Last week, we lost Cpt. Haldane (Scott Gibson), picked off by a sniper. It was horrible and sad. I didn't think they could actually make me feel worse about a soldier's death. And I was very wrong about that.
Watching John Basilone (Jon Seda) finally manage to be able to return to active duty after suffering so long as a hero in name, but only in action past, filled me with a mix of understanding and sadness. I never doubted he would return to the war, never doubted that he had any other goals. That he had lost his best friend and that so many of his friends had stayed behind to fight and to die while he was given so many favours and was safe at home never sat well with him.
So he returns and begins training the new recruits. He doesn't want them going in feeling as useless and unsure of themselves has he had his first time, and he proves himself a leader as compassionate and wonderful as Haldane.
Next, he meets a woman. A woman whom he considers superior to all the other women he has ever met in his life, Lena Riggi (Annie Parisse). Most men, when they meet that woman, they marry her, and John was no exception. He wooed and won himself the perfect bride.
And then he had a choice - he could go home when his term of duty ended, or he could renew it and stay with his men. And I knew the choice that a man like John Basilone would make. He stayed on. And he went to Iwo Jima. And although he did a wonderful job rallying his men, he was shot down the first day of combat, and never saw his wife again.
It's very much the tragic Hollywood story, meant to draw our tears. But it is history, not just a story. John Basilone lived once. He had a wife and family, and he had friends. And he chose to stay with those friends, to continue to fight for his country, for his family, and for his wife, and he died for them.
That fight was so long ago, it's harder to understand why he fought. He could have gone home. He could have lived. He could still be alive today, or at least have lived into this century. But he chose to fight. And I can't be upset with him, no matter how sad it makes me, because, while he was a man who could have lived with a lot of things, he could never have lived with hearing the casualty rates from Iwo Jima and not thought to himself "How many of those men might have lived had I been there to help them?"
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