I watched Band Of Brothers with #2 Son last night, because it was D-Day. As it turns out, that's a show that means a lot to me - personally - since it aired when I was just brand new at Internet Security Startup #2, which ended up being a win for us. But I was driving between Atlanta and Massachusetts a lot in the fall of 2001, and away from home a lot trying to keep the wheels from coming off the family bus. Having a reminder that some guys had far worse was an inspiration, back in the bad days of the Dot Com bust.
It's very nice indeed to watch it again, with a (nearly) grown #2 Son, my shootin' buddy. At his age, I was also fascinated with things military. It's nice looking at him, and seeing me at his age. I hope that when he's my age, he'll be so lucky.
Entirely made of Win. Entirely.
And all day, I've been thinking of 2cents' dad, who was a veteran of Normandy. 2cents has been my best friend since we were small - his dad was just a normal guy who never talked about what he did in those months. These days, you'd expect a publicist and a support group, but he was just a regular Joe (a crazy smart regular Joe) raising his kids in the 1960s.
A good man, as were a lot of men. They saved the world, and then came back home to be good husbands and good fathers. I'm a better man for having known him, and watching #2 Son, I hope I do as good a job as he did. Rest in peace.
4 comments:
Thanks for the kind words about my Dad, though he would've made a joke of them if he'd heard them. The funny thing is, a sanitized version of the story about his company being told to stop chasing the exiting enemy so the pretty, fresh troops could be filmed liberating Paris is about the only one remotely about real fighting that I remember him telling when I was a kid. I think the injustice combined with Generals' stupidity stuck in his craw.
Band of Brothers was an awesome series, and even more so was the write-up I read, where before filming, each one of the actors went through a very similar Airborne training (not as long, about two weeks or so, so nothing candy-coated!), so they would know what it was like. They also either met their real-life counterparts in person, or at least spoke with them over the phone (Carwood Lipton was unable to travel due to health reasons, IIRC), and each one came away humbled by the meeting. These allowed them to put the whole movie into perspective and made it much more personal, allowing them to gel as a combat group like no other movie before. Winters himself only had issue with two scenes out of the entire series.
"But I was driving between Atlanta and Massachusetts a lot in the fall of 2001"
Huh. And I was driving back and forth from K-town to ATL every other weekend in that same time period.
We probably passed each other...
Tam, your tire budget sounds like it's about the same as mine.
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