall. Which makes this
unbelievable and unbelievably moving story, of a moment of shared humanity
during World War II and all that followed it, even more striking and worth
remembering and sharing. Honestly, I don’t want to take up any more of your
reading time with this post, when I can ask you to read that story instead. If
there’s a better example of the possibility of warmth, empathy, and even love,
amidst the coldest, darkest kinds of human conflict and brutality, I don’t know
it.
Last thaw
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other thaws you’d highlight?
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