Tag Archives: War Movies

War Movies 3: “Hamburger Hill.”

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“Hamburger Hill” (1987) follows the misfortunes of a squad (the smallest Army unit) of the 101st Airborne Division[1] in the Spring 1969 fighting in Vietnam, Republic of.

The squad is led by Sergeant (Sgt.) Frantz, an able veteran who is returned to the unit after the military police arrested him for over-staying leave.  His squad mixes blacks and whites; and “short-timers” (men counting down their year-and-a-day tour of duty), veterans, and “FNGs” (Fucking New Guys who don’t know how to do anything and who will be killed or cause other people to be killed through their ignorance).  The constant bickering inside the group reflects these tensions, but slowly gives way to group solidarity; the FNGs rapidly mature into good soldiers.  In both cases, it is the shared experience of combat that changes men.

The squad forms part of a platoon, nominally under the command of a new lieutenant named Eden, but actually run by the veteran top sergeant, Worcester.  That is as far as visible authority goes in the movie.  The higher order–company, battalion, regiment, and division—appear only briefly as disembodied voices on the radio.

One common image of the Vietnam War is of a guerrilla war: suspicion of a civilian population that seems uninvolved in the war and only interested in gouging money out of the G.I.s; big sweeps through the boonies by American forces searching for contact with the Viet Cong (VC, Victor Charlie); brief fire-fights before the enemy fades away into the jungle.

That is not what happens in this movie.  Instead, we witness an assault on a heavily entrenched position defended by North Vietnamese Army (NVA) regulars.  The “American way of war” portrayed here relies upon the use of technology.  On the one hand, soldiers ride to war in helicopters that move them rapidly over long distances.[2]  On the other hand, the Americans apply massive firepower.  The infantry spray fire from automatic rifles (M-16s), light machine guns (M-60s), and grenade launchers (M-1s); they call in “fire missions” from artillery (whenever they talk to “Coldsteel” on the radio); they are supported by airstrikes from helicopter gunners and jets dropping napalm (jellied gasoline).  Even so, it all comes down to the “grunts.”          References to American popular culture of the era show the men to be part of mainstream culture: they listen to Motown or country-and-Western music (which is meant to show the distortions of military recruiting); they admire muscle cars in Road and Track and the Zeppelin-breasted models in Playboy.  Yet the references to “hairheads” and college students back home, and the lack of support from both politicians and the media show a growing estrangement from that society.  Back home, people were discussing the “Generation Gap.”  In this movie we see a different gap, one that continues to trouble us to this day: the gap between those who do military service and those who do not.[3]  What can a country ask of it citizens, what does a citizen owe?

[1] The “Screaming Eagles,” are also at the center of the HBO series “Band of Brothers.”

[2] The origins and first use of this method is portrayed in “We Were Soldiers” (2002), based on the book We Were Soldiers Once…and Young (1992) by Lt. Gen. Harold Moore (ret.) and Joseph Galloway.

[3] Former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican Senator John McCain, Democratic Senator John Kerry, and former Democratic Senator Bob Kerry all served in Vietnam.  Former Presidents Bill Clinton, Democrat, and George W, Bush, Republican, did not.  Nor did I…nor did anyone I know.

War Movies 2: “Currahee.”

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How do you transform people from civilian volunteers into excellent soldiers?  E/”Easy” Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment (P.I.R.), 101st Airborne Division, United States Army, provides a case study.

The company consisted of three rifle platoons and a headquarters unit.  Each platoon consisted of three rifle squads and a mortar section.  Each rifle squad consisted of twelve infantrymen; each mortar team of six men.  Each rifle squad had one machine gun; each mortar team had one 60-mm mortar.  In sum, nine rifle squads and three mortar sections, 135 men with  semi-automatic rifles, carbines, and sub-machine guns, nine light machine guns, three mortars.  That was a lot of firepower.  They would need it.

The idea behind paratroopers was to drop them behind enemy lines before an attack so that they could seize key points of communication.  This would disrupt enemy communications and hold open the door for advancing ground forces.  In one of the most dramatic and bloody fights of the war, German paratroopers had stormed Crete from the air.   Now the British and Americans hoped to do the same on the grand scale.  The paratroopers would be out on the end of a limb until the ground forces arrived.  Skills and toughness would be essential to success—and to survival.

A crude camp near Toccoa, Georgia, in the Piedmont region and close to the South Carolina line, served as the initial training site.  The soldiers were all very young when they began training.  Most of the officers ranged in age between 22 and 25.  Most of the enlisted men ranged in age between 18 and 23.  They were young and impressionable.  They had grown up during the Depression, when nobody gave you anything for free.

Lieutenant, later Captain Herbert Sobel (1912-1987), commanded the company during its training.  Sobel drove his men ruthlessly to achieve the highest standing in physical fitness and military training.  Long marches, lectures on military subjects, calisthenics, weapons training, numerous inspections with minute infractions punished by cancellation of week-end passes, and frequent timed runs up the neighboring Mount Currahee—“three miles up, three miles down”—did the job.  The regiment’s commander judged Sobel’s company to be the finest in the regiment.  Then came parachute training and test jumps.  Five jumps in one day and “anyone who hesitates in the door will be immediately removed from the paratroopers.”  Then came “war games” in North Carolina as companies were forged into battalions, battalions into regiments, and regiments into divisions.  As more and more men failed to make the cut, the survivors could regard themselves as a special group of men who had shared many hardships.  Of this, comradeship began to be born.

In early 1944 the regiment shipped out for Britain.  Here the training became even more intense, but also more focused on combat operations.  Stresses and strains developed.  Whatever Captain Sobel’s achievements as a trainer, his unsympathetic character left him estranged from his men.  He initiated court-martial proceedings against his own Executive Officer, Lieutenant Richard Winters, in what might be taken to be a case of petty abuse.  Worse, he showed signs of being a poor tactical leader when all minds had turned to the coming jump into German-held territory.  Easy Company’s sergeants offered to resign their ratings and requested transfer to another unit rather than serve with Sobel in combat.  Sobel soon found himself transferred to other duties with the regimental headquarters.  Lieutenant Thomas Meehan took command of Easy Company.  Now began the anxious waiting for the invasion of Hitler’s “Fortress Europe” in Summer 1944.  On 5 June 1944 the order came.  The men began to pile into their planes.

War Movies 1: The Thin Red Line.

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When James Jones (1921-1977) enlisted in 1939 the Army shipped him to Schofield Barracks in the Hawaiian Islands.  He spent a couple of years getting to know the “Old Army” and witnessed Pearl Harbor.  A year later, in December 1942 and January 1943, he fought in the Battle of Mount Austen on Guadalcanal and was wounded there.  After the war, he wrote two of the great novels of military life based on his experiences: From Here to Eternity (1951) and The Thin Red Line (1962).  Both were made into movies, the second one twice.

The second, 1998, version of “The Thin Red Line” is the better-known of the two.  The idiosyncratic Terrence Malick[1] wrote the screen-play and directed.  Malick is famous for shooting miles of film with an enormous cast of stars, then cutting most of them out of the final print of the movie. Fair’s fair: I’m going to do the same thing to his version of “The Thin Red Line” by omitting all the philosophical goop.  (Is “philosophical goop” redundant?)

The men of Company C, 127th Infantry Regiment, 25th Division land on Guadalcanal in late 1942 to help finish off the Japanese forces on the island.[2]  Some of them are veteran soldiers, but none of them have been to war before.  The youthful General Quintard (John Travolta) patronizes the older, passed-over Colonel Tall (Nick Nolte), who is desperate to make his life mean something by commanding men in battle.  Captain Staros (Elias Koteas) finds himself commanding Company C in a struggle in which Reason and Argument play no role. As a lawyer in civilian life, he finds this disconcerting to say the least.  Sergeant Welsh (Sean Penn), who really runs the company, discovers that War is his element.  Private Witt (Jim Cazaviel) doesn’t like the Army or the War, but proves himself a brave soldier.

After pushing inland from the landing beach without encountering any opposition, Company C is ordered to attack a high ridge covered in tall grass defended by Japanese troops in bunkers that cannot be seen from below.  An artillery bombardment is just for show.  “It’ll buck up the men,” says Tall.  Men are shot down by the hidden Japanese.  The frontal attack up the ridge quickly stalls and Staros refuses an order from Tall to keep pushing.  A small party of volunteers goes forward to destroy the bunker.  A chaotic fight among a few men suddenly turns from defeat into victory.  Japanese resistance collapses, so Tall orders a general attack.

In this movie there is nothing of the loving attention to military minutiae that one sees in recent depictions of Americans at war (e.g. “Band of Brothers”; “Saving Private Ryan”; “Zero Dark Thirty”).  Instead, the artillery support never does any good and the rear echelons can’t get water to the fighting men in a tropical climate.  Soldiers crumple under the weight of fear and leave the battlefield or engage in acts of heroism just to get their dying over with.   A veteran sergeant grabs a grenade by the safety pin, a classic “rookie mistake” that kills him.  Ragged, starving Japanese prisoners are abused and murdered.  The essential humanity of Staros makes him a poor commander, while Tall’s egotism brings “victory.”

Later, Captain Staros is relieved of his command by Colonel Tall.  His replacement (George Clooney) mouths platitudes about the company as a “family.”  Witt, who has listened to Sergeant Welsh deride the significance of any one man “in this fucked-up world,” sacrifices himself to save a patrol during an encounter with a larger Japanese force.  The war grinds on.

[1] B.A., Philosophy, Harvard (1965); Rhodes Scholar (1965-67); M.I.T. philosophy instructor (1967-68); free-lance journalist; MFA (1969); directed “Badlands” (1973); “Days of Heaven” (1977); “The Thin Red Line” (1998); “The New World” (2005); “The Tree of Life” (2011); and “To the Wonder” (2013).  Two Best Director nominations.

[2] From August to November 1942 the First Marine Division held a chunk of the island against Japanese attacks.  Having broken the Japanese forces, they were relieved.  Fresh Army and Marine troops arrived to finish the job.