EARN THIS.........................................

D-Day, Dick Feagler's column in Toledo, Ohio, The Plain Dealer.

In a battlefield cemetery each marble cross marks an
individual crucifixion. Someone - someone very young
usually - has died for somebody else's sins.

The movie "Saving Private Ryan" begins and ends
in the military cemetery above Omaha Beach.
By sundown of D-Day, 40,000 Americans had landed on that
beach, and one in 19 had become a casualty.

Director Steven Spielberg made "Saving Private Ryan"
as a tribute to D-day veterans.  He wanted, reviewers
say, to strip the glory away from war and
show the '90s generation what it was really like.
The reviews have praised the first 30 minutes of
the film and the special effects that graphically
show the blood and horror of the D-Day landing.

Unfortunately, American movie audiences have become
jaded connoisseurs of special effects gore.
In the hands of the entertainment industry, violence
has become just another pandering trick.  But
Spielberg wasn't pandering.  Shocked by and wary
of his depiction, I bought a copy of Steven Ambrose's
book "D-Day." The story of the Normandy invasion is
a story of unimaginable slaughter.  Worse than I ever
knew, and I thought I knew something about it.

The young men who lived through those first waves are
old men now. Many have asked themselves, every day
for more than 50 years, why they survived.  It
is an unanswerable question.  The air was full of
buzzing death.  When the ramps opened on many of
the landing craft, all the men aboard were riddled
with machine gun bullets before they could step
into the water.  Beyond this cauldron of cordite
and carnage, half a world away, lay an America united in
purpose like no citizen under 60 has ever seen.
The war touched everyone.

The entire starting lineup of the 1941 Yankees was
in military uniform. Almost every family could hang
a service flag in the window, with a Star embroidered
on it for each son in uniform, a Gold Star for those
who had made the ultimate sacrifice.

In the early hours of D-Day, with the outcome of
the battle still in the balance, the nation prayed.
Ambrose tells us that the New York Daily News
threw out its lead stories and printed in their
place the Lord's Prayer.

"I fought that war as a child," a historian on
television said the other night.  I knew what he
meant.  So did I.  We all saved fat and flattened
cans and grew victory gardens.  But we did not all
go to Omaha Beach.  Or Saipan.  Or Anzio.
Only an anointed few did that.

The men of World War II are beginning to leave
us now.  In my family, six have gone and two are
left.  We have lost the uncle who was on Okinawa, the
cousin who worked his way up the gauntlet of Italy
and the cousin who brought the German helmet back
from North Africa.  These men left us with a
simple request.  You can hear that request in final
minutes of "Saving Private Ryan." I haven't read a
review that has mentioned it, but it is what
makes Spielberg's movie a masterpiece.  In the film,
a squad of rangers is sent behind enemy lines to save
a man whose three brothers have been killed
in battle.  Headquarters wants him shipped home to
spare his mother the agony of having all her sons
killed in combat.  So eight rangers risk their
lives for one man.  And when one of the rangers
is mortally wounded, he asks Pvt.  Ryan to bend
over so he can whisper to him.

"Earn this," he says.

And that is the request of all the young men who
have died in all the wars -from Normandy to the
Chosin Reservoir to Da Nang to the Gulf.

"Earn this."

When the movie ended, the theater was silent except
for some muffled sobs. But the tears that scalded
my eyes were not just for the men who had died on
the screen and in truth.  Or for the men who had
lived and grown old and were baffled about why
they had been spared.  I walked out into the world of
Howard Stern and Jerry Springer and "South Park."
Into the world of front-page coverage of Monica
Lewinski and the stain  on her dress from
Oval Office semen.

"Earn this," was still ringing in my ears.
And the tears in my eyes were tears of betrayal.
Submitted by: John Wear