June 1, 2001

Letters to the Editor
The New York Times
229 West 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036
fax: (212) 556-3622

To the Editors of the New York Times:

The NYT Memorial Day editorial ["Stories From Silence" May 28^th] spoke poetically of the "realm of the inarticulable" from which our aging WWII veterans are unable to express the horrors of war. For the past four years we have been producing a documentary film on one of the battles of that war—Monte Cassino. We have talked with and taped over a hundred Cassino veterans; these were not the military leaders, but the guys who experienced something far from the ordinary. It is amazing to me that after a lifetime of bottling up horrible memories, they speak readily to strangers. One man told us, barely containing his emotions, that he had not spoken to his wife about the war until just a few years ago. It is as if after so many years the images have to be released, have to be shared. As one veteran told me: "When you think about this, these things are unreal, this couldn't happen, but they did and I think this is what every body is trying to convince themselves that these things happened. [and then] Cassino was very unreal."

And so they talk to us, maybe because we listen. Most do not have the capacity or possibly the imagination to tell us what happened to them over 55 years ago, but a handful have held their memories pristine through 55 years of growth and physical decay; a few have transcended the façade of their ordinary lives and can still vividly describe through the eyes of a 17 or 18 year old boy, the unimaginable.

But even if they do not have the vivid memory or the exact words, the camera can see the pain in the eyes, in the shoulders, in the hands. Each knows that his experiences has made the rest of life extraordinary.

We have been unsuccessful in completing our production. Maybe this is due to the unusual circumstances of the Cassino battles which involved over 30 nations and resulted in no clearly defined heroes, certainly not the American troops who were asked to accomplish misconceived missions, followed orders and suffered much. For the most part they did not partake in the eventual (6 months of trench-like warfare) victory.

And we are certainly not Hollywood. The recent successes of WWII narrative films such as "Pearl Harbor" [$135 million] or even "Private Ryan" are not these men’s stories. Those are big and dramatic and romantic and audience safe. The men we talk to are merely human and straining to be understood. In the end, which ideas will abide? If we Americans are to cultivate what your editorial called "the collective memory of WWII," we must equally strain from our side of the gulf of ordinariness to listen to their words for as long as the men and the memories are alive with us.

Stone memorials have their place, but if we don’t know what they stand for, their silence may be misinterpreted. So, for as long as these ordinary men are able, let’s listen to their extraordinary truths.

Alan Winson

Director – Grand Island Films