The Burden of Heroes

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And also shutting up about what you did later?

It's something like you're holding your soul in. You're just not baring it. It's something that is private, and if you brought it out, you might bring out a lot of bad stuff with it. Ira Hayes, in the scene on the train says, in effect, Wouldn't it be great if the other guys--meaning the other three compadres who are dead--could be here on this train eating with silverware and all these niceties? Hayes is in a drunken stupor, and he just says, "We shouldn't be here." And that sort of sums the whole thing up. They were beginning to realize that maybe they should either be back with their units or home.

Sinking back into anonymity.

Which had its costs. The idea of post-traumatic stress wasn't around in those days. It used to be called shell shock, and they were told, "Go home, and get over it." I met with a lot of vets. I went to a 60th anniversary [of the war] in San Francisco, and there was a panel of vets. All of them, to a man, said that they'd only come out in the last couple of years. One guy I talked to was Danny Thomas, who was a corpsman like Bradley--same decorations and everything. He said it took him 55 years before he could talk about it even in passing. And he had never married, and he never had children. He said, "I missed a lot of life because I could never adjust."

In light of stories like that, do you think WW II permanently changed our definition of heroism, especially battlefield heroism?

I think so. If you go back and think of the romance of WW I, you think of the pilots flying these Spads, and if they shot a guy down--and he'd be in a parachute--instead of shooting him, they'd salute him, you know. There was a certain gallantry, a certain code. I remember my dad took me to see Sergeant York when I was a kid, and I was taken by the fact that it was a story about a guy who was a conscientious objector but was a great shot with a rifle. But in the end, he just goes out and gets the job done. He too sort of represented the character of America at that time.

And now?

You know, heroism is so much different now. I think everyone is looking for who's the hero that is going to get us out of what we're in now. I heard somebody on the radio the other day--one of these talk shows--saying, "Oh, where's the new General Patton? Where's the guy who says, 'I don't give a s___ what the politicians want--this is what we should do.'" Well, that era's gone.

The military is so bureaucratized now. It's hard for a guy to assert that kind of will. He's going to end up a major on a base in New Mexico. He's not going to be a Colin Powell.

No, no--Powell's always been a person who likes to take the conservative way. He certainly isn't militant military. At least we don't picture him that way. Whether he could do the Pattonesque thing, I don't know.

Modern war almost in its nature negates the possibility of heroism as it was traditionally understood.