During the past two weeks, I discovered a program that was broadcast on the PBS network and which ran from 9 p.m. til around 11 or 11:30 p.m. almost every night. The program was titled simply "The War" and it was a documentary put together about World War II, the fighting in both the Pacific and European theaters. A very compelling piece of television journalism, for sure.
Just wondering -after the fact now though-if anyone else of my readers might also have seen this and what their opinions were of this program too.
I'm not sure exactly how to word this because of the nature of this program. To say I really liked it, or enjoyed it immensely, considering it is a program that uses actual video footage from various sources, and shows the reality of war -the pain, misery, anguish that it entails -so I'm kind of confused and words escape me now to tell about this program.
It is first and foremost, I think, shocking to watch and learn the horrors of war!
Sure, by now, as adults (I'm assuming those reading this post are all adults) we should already have some awareness of war and what transpires then and there. But until you see it, as it is shown in this documentary, I don't think it really does fully hit home as to how truly sickening war is to those who are involved and on the front lines.
Many of us, no doubt, have seen various movies that depict (some more accurately than others -i.e. Saving Private Ryan, or Pearl Harbor, or Platoon and a plethora of other movies about various wars) but watching a movie where you know it is not really happening, even though it may be a story about an event that did happen, you still know it is a fictionalized account in most of these cases.
To watch this documentary though and see what the soldiers actually endured, as well as many scenes about the people affected by the battles too, at least for my part, made me think in terms of "What can be done by the general public to avoid the possibility, the probability, of anything like this continuing to happen again?"
This program also has interviews with men mainly, but a few women, who saw this event unfold before their own eyes, who participated in this or that battle, who trained specifically for certain landings and attacks, and those people all provided even more insight into the necessity then for not just our country, but for all countries, world-wide, to strive for peaceful coexistence.
How anyone can watch something like this, particularly the parts were the soldiers reached the concentration camps and those people imprisoned there who managed to survive were finally freed, if there are still folks who can watch those portions and then turn around and declare that the holocaust never happened, I personally think those individuals must be in severe need of psychiatric care!
The events of World War II are not something I recall because I was born near the end of the war and only learned bits and pieces about it via history books in my educational process. Why it is that I especially do like to read both true accounts of the events of this war and any others too for that matter, or fictionalized stories too about various wars, I really can't say how that happens to be the case for me. I'm far from being a war monger but yet, reading about historical events under either of these circumstances (factual or fictional) has always been a type of reading that was high on my list of "likes."
One would hope that by learning as much as possible about something as terrible and atrocious as war is, would create a longing then to try to work, even in the smallest way, as one person, towards seeing that society stays away from actions that cause millions of people to die.
Probably a bit too simplistic a theory there but as I am only one person who sees things this way, if any others feel the same as I do, perhaps we can make ourselves heard, one voice at a time, if that is what it takes, and if it would help, in any way, to stop the destruction from happening, over and over, again and again.
Peace now. Peace today. Peace tomorrow.
Would that someday it no longer is just wishful thinking is what I pray.
1 comment:
Mark really gets into this kind of documentary too. I think there is definitely something to the fact that coming to an understanding about what really happened breeds a sense of compassion as well as a passion not to let these things happen again. Without that knowledge, how can any of us manage to care one way or another about war?
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