War, Suffering and Media Memory: What do Films & Historians Miss In Our Great Conflicts?

The failings of authors and popular culture are almost excusable given that the military itself until recently often underestimated the human dimension of war.

Reading through the voluminous World War II correspondence of Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, one letter stood out among the many on the trials and troubles of global war. “I am pretty busy and have been unremittingly since I took over July 1st in 1939,” Marshall wrote, “as a matter of fact I have had about sixteen days’ holiday in the period and have flown about 150,000 miles.” Even a stoic icon like George Marshall had to complain about the mental and physical toll—sometimes, even if only in a private letter to an old friend, about inconveniences that paled compared to the horror show at the front edge of war. This letter stood out, because it is too often true that remembrances often never convey this great burden.

In real war, war stresses the limits of human endurance. When those limits are reached it shows.

The story of war in film and books, however, rarely goes to these places, forgetting people get tired and frustrated, and that on occasion it is just human foibles bubbling to the top that account for some of the worst moments. When a film or book does go there, it is usually not successful. Like “The Deer Hunter” (1978), it just comes off as someone trying to tell “a story” not “the story” of war.

During World War II, one of the most popular Hollywood war films on the pacific war was “Guadalcanal Diary” (1943) based on Richard Tregaskis’s bestselling book recounting his war reporting of the fighting in the summer of 1942. This movie practically invented the motif of the all-American squad—hard-scrabble kids, a Texas drawl, middle-class aspiring novelist, a bouncy New York City taxi driver, a poor Mexican-American boy from the barrio—all thrown together in the fight for freedom, dreaming of a Coney Island hot dog and the auburn-haired girl back home. One reviewer dismissed the film as “every cliché known to man.” Apt criticism.

To be fair, trying to be faithful to the book, “Guadalcanal Diary” attempted to make the war look like no picnic—as realistic as could be done filming on studio soundstages and the training area at Camp Pendleton near Oceanside, California. Even with real-life Marines conducting mock battles as a backdrop, the actors bathed in sweat and smudges of make-up for mud could not come close to making the movie men in uniform look like the gaunt, rawboned “pale ghosts” that fought at horrible places. The play soldiers had just come from a hefty lunch at the Studio canteen.

Less than graphic or realistic in their portrayal of battle, contemporary Hollywood films eschewed close-ups of gapping wounds, spattering blood and severed limbs. When a Japanese soldier got shot he dramatically grabbed his belly, doubled over and crumpled to the ground. Americans expired, theatrically gasping their last words, clutching a sweaty fatigue shirt.

John Huston made one of the most realistic war films in the documentary “Battle of San Pietro.”  Though Huston staged the combat scenes in the films, he used real troops for the reenactment. The documentary also included grim images of dead soldiers carted off the field. Military officials considered this war cinema so harrowing they argued showing it to the troops would scare them. Marshall disagreed. The Army Chief of Staff ordered Huston’s documentary to be used as a training film. The American public did not get to see “The Battle of San Pietro” until 1945.

The fighting in the Pacific during World War II was even more grim and debilitating, but got even less attention. In one example, in September 1942, the Australian director Ken G. Hall and cinematographer Damien Parer documented the Aussie withdrawal from Kokoda in a short film sponsored by the Department of Information. “Kokoda Front Line!” gave glimpses of the harrowing conditions the diggers faced. Unlike Huston’s’ movie it was rushed into theaters and earned a film award, a rare public-relations success for the embattled Department of Information.

War reporters, like the Americans A.J. Liebling and Ernie Pyle also tried to bring some of the reality of war back home. Still, like the documentary makers, feature films producers and war photographers, overseas correspondents were overseen by wartime editors and censors, anxious to show the service and sacrifice of the boys, but reluctant to demoralize the home front with the abject horrors of jungle war in places like the vicious fight for Henderson field at Guadalcanal or in Papua New Guinea.

It was postwar writers of fiction and non-fiction like James Jones’ autobiographical novel The Thin Red Line (1962) and E.B. Sledge’s war memoir With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa (1981) that brought the physical horrors of combat and their wasting effect on men into the public imagination. 

The effort to bring graphic physical suffering to the portrayal of war intensified during and after the Vietnam conflict, with Hollywood making a conscious effort to de-glorify war. Still, the big-budget films about World War II like “Tora, Tora, Tora” (1970) and “A Bridge Too Far” (1977), recounting the airborne Operation Market Garden in Europe, left the blood and guts out of battle.

More recently, on the other hand, even in romanticized war stories like Steve Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” (1998) the extreme violence and physical horrors of war, rather than being avoided or deemphasized, are made explicit—considered essential to bringing elements of realism that today’s contemporary audiences expect.

Slower to emerge was an appreciation for the mental stress and strain of war—the invisible wounds of battle. These themes were not commonly understood or explored. Breakdowns were often attributed to weakness or cowardice. Many issues were covered over by the abuse of drugs and alcohol. A rare film that explored these themes was “Twelve O'Clock High” (1949). Based on a novel released the year before, the movie tells the story of a dedicated, courageous group commander who suffers a breakdown from “battle fatigue.” Still, the issue of mental illness is buried under the film’s study of sacrifice, commitment, and courage, themes with which wartime and post-war audiences were far more comfortable. Stress was viewed more as a moral issue or a leadership problem than a mental illness.

In contrast, today’s audiences, which understand terms like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), empathize the war in the minds of men with films like “The Hurt Locker” (2008), which highlight the debilitating physical and mental effects that can affect combatants, non-combatants, and even participants far from the front like generals in the Pentagon and family members on the homestead. Mental suffering is not portrayed as cowardice or a character flaw.

History is not much better. Decades ago biographers like Manchester, for example, tried to strip controversial and flawed generals like MacArthur of all human frailty. Today there is more recognition that unpacking the human dimension of war is crucial to truly knowing the ugly face of battle. As the sensibilities of the American public changed with distance from war, so did the writings of war historians who increasingly documented the physical and brutal aspects of war. One of the featured aspects of John Keegan’s groundbreaking The Face of Battle (1976) was the notion that no real battle history was complete unless it recounted the gory, smelly obscene physical nature of combat-experienced by soldiers. This was a topic more palatable three years removed from the last America troops leaving Vietnam.

Today, gripping documentaries, films, and books, like those dealing with contemporary conflicts like the fighting in Afghanistan, try to take us closer the human dimension. For many Americans, however, war remains as distant and unreal as the Land of Oz.

There is still much of the memory of war and its toll on leaders and their men that is still not sufficiently appreciated. For instance, after V-E Day in World War II while fighting still raged in the Pacific, the Army slotted General Matthew Ridgway (one of the models for the protagonists in Myrer’s novel Once an Eagle) to oversee the U.S. occupation zone in Berlin. Following the grave responsibilities of commanding men in a life and death struggle for democracy, Ridgway had little taste for the intractable and thankless tasks of postwar duties. He resigned himself.  Ridgway recalled, “I have never ducked a job in my life, headache or no headache.”  Still, war left him physically and mentally drained. Before facing new troubles Ridgway asked for a week’s leave.

In fact, like athletes who ignored pain and exhaustion until the final bell or stretch at the finish line tape, the general was on the verge of collapse. Ridgway nursed a bad back and battled recurring bouts of malaria throughout the war. His condition was not uncommon of many senior frontline senior officers, Though they had not suffered constant exposure to the dangers and trials of months of shooting duty, they were still middle age men who endured middle-age ailments, long hours, little sleep, and constant stress that were as debilitating as bullet wounds.

With permission from Eisenhower, on May 26, 1944, Ridgway departed for Washington, DC where his wife Peggy and other senior Army wives lived at the Wardman Park Hotel for much of the war. Arriving on May 28, an officer from Marshall’s staff greeted Ridgway with some astonishing news. MacArthur argued he needed XVIII Corps for the invasion of Japan. There would be about two months to redeploy the troops to Fort Campbell, Kentucky and ready them to head to the Pacific. Ridgway took a good portion of his brief time-off to relax, before leaving with an advance planning team for MacArthur’s command post in Manila, steeling himself for yet another round of war.

Historians, who rarely fully consider the physical and mental state of commanders when weighing their abilities, frequently ignore human frailties. In the European theater, First Army Commander Courtney Hodges, for example, fought most of the European campaign with a debilitating back problem that most likely contributed to many of his failings as the campaign progressed. Medication, both from doctors and self-imposed (alcohol), took a toll as well. Understandably, such factors are difficult to document. Archival records rarely hint at the physical and mental state of leaders. The primary sources for such comments are war diaries, letters, and oral histories. Many of these observations are episodic, hearsay, or unsubstantiated. Even when documented, it remains difficult for historians to establish cause and effect linkages between bad health and bad judgment.

The neglect of historians is excusable given that the military itself until recently often underestimated the human dimension of war. Military organizations are designed in a vacuum with minimal key personnel and little redundancy, ignoring the fact that war goes on 24 hours-a-day in bone-chilling-cold, driving rain, blinding snow, and airless swelter, that men still get flues, fevers, and colds. Yet, the notion of rotating or resting commanders and staff was virtually unthinkable. In the European theater, John S. Wood, the outstanding commander of the 4th Armored Division was relieved for exhaustion. His career and reputation never recovered. It was not uncommon to find commanders and staffs on the edge of collapse after a harrowing tour of duty.

It is also understandable why media memory often struggles with portraying the real face of battle. It is both terrible and difficult to portray. Complex narratives often are—and when they are simplified, they become manipulative and unsatisfying. Soldiers that bear the burdens of war are not simply victims. They are not weak. They are not less brave. They are just humans in a tough place, doing a difficult task. And as one novelist once wrote, “life isn’t fair, it is just fairer than death.”