There’s a moment in Saving Private Ryan, the 1998 Steven Spielberg gore-fest, when the sergeant, played by Tom Sizemore, tells his captain: “Someday, we might look back on this and decide that saving Private Ryan was one decent thing we were able to pull out of this whole godawful s***ty mess.”
The one decent thing? What about, you know, defeating Hitler? What about liberating millions from brutal foreign occupation? What about stopping the Holocaust?
There was a time when the fact of fighting the Nazis was seen as intrinsically decent. It did not need some sugary human interest coating to make it palatable. Before Spielberg’s, the last D-Day movie had been the 1962 epic The Longest Day, made when it was taken for granted that some things were worth risking your life for.
“There’s no time for any sob stuff about England, home and beauty,” says the heroic special forces commander, Lord Lovat, played by Peter Lawford. “Remember, our people have had a rough time for 4 1/2 years. They’ve earned the final victory. Let’s give it to them.”
Cinematic reconstructions eventually squeeze out firsthand memories. This will surely be the last time that veterans gather in Normandy in any numbers.
“Let me assure you, what you read in those silly books that have been written about D-Day is absolute crap,” said George Chandler, now 99, who served on a British torpedo boat escorting U.S. troops to Omaha and Utah beaches. If you have lived through anything you later saw dramatized on screen, you will know how Chandler feels.
D-Day is now mainly about political symbolism, and the politicians know it. No fewer than 25 world leaders are in Normandy as I write, bringing 12,000 security personnel with them.
All sides cram the invasion into their own pet narrative. For Europhiles, it is all about how the EU came together to stop wars. British paratroopers landing on the beaches for the anniversary were pointedly subjected to French customs checks. Marine Le Pen complained that French President Emmanuel Macron was electioneering. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has attended past ceremonies, was ostentatiously uninvited.
My own take on that day was beautifully articulated by Ronald Reagan 40 years ago. “Gentlemen,” he told the assembled veterans, in words that still make me choke up, “I look at you, and I think of the words of Stephen Spender’s poem. You are men who in your ‘lives fought for life … and left the vivid air signed with your honor.'”
The Gipper went on to make a gentle reference to his own time: “You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One’s country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it’s the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty.”
How many contemporary American politicians would unequivocally commit themselves to the defense of the free world as Reagan did on that day when he quoted the Book of Joshua: “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.”
It is not just that the Cold War is over. It’s not just that many American voters have turned inward, nor that Iraq and Afghanistan have created an anti-war mood, nor even that former President Donald Trump cannot find it in him to be critical of Putin or, indeed, of despots in general.
No, the wider problem is that we have moved from The Longest Day to Saving Private Ryan. Although we are more political than previous generations, more prone to work ourselves up into a rage about the slightest slip-up by an elected representative or the use of an inappropriate word by a celebrity, we doubt whether any cause is worth crossing half the world to fight for.
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Young people feel strongly about lots of things. But, looking at those face-masked campus protesters demanding that the rest of us send them gluten-free meals and respect their banana allergies, do we really suppose they would make the sacrifice that young adults of their age did when they plunged into Normandy’s rough waters under a hail of enemy fire?
On June 6, 1944, the English-speaking democracies, along with detachments of their allies and auxiliaries, imposed their values on the world, values developed overwhelmingly in the language in which you are reading these words. Civilian government, habeas corpus, free elections, jury trials, uncensored newspapers, and equality before the law. These things became so widely accepted that even dictators had to pretend to acknowledge them. Would British, Canadian, and American youngsters fight as hard for them today? I don’t like to put the question.