Movie Quote of the Day (‘Best Years of Our Lives,’ on the Bond Between Veterans)

Homer Parrish (played by Harold Russell): “I was afraid you wouldn't be able to stand up for me.”

Fred Derry (played by Dana Andrews): “I'd stand up for you, kid, till I drop.”— The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), screenplay by Robert E. Sherwood based on the novel Glory for Me by MacKinlay Kantor, directed by William Wyler

The Best Years of Our Lives won seven Oscars (including Best Picture) and was the most successful American film since Gone With the Wind seven years before. In contrast to the Civil War epic, William Wyler’s film concentrates wholly on the aftermath of WWII, through three soldiers suffering, in one form or another, dislocation as they re-adjust to civilian life.

The men’s alienation from their environment is enormous. It’s not just that they themselves have been changed by their experiences abroad, but the home front has been altered in ways that profoundly discomfort them. Al (played by Fredric March, far right in the picture) finds his job at his bank, once so important, now utterly meaningless. Homer (played by Russell, an actual disabled vet), burnt during an attack at sea, wonders if his fiancée will stay with him because of their prewar love or because she pities his prosthetic hooks. And Dana Andrews’ Fred may face the most complicated set of emotions: a wife who he discovers really doesn’t love him, his old job as a soda jerk that offers no advancement, and nightmares that remind him of his terrors as a bomber pilot.

Al, Homer and Fred are so different that there is a real question whether they would co-exist in the same realm under normal circumstances. But the war was anything but normal. Their experiences have so seared them that they must reach out to each other for support amid a world that, no matter how hard it tries, cannot imagine what they have endured. I can’t think of a better film to watch this Veterans Day.

Bonus Quote of the Day (James Jones, on the WWII Vets, Afterward)

“So slowly it faded, leaving behind it a whole generation of men who would walk into history looking backwards, peering forever over their shoulders behind them, at their own lengthening shadows trailing across the earth. None of them would ever really get over it.” — James Jones, WWII: A Chronicle of Soldiering (1975)

Today marks the 70^th anniversary of V-J (Victory over Japan) Day, the announcement that Japan would cease fighting and that WWII was effectively over. Few American households were unaffected by the experience of that conflict—and, despite the euphoria over its successful conclusion, From Here to Eternity author James Jones got it exactly right: The young men who fought to redress the catastrophic failures of two decades of diplomacy didn’t get over what they saw and experienced in the Pacific and Europe.

How could they? How could anybody?

All the more reason to honor their sacrifices—which, given the bright hopes of these youths going in, are far greater than we will ever be able to imagine.

(The image accompanying this post comes from The Best Years of Our Lives, the Oscar-winning 1946 postwar drama starring, from left to right, Harold Russell, Dana Andrews and Fredric March as veterans returning home as men changed utterly by the conflict, to a world that has altered just as significantly in their absence.)