We Were Soldiers?
No, they were soldiers. We were just forgetful.

By Michael Long, a director of the White House Writers Group.
March 19, 2002 9:10 a.m.

t is encouraging to believe a notion that is very popular just now: that baby boomers — that's my generation — rose up as one to demand that the entertainment community pay tribute to the "Greatest Generation," who fought and died in WWII.

It's a sentiment offered as fact in many corners — and recently on NRO — but it's just not true.

The notion that boomers launched all this cheerleading for the Allies is made possible partly by forgetfulness, and partly by very wishful thinking. What really happened to get those "tribute" movies made — and there have in fact only been a couple of them — was what always happens in the movie business: Filmmakers set out in search of a great story to tell that would look good on the screen, and that would make money.

Saving Private Ryan is usually cited as the first expression of a supposed generational epiphany. However, the movie was conceived not as homage but "simply as a badass Second World War movie," according to its director, Steven Spielberg, who said so in an interview with Stephen Dubner of the UK's Guardian Unlimited. The notion of Private Ryan as tribute came after its release — a welcome outcome, but a far cry from the now-popular idea that it was Hollywood's portion of the virtuous expression of a suddenly grateful nation.

Perhaps Spielberg decided to make it a tribute during production? "[T]alking to veterans during research 'sobered me up'," the director told Dubner, but the effect was not to inspire tribute, but to "push the film towards the grimmest realities: fear, boredom, killing."

Ryan wasn't conceived as a "thank you" at all, and neither were the WWII films that came after. For instance, Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, released within weeks of Private Ryan, had just about nothing to do with honoring our soldiers. An overblown exercise in thinking out loud, CNN movie critic Paul Tatara got it right when he said the movie should have been called Patrolling the Area for Godot. 2001's Enemy at the Gates is a character study of WWII snipers, one German and one Russian. Both men (and by its silence on the matter, their causes) are presented as moral equals.

There has been no Hollywood response because there has been no public demand. Most people don't even know the simplest facts of American history, let alone those of the Second World War.

In a 2000 survey of seniors at the top 55 universities in America, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni found that four-fifths of these "elite" students didn't know who led the USSR during the war. Almost two-thirds didn't know that the Battle of the Bulge occurred during the war. One third couldn't identify Germany's Axis partners from a list. (However, 98 percent identified Snoop Dogg as a rapper. Really.)

Overall, the report found that four out of five seniors scored either a "D" or an "F" on a widely used high-school exam on American history — and these are our best students, who have been exposed to the material relatively recently. It is hardly likely that the typical Boomer knows much more, and certainly not enough to create a demand heard all the way in Hollywood to start praising their "wartime heroes."

None of this takes away the achievement of Saving Private Ryan in (somewhat accidentally) raising public awareness of the terrible necessity of war, and in its (perhaps inadvertent) honoring of the men who fight it on our behalf — men who, since Vietnam, have had their sacrifice swept under the rug by the arbiters of popular culture. But it should put the lie to the self-flattery that there was a generational outcry for such a thing.

If anyone deserves extra credit for focusing attention on the 1940s, it is Steven Spielberg and Ryan star Tom Hanks in their work after the film. The two men who have channeled American appreciation into support for a World War II Memorial on the National Mall, and for the National D-Day Museum. In addition, recent, powerful films on war after WWII deserve notice for clearly explaining war: Black Hawk Down told the American story in Somalia, and We Were Soldiers restored some honor to our fight in Vietnam.

Let's stop congratulating ourselves for remembering what should never have been forgotten. The lion's share of the tribute our veterans now enjoy came from a serendipitous connection between Hollywood's love of a good story, and our own blessed sense of collective obligation — which was awakened in us, and not by us, just in time, before the last of these heroes are gone.