Sheepdog Tip of the Day, After Combat tip 99
Steven Spielberg's motion picture Saving Private Ryan gives us an incredibly realistic depiction of the violence and horror of combat. This movie is something which, like sex, can be child abuse if inflicted upon children, but for adults it can provide us with a wonderful model for behavior when we talk about choosing life not death. Let me tell you what Saving Private Ryan means to me. A band of U.S. Army Rangers go behind enemy lines, where each man, one by one, dies to save one young paratrooper: Private Ryan. To me that band of Rangers represents every American warrior who ever willingly gave his life to give us the freedom, the lives and the liberty that we have today. Those Rangers are the boys who fell at Lexington and Concord, and they are bloody windrows of bodies at Shilo and Gettysburg. They are trenches full of blood in the Ardennes Forest, and they are a bloody tide of bodies at Normandy Beach and Iwo Jima. They are more than 300 police officers and firefighters rushing up the steps of the World Trade Center, and they represent the cop who died yesterday, alone and afraid on a dirty street, somewhere in America. That band of Rangers is every warrior who ever died to give us what we have today. Private Ryan is us. He is every citizen who is alive and free today because two centuries of warriors have gone before us and purchased at the ultimate price what we have today. Do you remember the end of the movie, when the last ranger, Captain Miller, lay dying on the bridge? He looks up at Ryan, he looks up at us, and what are his dying words? "Earn this. Earn it." Earn it. Be worthy. Don't waste it. Two centuries of warriors look up from their graves in this dark hour, they look up from the rubble of the World Trade Center, and their message is, "Earn it." We can never truly earn what has been purchased at the ultimate price, but we can do our best. Our model is Private Ryan. Do you remember the old man at the very end of the movie standing over the grave of his comrades with his grandbabies and his great-grandbabies bouncing all around him? He looks over at his wife, and says, "Tell me I've led a good life. Tell me I've been a good man."
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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