Movie Quote of the Day (‘The Bridges at Toko-Ri,’ on ‘The Sacrifices of a Few’ in War)

[A WWII veteran, Lt. Harry Brubaker, has been drafted back into service in the Korean War as a Naval Reserve pilot, and asked to undertake a dangerous new mission.]

Rear Adm. George Tarrant [played by Fredric March]: “Son, whatever progress this world has made, it's always been because of the efforts and the sacrifices of a few.”

Lt. Harry Brubaker [played by William Holden, pictured]: “I was one of the few, Admiral, at New Guinea, Leyte, Okinawa. Why does it have to be me again?”

Tarrant: “Nobody ever knows why he gets the dirty job. And this is a dirty job.”— The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954), screenplay by Valentine Davies, adapted from the novel by James Michener, directed by Mark Robson

I have known about this movie for quite a while, but had never seen it till this weekend, when I watched it in preparation for a talk next month on one of its stars, Grace Kelly (who plays Holden's loyal but worried wife). This quote seems especially appropriate on Veterans Day.

The screenplay is not everything it could have been, but it captures quite well the ambivalence that even the best service personnel, like Tarrant and Brubaker, feel about such conflicts. 

And the Oscar-winning special effects powerful approximate the visceral sensations involved with flying into the form of hell known as the combat zone—something that most of us will, fortunately, never experience firsthand.