The Voice Of One Crying Out In Suburbia

Wow, something profound from TV Guide.com!

This was well put and obviously well thoguht out, especially the last line!


>>>Movies in Time: The Lost Battalion
Does anybody remember the World War I veteran? Thanks to Tom Brokaw, Stephen Ambrose, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, World War II veterans are deified. Vietnam veterans have a memorial in Washington, D.C. The lasting popularity of M*A*S*H assures that the Korean War will never be forgotten. Yet there is only a handful of living survivors from the Great War, and virtually all of them are over 100 years old. What are we doing to honor them? The History Channel aired this 2001 fact-based drama about 600 Americans surrounded in the Ardennes by the Kaiser's divisions. Led by Maj. Charles Whittlesey (Rick Schroeder) — a lawyer — this motley collection of Irish, Jewish, Polish and Italian "New York gangsters" repulsed wave after wave of attacks, weathered friendly artillery fire and endured a five-day siege with little food, water and medicine before being relieved. Of the 600 who entered the siege, fewer than 200 emerged unscathed. Schroeder brings a square-jawed innocence to Whittlesey, who clings to his position despite the catastrophic losses to his command. "Life would be a lot simpler if we could choose our duties and obligations," he tells a subordinate. "But we can't and we shouldn't." Whittlesey's devotion cost him dearly. Although he won the Medal of Honor, he committed suicide three years later. (I doubt that sort of thing would go over well on JAG.) My grandfather, Sgt. Frank Donnelly, enlisted in the U.S. Army at 15, and after chasing Pancho Villa into Mexico, "Pap-Pap" fought in the trenches of France, where he earned the Purple Heart. A surgeon wanted to amputate my grandfather's leg, but Pap Pap managed to talk him out of it by pointing his .45 automatic pistol in the man's face. Suffice it to say, the casualties were staggering. "In less than four months," said author John Mosier (The Myth of the Great War), "we lost more men than in the entire Vietnam War." Pap-Pap died before I was born, so in tribute to him and to all the other Great War veterans, I wish to say this: Any talk about a "Greatest Generation" is a crock. As far as I'm concerned, any generation that contains people willing to risk their lives, their happiness and their sanity for a cause greater than themselves is pretty damn great. (Unless of course, you're willing to blow yourself up to kill innocent people, in which case you're simply an ass.)<<<