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.

Photo of the Day: Field of Heroes, Fort Lee High School, NJ

This past Saturday, driving on Lemoine Avenue in Fort Lee, N.J., I was struck by a remarkable sight on the left hand side of the road: thousands of flags on the front lawn of Fort Lee High School. I had to pull over to the side of the road, park, and take a picture of this. I suspected that the display had been put up around Veterans Day, but wondered how much longer it would stay there.

In answer to the latter question, it turned out, not for long—a post on the school’s Web site indicated that members of the student council and the band were due to remove them this afternoon. But this is not the first time they were up—the 5,000 flags honoring veterans and emergency service personnel first appeared three years ago and have been placed on the lawn at least twice since then. I sure hope we’ll see them again next year, too.

I could not let this occasion go by without thanking the school and its students for this visually powerful, profoundly moving tribute to American heroes who, at constant risk to their own lives, strive to keep the rest of us safe.

Quote of the Day (Tim O'Brien, on Going to War ‘Without Knowing Why’)

“It was my view then, and still is, that you don't make war without knowing why. Knowledge of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can't fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can't make them undead.”— Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried (1990)