The end of a lazy but good weekend.

Had all sorts of plans for this weekend, most of which never materialized. Funny how that happens. I was going to head down to Austin to visit a gun show Saturday and check out the state history museum down there with a friend and his family, and then I was going to go up to Dallas Sunday to visit with another buddy (one of the Enchanted Rock campers). We were going to go to visit some gun store he's found up there and eat some nice food, and then see "Flags of our Fathers", which both of us were dying to see. I ended up not connecting with ether guy, sleeping in both days, doing about 5 loads of laundry (sheets and bedspreads and shit), cleaning up around my desk, going through and then throwing away a lot of old magazines and catalogs that have been piling up for months. Finally, I ended up spending Sunday afternoon with the folks and my sister, eating mom's fabulous spaghetti and taking my sister to see the 5pm showing of "Flags". What an amazing film.

Some of you may be disappointed to know that this isn't really a film about the Battle of Iwo Jima. Like the John Wayne classic, "Sands of Iwo Jima", this is really a film about the men who were there and what they went through before and after. It's about the flag raising, the men who did it, and what happened to them later. But It's really about how important that flag raising picture was to the people at the home front, and how the government used it to raise billions of dollars to help fund the war effort as it was grinding down to the end. The film is very moving, as I expected it to be. The scenes with the author interviewing the old veterans who are remembering the events of the war, and the story of the author and his elderly father had me just about balling. It was all I could do to restrain myself from blubbering like a fool. My sister too. Every time I see a film like this, like the opening and ending scenes in "Saving Private Ryan" where Ryan as an old man is walking through the cemetery, it makes me think how short a time I have left with my dad, how much I'll miss him one day, and how much I love him. We're losing about 1500 WW2 veterans a day now. One of these days, probably not too far in the future, my own father will be part of that statistic. We owe those guys everything we have. They gave us a huge inheritance, and I'm afraid it's being slowly pissed away. It makes me very mad to see it.

The scenes of the preparation and the battle are amazing, and the scenes of the bond drive after the battle (the events are interwoven back and forth throughout the film) are very moving and tragic, particularly when it comes to the story of Ira Hayes. Tony Curtis played Hayes in a movie back in the early 60s that is actually very good, but this version is much better. You see how he was repeatedly degraded by everyone along the way, and how he had no chance to grieve for his comrades who were lost, resorting to the temporary comfort of the bottle to deal with it all. Hayes' story is really the story of how combat screws you up for ever, and how some guys deal with it a bit better than others, but how you are never really the same. It's something we know a lot more about now, and something we need to always remember.

I was basically aware of much of the story going in to the film, even though I've never read the book that the film is based on. It's a story that's been told before, but this retelling is well worth seeing. The things they can do now with computer graphics makes you think you are seeing the real events unfold in front of you. It all amazes me, but the heart of this film, and the real value of it is in the emotion that comes from the human story. It's about these guys and their families. The mothers and the fathers, and the nation that desperately needed these heroes, who protested over and over that they were not really heroes. It's for all the sons who have never really been able to know their dads, and what they went through as young men. I've been saving pictures off the web ever since I've had this friggin thing, and a few are from Iwo. If you go to see the film, make sure you stick around and sit through the end credits. They show a lot of pictures like these that brings the events of the film into focus again. Here are the real guys. Enjoy.

The landing craft moving in to the beach.


Artillery shelling Japanese positions.


Supply ships unloading all the stuff they needed to fight the battle.


Marines, living and dead, strewn along the beach.


A Marine with a Thompson, taking aim.


The detritus of war, with Mount Surobatchi in the background.