Terkel #5

              After watching Band of Brothers, 101st Airborne, and reading Peggy Terry's interview, I realized that war life was worse than it seems. Of course war seems bad, but nobody ever gets to go through what the soldiers do, unless they are psychically there. The movie gave a very realistic presentation of what those who were in the Airborne did, and what happened during battle. The interview with Peggy and E.B Sledge also gave good insight on the during and after war effects on soldiers. Once the movie and interviews were over, I realized that the soldiers don't realize how "real" war is until they are there in the moment. I definitely didn't think war was as brutal as the movie showed, but apparently it was worse. Peggy Terry grew up in Paducah, Kentucky but was interviewed in Chicago where she had lived the last 20 years of her life. She told us about her life after the depression, but what really struck me was when she talked about her husband. Peggy told Terkel that her husband was in the Airborne 101st division and how when he came back from war, he was a drunk and would have nightmares. She said that those were the things that she saw in him, that he showed on the outside..but I'm sure there was a lot that was happening to him on the inside that no one knew about. She said that "wars brutalize people"which is completely true. His experience had hurt him mentally, and even though he was alive and home, Peggy said that it was hard seeing him act the way he was. Right after she was done talking about her husband, she brought up Hiroshima and how it was dropped on innocent people who had nothing to say about war. They were all innocent civilians, and that connected back to the soldiers in war. Those who were traumatized by the war were innocent people who lived normal lives just a year before, and same with those killed or wounded in Hiroshima. E.B Sledge, a ex marine told us in his interview that everyone had a different view on war during the battles. He said that we had a different strategy than the Japanese did, and that all connected back to how civilians see things differently than soldiers.