Ed said tonight, that he wanted to watch a new series and tuned in to HBO. The series is “The Pacific” about World War II. It is meant, I think, to be as powerful, in series form, as “Band of Brothers” and “Saving Private Ryan” were as feature films. I have seen small parts of these movies. I left and came to the computer and Ed said, “you’re going to play Freecell?” And I said, "I can’t watch a war movie.”

No, not the above, not anything set in Vietnam or Korea or Afghanistan or Iraq, and particularly not any war movie about World War II. World War II started, for the U.S. in 1941. I was 10 years old. The movies were full of newsreels about our troops overseas. Romance films were made showing soldiers leaving and women crying. My father left his barbershop and went to work in a war plant. But he couldn’t stand it and returned to barbering.

At school there were drives to collect paper and metal. My little friend, Wilda, and I took her wagon and went up and down alleyways knocking on back doors and collecting newspapers. When you opened a can of anything, you peeled off the label, washed it, flattened it and took it to the scrap metal bin set up on every block. Pocket memorials sprang up on tiny street islands listing the names of soldiers from the area with a star next to each name. Blue for active, silver for missing in action, gold for killed in action. Families with sons and fathers overseas also put a flag in their windows with those blessed stars. As I write about these memories, I still get a lump in my throat. Names from the Pacific theatre still have the power to stun me – Leyte, Guam, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Tarawa are as fresh to me now as when I first heard them. I will never, ever forget the pain of that war and I didn’t even have a personal loss to mourn.

Ration books were distributed. You were allowed certain amounts for sugar, eggs, meat, coffe, nylons, shoes. As I remember it, we didn’t really give up a lot. When we needed rationed items, we seemed always to have just enough stamps to buy them. I guess we were not heavy consumers in my family.

There were posters on billboards showing Uncle Sam holding a finger to his lips, with the legend, “Shhh” or “The slip of a lip can sink a ship.” They didn’t want families receiving mail from soldiers that might contain critical information to be talking about what was written. Perhaps the soldier might say, we’re moving into action tomorrow and name an area.

That period of my life, young as I was, was as intense as anything I have ever experienced. I don’t see war movies as entertainment, I don’t want to re-live in any form the pain and loss of good men dying no matter how well the story is told, how perfect the acting and direction, how insightful its conclusions.

Later when I was in New York, married to Jay, he would watch the series, “World at War”. By then he was in mental and emotional distress. He would watch and re-live his youth during a time when, perhaps, he felt he had more worth than he felt later. I couldn’t keep him from watching, but his pain was my pain.

So, no, I am not watching any war movie, ever.

xx, Teal