More than 50 years after World War II, the title character of Saving Private Ryan stands amid a forest of white crosses in Normandy and asks, "Am I a good man? Have I led a good life?" The answer to both is yes. But the veteran's true triumph is just posing the questions. Following the mid-century war, Americans who had endured the horror of combat tended to keep their experiences to themselves. "There's a stoicism about them very similar to Holocaust survivors who went through the same trauma in different ways," notes Ryan director Steven Spielberg. "They didn't think we cared enough to hear their stories." In fact, the veterans' children—the baby boomers who spent their formative years protesting a different kind of combat—seemed disinclined to ask, "What did you do in the war, Daddy?" So the Good War ("There was no mistaking the enemy after Pearl Harbor," notes Catch-22 author Joseph Heller) slipped into shadow.
Now, due in great part to the vividly realistic Ryan, the stories are on thousands of lips and in millions of hearts. Inevitably, some old terrors have been reawakened. Historian Stephen E. Ambrose (D-Day, Citizen Soldiers) encountered an elderly D-Day survivor who had seen the film. "He told me that for 30 years he hadn't had a nightmare, but he started having them again," Ambrose recounts. For most vets, though, the film has opened a welcome dialogue. Says Ambrose: "I've heard from guys who say, 'For the first time, I can talk to my wife and children and grandchildren about it.' "
