This entry was posted on 2/21/2009 1:05 PM and is filed under uncategorized.
Tonight, Saturday, February 21, on HBO, the movie Taking Chance airs at 8 p.m. or 7 p.m. central time.
Taking Chance is a true story, starring Kevin Bacon, and is based on a journal kept by Lt. Col. Michael Strobl, a Desert Storm veteran who in 2004 was asked to be assigned for military escort duty to accompany the remains of Lance Cpl. Chance Phelps to his family in Dubois, Wyo.
You can see a trailer for the movie here.
I vividly remember the death of this young man, not because it stood out with any more fanfare than the deaths of the other 4,245 who have died in Iraq so far, but because of the moving homecoming ceremony that took place in the small western cowboy town where he was laid to rest.
I remember, for example, that his casket was driven to the cemetary in a horse-drawn wagon, in true cowboy fashion.
But this movie is not about one Marine, fallen in battle. As Tom Shales so beautifully pointed out in his review in the Washington Post today, it is about HONOR:
Rendering honor is one of the film's themes, and also one of its singular accomplishments...
The filmmakers show us in striking detail many of the little rituals that are part of the larger procedure, from the gentle cleansing of the dead man's fingers and toes (his face and most battle scars are avoided) to the fastening of a creepy bar-code tag to the black body bag.
That's one of the few cold, bureaucratic acts. For the most part, as the film makes clear, remarkable care is shown and taken by those who come in contact with the remains at each stage of the journey -- loading the long box onto one plane or another, carrying it in a hearse, carefully placing a memento inside the coffin and even, in an unusual gesture, declining the offer of a hotel room so he can sleep near the coffin inside a cargo hangar at a stopover.
At each stop, whenever the box is transferred from one conveyance to another, Strobl salutes -- a smart but slow salute, held until the box passes by. Sometimes onlookers or passersby feel compelled to register their own respect in some similar sort of gesture. At one point, as the remains are being transported in a long back limousine down a narrow Western highway, the cars behind form an impromptu cortege, headlights on as another sign of respect.
One could argue that such actions ring hollow, even meaningless. They are, indeed, inadequate to the occasion. But one does what one can; it's the motivation behind the effort, rather than the effort itself, that is moving and later haunting.
Now, I know what you are thinking.
You're thinking, BUT THAT'S SO DEPRESSING!! Why would I want to watch such a sad movie?
I know you're thinking that because I confess I had the same thoughts. As a Marine combat mom, I've done my best to avoid some of the more maudlin stories that go around about the war-dead. For one thing, many of them skirt a very fine line between honoring the fallen and glorifying war.
And for another, most of these stories hit just a bit too close to home. Having written a condolence letter to the mother of one of my son's buddies, and gotten a response from her, I can tell you that there is nothing glorious about grief.
But this movie is different.
It's about REMEMBERING.
Most people remain oblivious that flag-draped caskets are still coming home to the U.S. from Iraq with depressing frequency, a sad fact that gets completely overlooked in all the humid hothouse cable-news coverage of a new presidential administration and various domestic problems facing his team.
Even now, President Obama has requested a review of the policy that bans cameras from Dover Air Force Base, where all these caskets arrive with depressing frquency. Until that policy is lifted though--a policy but in by Dick Cheney when he was secretary of defense in the first Gulf War--people tend to forget.
People forget.
This movie is an extraordinary testament, not just to the care and respect given to those flag-draped caskets, but the heroism of the family members and the military escorts (every single Marine gets escorted home by a fellow Marine, who remains with the family and tends to their needs for at least a couple of weeks, through the funeral and all the bureaucratic necessities that follow), and by the dignity afforded by even the most casual spectators, who may not have even known who lies in that casket.
Shales writes:
"He'd be so happy" that an officer "brought him home," one of Phelps's relatives tells Srobl at a memorial service. When Strobl briefly expresses regret that his role of "escort" feels hollow and meaningless to him, a Korean War vet reprimands him. "Without a witness," he tells Strobl, Phelps would just "disappear."
Attention must indeed be paid, as Arthur Miller wrote of quite a different character, and respect must be shown. "Taking Chance" gives us all the opportunity to render honor.
Just before my son was due to deploy to Iraq, his unit specially trained to take part in the upcoming crucial Battle of Fallujah, in November of '04, ABC news correspondent Ted Koppell took a step which, at the time, was wildly controversial: On his late-night news program, Nightline, he called out the names of all 1,000 men and women who had died up to that point in Iraq, and he showed photographs of each and every one.
I remain stunned with disbelief that anyone, anywhere, could possibly accuse the honoring of the war dead as being some kind of political or anti-war statement.
IT IS HONOR, period.
Alone in my living room, I stood at attention before the television set, and I studied each face that appeared on screen and listened to each name, my vision blurred with tears.
It was my way of honoring their lives--not just their deaths. THEY EXISTED.
At the same time, I was utterly, completely terrified.
But I believed that to turn away, to pretend that men and women were not giving their lives even at that moment, was the true dishonor.
From what I understand in reading various interviews, this movie is not "depressing." It is uplifting, if for no other reason than to remind each and every one of us that we owe a responsibility to those who stepped up and gave what Lincoln called "the full measure of devotion" for their country.
What is that responsibility?
That we remember.
I urge you to watch this fine program, or TIVO, or DVR it. Don't miss it. Don't turn away from it.
Let us all remember, and honor.
