[After a mild
start, it ended up being a long, cold, 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 weekend post on one of our most recent warmings.]
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. Earlier this year, 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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