It’s the bits and pieces Burns assembles to punctuate his big pictures that light those memories that are packed away in the closets of my mind.
Like, for example, the horses in Missouri.
A batch of 1903 rifles being used in an infantry company was held up by Burns as an example of how ill-equipped we were for fighting a war against two highly trained modern war machines in 1942. And that carried me quickly to a medieval military exercise that partnered me with horses in a union of immediate mutual dislike.
I was then a junior at the University of Missouri, a land-grant college where military training was required of students.
Our unit was horse-drawn field artillery, right out of the Civil War.
Dragging these antiquated pieces around Missouri back roads on training missions and picturing them going against German tanks was absurd enough in peace time, but the prospect of fighting a real war with this equipment was a major factor that sent me running to enlist in the Navy Air Corps.
Along with the remarkable unity of the country in building our own war machine, probably no impression more permeated the three episodes I’ve seen of “The War” than the youthfulness of our soldiers and sailors and pilots.
The military pool of 50 million draftees was heavily loaded with kids right out of high school who weren’t allowed to drink or vote. Just to get shot at or blown up. And unlike the wars that would follow, fathers with clout weren’t keeping their kids out of the military, nor was status in society.
So recruiters had no trouble finding prospects. There were long lines daily waiting to enlist. And all this enlistment fervor was only partly about patriotism.
This war was a crusade in which we were very clearly the good guys, wearing the white hats. We were young and we wanted a piece of the action. Many months would pass before the realities of war hit us.
