My father wanted to be a hero. He went to the Air Force Academy, was valedictorian, and then he found himself strafing villagers in Vietnam in a war he didn't want to be in and didn't understand. He was extremely conflicted about the line where he went from being the good guy to possibly being the bad guy.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the internal conflict of a soldier grappling with morality in wartime.
In this quote, Patty Jenkins explores the complex emotions experienced by her father, who aspired to be a hero but found himself in morally ambiguous circumstances during the Vietnam War. Despite his achievements and desire to serve, he struggled with the realization that his actions could contribute to suffering and harm, highlighting the painful dilemmas faced by those in combat. This quote serves as a poignant reminder of the blurred lines between right and wrong in warfare.
In practice
In a discussion about the complexities of war, this quote can illustrate the emotional struggles faced by soldiers.
In the account book of the Great War the page recording the Russian losses has been ripped out. The figures are unknown. Five millions, or eight? We ourselves know not. All we know is that, at times, fighting the Russians, we had to remove the piles of enemy bodies from before our trenches, so as to get a clear field of fire against new waves of assault.
Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.
Like some infernal monster, still venomous in death, a war can go on killing people for a long time after it’s all over.
You can't have this kind of war. There just aren't enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets.
In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it's safe to say that in a war story nothing is ever absolutely true.
From now on we shall bomb Germany on an ever-increasing scale, month by month, year by year, until the Nazi regime has either been exterminated by us or - better still - torn to pieces by the German people themselves.
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