WORLD WAR II by Ken Burns

Phillip Leveque has spent his life as a Combat Infantryman, Physician and Toxicologist.

(MOLALLA, Ore.) - I had the rare privilege, along with about 500 others, to see excerpts of Ken Burns new 14½ hour series, “THE WAR”. It is certain that the excerpts show in ghostly detail what the whole war series is about. Only frontline combat Veterans had the dubious privilege of suffering through this before.

When I survived World War II, I decided I did not want to do that again—EVER. It took me about thirty years before I could even think about my experiences, and I’m not over it yet—neither the war itself or Ken Burns movie excerpts.

The artillery barrages had me almost diving under the theater seats they were so real and brought me back sixty-two years crossing the Rhine River under German tire of every kind of weapon they had—heavy artillery, antiaircraft guns, machine guns, mortars and hand guns.

My Battalion of 1,000 lost about 150 men in a few hours and a few Infantry companies were almost functionally destroyed. This was nothing like the D-Day at Normandy when 1,200 were killed but that was about 60,000 attacking men.

If anyone wants to see what war is like—this is it. Battle Veterans like myself will most probably have difficulty experiencing it. It will be the time to honor your combat buddies who didn’t make it home.

Thank goodness we will be able to watch the series at home and not have to weep in a public theater. Whoever said strong men don’t weep. We earned these tears the hard way.

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Henry Ruark August 8, 2007 12:11 pm (Pacific time)

Will echo S-LM, albeit I never got shot-at nor returned to battle-site. 3/yr/Army service taught me much about leader-wisdom in wartime and boosted my already high disbeliever-quotient, now very important for any ongoing ethical-journalist effort. Still remember returned-vet interviews then, part of my PR assignment when snatched from 10th Mt. Ski battalion by left eye-blind, discovered after rushed-assignment via draft at Camp Devens, near Boston, from United Press wires editing. Ended up in brash Air Force recruitment in Maine, driving Southern pilot who was racist, making for real conflict in Maine high schools !! That makes for strong,angry recall, too.

S.LaMarche; August 8, 2007 9:22 am (Pacific time)

Dr. Leveque.,I read a book years ago by William Manchester called "Goodbye Darkness". He was a Marine in WWII, and he went back in the early 80's, retracing where he'd been in the Pacific. It was one hell of a story and was instrumental in my own life for the idea to return myself, eventually right to the spot I'd crouched in 1968, becoming one with the bottom of a hole in the ground and waited to die from incoming arty, mortars and small arms. It didn't make the history books, and it wasn't Bastogne, but the "casualties" were over 70% of an undermanned Marine company. It was tewnty four years later and I couldnt' take it anymore, so I got the grid coordinates from the Marine Corps Historical Center in Wash. D.C., and walked the bush once again. The events of that time didn't go away after this return, but the noise I used to hear at night, in the daytime and in my dreams., seems to come from a more distant ridgeline now. I'm self medicated too and it hasn't hurt a bit. I appreciate your articles very much, and hope for the "distant ridgeline" for you too, and possibly naievely, for all the others in the same position. In a dozen returns to the Nam I met hundreds of Vietnamese veterans from both sides of the DMZ, and it hadn't gone away for them either. Semper Fi!~

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