Axar.az presents an article, "Veterans At Home​" by John Samuel Tieman.

You're a war veteran. What are your favorite war movies?

I am alternately drawn to, and disturbed by, war movies. But it's not for the reasons a lot of people think. A lot of folks think that a war movie, verisimilitude notwithstanding, can never depict war. I'm an artist. I don't ask the artifact to be the war. I just ask the art to give meaning to witness. Those are the movies I like, the ones that give witness. I don't like most war movies, because there is nothing transcendent. I don't like shoot-em-ups. All they do is remind me that, when I was a soldier, I was violent. Here's one thing I like. Some of the best war movies are not about war. They are about coming home from war. They are about finding meaning in witness. That's one thing I like.

What follows is personal, just a sample of movies I like. I will illustrate this not by talking about whole movies, but by centering on great scenes.

The Best Years Of Our Lives

A trivia question. What movie won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1946? “It's A Wonderful Life”? Lawrence Olivier's “Henry V”? Darryl F. Zanuck's “The Razor's Edge”, which is based on the 1944 Somerset Maugham novel?

No. The movie that won is the movie that 16 million returning veterans wanted to see, “The Best Years Of Our Lives”, the movie about three combat veterans readjusting to civilian life.

Harold Russell won two Academy Awards for the same role. Russell plays Homer Parrish, a disabled ex-sailor. While serving as a paratrooper, Russell in fact lost both hands.

In what could be called a reverse bedroom scene, Homer's fiancee, Wilma, played by Cathy O'Donnell, comes by to break their engagement. Wilma is reluctant to leave Homer, but her parents want to send her away. “I want you to be free, Wilma, to live your own life. I don't want you tied down forever just because you've got a kind heart,” Homer tells her.

He tells her further that she really doesn't know what she's getting into. “I'm going upstairs to bed. I wantcha -- I want ya to come up and see for yourself what happens.”

She follows Homer to his bedroom. He takes off his pajama top with surprising dexterity. Then he stands before her, his harness and hooks displayed. He wiggles out of the harness and tosses it on the bed. With his left stub, he points to the harness and says, “This is when I know I'm helpless. My hands are down there on the bed. I can't put them on again without calling to somebody for help. I can't smoke a cigarette or read a book. If that door should blow shut, I can't open it and get out of this room. I'm as dependent as a baby that doesn't know how to get anything except to cry for it.” To her credit, she marries him.

There are a couple of things that make this scene powerful. Russell, in a sense, isn't acting. “This is when I know I'm helpless.” He speaks for almost all war veterans, the wounded and the whole. Why? Almost all war veterans, the occasional sociopath notwithstanding, are psychologically wounded. This woundedness is compounded frequently by a feeling of isolation. Homer is luckier than most. He is able to share his pain with Wilma.

Born On The 4^th Of July

The film depicts the life of Ron Kovic, played by Tom Cruise. Over a 20-year period, it details his childhood, his teenage years, his military service, and the paralysis he suffered because of the Vietnam War. It chronicles his transition from unquestioning Marine to anti-war activist.

Ron Kovic came home from the war. He spent a lot of years drunk. He spent a lot of years lost. I think there are a lot of war veterans who can identify with those lost years, this veteran included. He gets into a fight with another veteran, Charlie, played by Willem Defoe. To whom he says, after the fight, “I had a mother; I had a father, things – things that made sense. Do you remember things that made sense? Things you could count on? Before we all got so lost?”

Jaws

A seemingly odd choice. But there's this old joke among war vets. You know the difference between a war story and a fairy tale? A fairy tale starts, “Once upon a time,” and a war story starts, “Now this here ain't no b/s.”

I love a great story. And every war vet has at least one story that, as the bard says, “would harrow up thy soul.”

I mention this movie because of one scene only, a great scene, a story told by Quint, the captain of the ship that chases the shark. Amid much drinking aboard his vessel, Quint recalls the 1945 sinking of his cruiser, the U. S. S. Indianapolis. Quint spent four days in the water waiting for rescue. Hundreds around him were eaten by sharks. For Quint, hunting sharks is all about his war. It is his way to revisit his trauma, and this time, hopefully, fix it.

Quint's mesmerizing tale is based on a true story. Of 1,196 folks aboard the cruiser, only 316 survived. And yes, hundreds, by sharks. And this here ain't no b/s.

Robert Shaw, who played Quint, completely rewrote the monologue, which director Steven Spielberg came to regard as one of the best scenes he ever shot. Originally, mention of the Indianapolis was just a passing reference to Quint's familiarity with sharks.

“For he today that sheds his blood with me, shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile...” Wasn't that what “Henry V” said? I used to wonder about this good old boy I used to see at a V. F. W. hall. He was a physician at the St. Louis University hospital. But, during World War II, he was a pharmacist's mate on a submarine. Once a month, he'd meet with his old shipmates. Working men. I used to wonder about that. The physician and the plumber.

I went to a reunion of my Nam unit, the 4^th Infantry Division. I always avoided these things, but this time the 4^th was meeting here in my hometown, St. Louis. I spent the evening talking to a guy who, today, is a crane operator. The Ph. D. and the high school dropout.

And what draws us together? Memories? A few laughs? No, what draws us together is a terrible knowledge. And while art cannot replicate the experience, it can, in fact, give that knowledge meaning. As for the experience per se, that's what reunions are for.

As for the movies. Why are so many good war movies really coming home movies?

There are a lot of other movies I could mention. “The Deer Hunter”. “The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit”. “Coming Home”. “Johnny Got His Gun”. Or, for that matter, “Rambo”. My point is this. It took me a lot of therapy to learn a simple truth. I will never recall The Nam and not be sad. But I don't hate the army. I hate what I became because of war. Sometimes art, for an hour or two, gives that meaning.