Saving Private Ryan, realistic?

Dark Primus · Post by **Dark Primus** » 2002-09-01 08:29am

I am asking anyone who have seen the movie, do you think the movie was realistic? Concerning how people got butchered on the beach by rain of bullets, seeing a guy walking around looking for his arm that have been torn away. *shudders*

Doomriser · Post by **Doomriser** » 2002-09-01 08:55am

I don't know how realistic the movie was, but it can sure be classified as pornography. Instead of thinking about the soldier's situation on the beach, the tragedies of individual human deaths, or how it all related to the war as a whole, most viewers think 'wow that's a lot of gore ... cool' or 'how did they get the image so grainy.' You watch the technical proficiency of the special effects team and not the unfolding drama.

Raptor 597 · Post by **Raptor 597** » 2002-09-01 11:07am

It was like I heard in a review somewhere, Saving Private Ryan degraded into an Marvel comic book series. But the Longest Day stayed, just as Band of Brothers, greatest movies not for gore but they showed emotion, and they're sacrifice, but Private Ryan was just a gore fest..

Post 100, yay!:D

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2002-09-01 12:49pm

Austin Lange (usually on SB, sometimes on ASVS) thought it was fairly unrealistic.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2002-09-01 01:28pm

I wouldn't call it realistic in any respect, though I think there was effort on the part of the crew to make the combat at least that way. The plot was total BS, which basicly fucked the moives hopes for realisium.

Totenkopf · Post by **Totenkopf** » 2002-09-01 01:31pm

WWII veterans who saw it said it was realistic.

Some of them were moved to tears by the memories it brought back.

(Just for the record: The first 20 minutes of SPR is the most intense gorefest I've ever seen in any film.)

Totenkopf · Post by **Totenkopf** » 2002-09-01 01:32pm

Also, during the battle at the beginning, most of the extras were members of the Irish army (the beach scenes were actually filmed in Ireland not France), so being real soldiers their depiction of how soldiers move etc. would be realistic.

Subnormal · Post by **Subnormal** » 2002-09-01 03:20pm

Thomas Valence's FPA.

I made my way forward as best I could. My rifle jammed, so I picked up a carbine and got off a couple of rounds. We were shooting at something that seemed inconsequential. There was no way I was going to knock out a German concrete emplacement with a .30-caliber rifle. I was hit again, once in the left thigh, which broke my hip bone, and a couple of times in my pack, and then my chin strap on my helmet was severed by a bullet. I worked my way up onto the beach, and staggered up against a wall, and collapsed there. The bodies of the other guys washed ashore, and I was one live body amongst many of my friends who were dead and, in many cases, blown to pieces.

Chaplain Burkhalter's FPA.

The enemy had a long time to fix up the beach. The beach was covered with large pebbles to prevent tank movements, and mines were everywhere. The enemy was well dug in and had set up well prepared positions for machine guns and had well chosen places for sniping. Everything was to their advantage and to our disadvantage, except one thing, the righteous cause for which we are fighting - liberation and freedom. For the moment our advantage was in the abstract and theirs was in the concrete. The beach was spotted with dead and wounded men. I passed one man whose foot had been blown completely off. Another soldier lying close by was suffering from several injuries; his foot was ripped and distorted until it didn't look much like a foot. Another I passed was lying very still, flat on his back, covered in blood. Bodies of injured men all around. Sad and horrible sights were plentiful

S.L.A. Marshall Combat historian and witness 29th Division US Army.

His men are at the sides of the boat, straining for a view of the target. They stare but say nothing. At exactly 6:36 A.M. ramps are dropped along the boat line and the men jump off in water anywhere from waist deep to higher than a man's head. This is the signal awaited by the Germans atop the bluff. Already pounded by mortars, the floundering line is instantly swept by crossing machine-gun fires from both ends of the beach.

Able Company has planned to wade ashore in three files from each boat, center file going first, then flank files peeling off to right and left. The first men out try to do it but are ripped apart before they can make five yards. Even the lightly wounded die by drowning, doomed by the waterlogging of their overloaded packs. From Boat No. 1, all hands jump off in water over their heads. Most of them are carried down. Ten or so survivors get around the boat and clutch at its sides in an attempt to stay afloat. The same thing happens to the section in Boat No. 4. Half of its people are lost to the fire or tide before anyone gets ashore. All order has vanished from Able Company before it has fired a shot.

Already the sea runs red. Even among some of the lightly wounded who jumped into shallow water the hits prove fatal. Knocked down by a bullet in the arm or weakened by fear and shock, they are unable to rise again and are drowned by the onrushing tide. Other wounded men drag themselves ashore and, on finding the sands, lie quiet from total exhaustion, only to be overtaken and killed by the water. A few move safely through the bullet swarm to the beach, then find that they cannot hold there. They return to the water to use it for body cover. Faces turned upward, so that their nostrils are out of water, they creep toward the land at the same rate as the tide. That is how most of the survivors make it. The less rugged or less clever seek the cover of enemy obstacles moored along the upper half of the beach and are knocked off by machine-gun fire.

Within seven minutes after the ramps drop, Able Company is inert and leaderless. At Boat No. 2, Lieutenant Tidrick takes a bullet through the throat as he jumps from the ramp into the water. He staggers onto the sand and flops down ten feet from Private First Class Leo J. Nash. Nash sees the blood spurting and hears the strangled words gasped by Tidrick: "Advance with the wire cutters!" It's futile; Nash has no cutters. To give the order, Tidrick has raised himself up on his hands and made himself a target for an instant. Nash, burrowing into the sand, sees machine gun bullets rip Tidrick from crown to pelvis. From the cliff above, the German gunners are shooting into the survivors as from a roof top.

Captain Taylor N. Fellers and Lieutenant Benjamin R. Kearfoot never make it. They had loaded with a section of thirty men in Boat No. 6 (Landing Craft, Assault, No. 1015). But exactly what happened to this boat and its human cargo was never to be known. No one saw the craft go down. How each man aboard it met death remains unreported. Half of the drowned bodies were later found along the beach. It is supposed that the others were claimed by the sea.

Along the beach, only one Able Company officer still lives -- Lieutenant Elijah Nance, who is hit in the heel as he quits the boat and hit in the belly by a second bullet as he makes the sand. By the end of ten minutes, every sergeant is either dead or wounded. To the eyes of such men as Private Howard I. Grosser and Private First Class Gilbert G. Murdock, this clean sweep suggests that the Germans on the high ground have spotted all leaders and concentrated fire their way. Among the men who are still moving in with the tide, rifles, packs, and helmets have already been cast away in the interests of survival.

To the right of where Tidrick's boat is drifting with the tide, its coxswain lying dead next to the shell-shattered wheel, the seventh craft, carrying a medical section with one officer and sixteen men, noses toward the beach. The ramp drops. In that instant, two machine guns concentrate their fire on the opening. Not a man is given time to jump. All aboard are cut down where they stand.

By the end of fifteen minutes, Able Company has still not fired a weapon. No orders are being given by anyone. No words are spoken. The few able-bodied survivors move or not as they see fit. Merely to stay alive is a full-time job. The fight has become a rescue operation in which nothing counts but the force of a strong example.

Above all others stands out the first-aid man, Thomas Breedin. Reaching the sands, he strips off pack, blouse, helmet, and boots. For a moment he stands there so that others on the strand will see him and get the same idea. Then he crawls into the water to pull in wounded men about to be overlapped by the tide. The deeper water is still spotted with tide walkers advancing at the same pace as the rising water. But now, owing to Breedin's example, the strongest among them become more conspicuous targets. Coming along, they pick up wounded comrades and float them to the shore raftwise. Machine-gun fire still rakes the water. Burst after burst spoils the rescue act, shooting the floating man from the hands of the walker or killing both together. But Breedin for this hour leads a charmed life and stays with his work indomitably.

By the end of one half hour, approximately two thirds of the company is forever gone. There is no precise casualty figure for that moment. There is for the Normandy landing as a whole no accurate figure for the first hour or first day. The circumstances precluded it. Whether more Able Company riflemen died from water than from fire is known only to heaven. All earthly evidence so indicates, but cannot prove it.

By the end of one hour, the survivors from the main body have crawled across the sand to the foot of the bluff, where there is a narrow sanctuary of defiladed space. There they lie all day, clean spent, unarmed, too shocked to feel hunger, incapable even of talking to one another. No one happens by to succor them, ask what has happened, provide water, or offer unwanted pity. D Day at Omaha afforded no time or space for such missions. Every landing company was overloaded by its own assault problems.

By the end of one hour and forty-five minutes, six survivors from the boat section on the extreme right shake loose and work their way to a shelf a few rods up the cliff. Four fall exhausted from the short climb and advance no farther. They stay there through the day, seeing no one else from the company. The other two, Privates Jake Shefer and Thomas Lovejoy, join a group from the Second Ranger Battalion, which is assaulting Pointe du Hoc to the right of the company sector, and fight on with the Rangers through the day. Two men. Two rifles. Except for these, Able Company's contribution to the D Day fire fight is a cipher.

Frank Snyder is haunted by the apparition of a soldier clawing through the sand, dragging himself toward his blown-off leg as if just reaching the scorched limb would restore his power to walk.

He has tried to hide from the memories of twisted bodies he could not save on the beach, but they haunt him still.

The thick marsh and ancient trees that surround his home offer no protection from the ghost of the Army officer who waved for attention with what Snyder thought was a white baton, and he can remember the taste of his horror on learning it was the remnants of the officer's own arm.

"You can only imagine what it's like to see a man with all his intestines blown out into the sand, crying," he said, taking off his glasses and rubbing the corners of his eyes. "All we could do was give him a shot of morphine and hope he will have one moment's peace before he dies."

There are far worse things for me to list but I think I made my point. I also believe the movie accurately portrayed the events of June 6, 1944. Also I have read multiple books on D-day including Sephen E. Ambrose and Cornelius Ryan's The Longest Day and they are both written through collections of first person accouts which in all give an accurate description which is portrayed in film in Saving Private Ryan. My former history teacher did hundreds of interviews to WWII vets namely D-day vets and he stated that the events that take place in Ryan are strikingly similar to what those who went through it described.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2002-09-01 03:22pm

The actual combat effects of weapons were fairly realistic. The tactics could have been worked on. It is unfortunate that so many people did not understand the point of the blood and gore in the movie, and so it had so little impact on them.

Subnormal · Post by **Subnormal** » 2002-09-01 03:32pm

Band of Brothers had a more realistic feel to me as it was basicly a visual first person account. All those who died and were killed in BOB are or were ACTUAL people not as in Private Ryan where as they were just reanacting the events of Omaha with fictional characters. But BOB uses real characters with real experiences and real thoughts. It is an amazing work which I hold to be Speilbergs greatest triumph. SPR would give you an amazing feeling if you actually knew that men did get blown to bits like this and death and destruction actually did happen just like that, you do get a lasting effect.

Bryan · Post by **Bryan** » 2002-09-01 09:15pm

Does anyone realize that the Totenkopf guy with the skull and crossbones in this thread has the same name as the Nazi SS section that ran their concentration camps?

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2002-09-01 09:20pm

countdooku wrote:Band of Brothers had a more realistic feel to me as it was basicly a visual first person account. All those who died and were killed in BOB are or were ACTUAL people not as in Private Ryan where as they were just reanacting the events of Omaha with fictional characters. But BOB uses real characters with real experiences and real thoughts. It is an amazing work which I hold to be Speilbergs greatest triumph. SPR would give you an amazing feeling if you actually knew that men did get blown to bits like this and death and destruction actually did happen just like that, you do get a lasting effect.

I agree with everything, except that I think comparing BoB to Schindler's List is wrong.

Subnormal · Post by **Subnormal** » 2002-09-01 09:55pm

I don't think I stated anything about Schindlers list. I personally believe BOB was Speilbergs greatest Triumph in visually recreating War, Schindler's list isn't really a visual triumph it is more of a drama featured around horrific evens with people who can't fight back.

Eleas · Post by **Eleas** » 2002-09-02 06:49am

Bryan wrote:Does anyone realize that the Totenkopf guy with the skull and crossbones in this thread has the same name as the Nazi SS section that ran their concentration camps?

You do realize that his name simply means "skull"?

Sebastin · Post by **Sebastin** » 2002-09-02 07:04am

quote:

Originally posted by Bryan:
Does anyone realize that the Totenkopf guy with the skull and crossbones in this thread has the same name as the Nazi SS section that ran their concentration camps?

You do realize that his name simply means "skull"?

You do realize that he even bears the SS-runes in his sig?

He´d better not be in Germany, thats worth up to 1 year in prison.

Cpt_Frank · Post by **Cpt_Frank** » 2002-09-02 09:41am

And that's fucking right! So tell us, skully, are you a neo nazi?

Eleas · Post by **Eleas** » 2002-09-02 02:38pm

Sebastin wrote: You do realize that he even bears the SS-runes in his sig?

He´d better not be in Germany, thats worth up to 1 year in prison.

Uh, no, I missed that. You're right, at best it's in bad taste. At worst...

Totenkopf · Post by **Totenkopf** » 2002-09-02 03:58pm

Cpt_Frank wrote:And that's fucking right! So tell us, skully, are you a neo nazi?

No.

Such closed minds, such small vision on the part of my accusers.

I will make no secret of this: That I respect and admire the Waffen SS as a great fighting force of powerful fearless men who would fight to the last (when a common soldier would have given up long ago).

With respect to those who died under the Reich that they served, it must be pointed out that only a small number of all the SS ever served in the death camps, and the majority were only soldiers who fought other soldiers on the battlefields of WWII. The vast majority of SS soldiers I am sure knew nothing of the death camps and the masses murdered there.

No nation or army is without atrocities. In the same way that I admire the SS as the great body of fighters that they were, many people also admire others, for example American forces such as the USMC. The fact that members of that organisation were involved in atrocities at times (such as the infamous My Lai massacre for example) does not stop this admiration and does not cause anyone to condemn those who admire the USMC.

The only real difference when the organisations as a whole are taken into account is that the Waffen SS was on the losing side of a war in which the allies, being the victors, got to write history as they saw fit.

Finally, I might add that both the totenkopf insignia and the SS thunderbolt rune predate the Nazis and the third reich by a long period, with the totenkopf being used by prussian soldiers well over 100 years ago, and the thunderbolt rune being an ancient symbol from norse mythology. The Waffen SS merely adopted them.

Cpt_Frank · Post by **Cpt_Frank** » 2002-09-02 04:26pm

Ya know what you say is right, but the thing is the SS (or parts of it) did guard the death camps, and that does give it a bad taste.

Raptor 597 · Post by **Raptor 597** » 2002-09-02 04:27pm

Totenkopf wrote:
Cpt_Frank wrote:And that's fucking right! So tell us, skully, are you a neo nazi?
No.

Such closed minds, such small vision on the part of my accusers.

I will make no secret of this: That I respect and admire the Waffen SS as a great fighting force of powerful fearless men who would fight to the last (when a common soldier would have given up long ago).

With respect to those who died under the Reich that they served, it must be pointed out that only a small number of all the SS ever served in the death camps, and the majority were only soldiers who fought other soldiers on the battlefields of WWII. The vast majority of SS soldiers I am sure knew nothing of the death camps and the masses murdered there.

No nation or army is without atrocities. In the same way that I admire the SS as the great body of fighters that they were, many people also admire others, for example American forces such as the USMC. The fact that members of that organisation were involved in atrocities at times (such as the infamous My Lai massacre for example) does not stop this admiration and does not cause anyone to condemn those who admire the USMC.

The only real difference when the organisations as a whole are taken into account is that the Waffen SS was on the losing side of a war in which the allies, being the victors, got to write history as they saw fit.

Finally, I might add that both the totenkopf insignia and the SS thunderbolt rune predate the Nazis and the third reich by a long period, with the totenkopf being used by prussian soldiers well over 100 years ago, and the thunderbolt rune being an ancient symbol from norse mythology. The Waffen SS merely adopted them.

Ah, the old "They are innocent and knew nothing, following order, etc." Card. But no matter what you say they trained to hate Jews, and if they didn't know which they did because field troops often did the dirty work, they would still be racists.

Cpt_Frank · Post by **Cpt_Frank** » 2002-09-02 04:33pm

Well you could say about the Wehrmacht that they were just a brave fighting force obeing orders in wartime etc. but with the SS that's a difficult issue at best.

Raptor 597 · Post by **Raptor 597** » 2002-09-02 05:14pm

Cpt_Frank wrote:Well you could say about the Wehrmacht that they were just a brave fighting force obeing orders in wartime etc. but with the SS that's a difficult issue at best.

Yeah, I think Band of Brothers sums it up Episode , Bertchestgarden(I think it was 9) "Captain, why everyone left town?
"We'' Sareant, it's the on;y twn in Germany where yoy can't claim you're a Nazi." - Winters

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2002-09-02 05:39pm

Totenkopf wrote:
Cpt_Frank wrote:And that's fucking right! So tell us, skully, are you a neo nazi?
No.

Such closed minds, such small vision on the part of my accusers.

I will make no secret of this: That I respect and admire the Waffen SS as a great fighting force of powerful fearless men who would fight to the last (when a common soldier would have given up long ago).

With respect to those who died under the Reich that they served, it must be pointed out that only a small number of all the SS ever served in the death camps, and the majority were only soldiers who fought other soldiers on the battlefields of WWII. The vast majority of SS soldiers I am sure knew nothing of the death camps and the masses murdered there.

No nation or army is without atrocities. In the same way that I admire the SS as the great body of fighters that they were, many people also admire others, for example American forces such as the USMC. The fact that members of that organisation were involved in atrocities at times (such as the infamous My Lai massacre for example) does not stop this admiration and does not cause anyone to condemn those who admire the USMC.

The only real difference when the organisations as a whole are taken into account is that the Waffen SS was on the losing side of a war in which the allies, being the victors, got to write history as they saw fit.

Finally, I might add that both the totenkopf insignia and the SS thunderbolt rune predate the Nazis and the third reich by a long period, with the totenkopf being used by prussian soldiers well over 100 years ago, and the thunderbolt rune being an ancient symbol from norse mythology. The Waffen SS merely adopted them.

Hitler made his genocidal policies know long before he was even in a position to implement them. The troops fighting in the field were fighting for the establishment that murdered 6 million Jews, and millions of others though out Europe in a war of Conquest.

They are just as responsible as they allowed the murder to go on. The fact that only a few tens of thousands guarded the camps is no defense, the SS field forces routinely were involved in rounding up and killing Jews and others in the field, as were many regular German Army units.

Your apologist bullshit is just that, a load of bull and an insult to those who survived.

Lord_Vader · Post by **Lord_Vader** » 2002-09-02 06:29pm

Uh no sorry man I got to argue with that point. Since I myself am part German and had relatives on both sides of the war. First of all the notion that 'every soldier knew' is utter crap. The death camps were NOT advertised and such. Second thing you are unfairly accusing many young boys who were conscripted and forced to fight as simply being evil. One can say the same about the Americans and the destruction of the Indians (native americans if u want that to be used instead). The simple truth is yes the death camps were horrific and so were the genocidal policies that Hitler put forth. Now has mass genocide been done before? Yes it has...any student of history knows that the Mongols have arguably killed more people than anyone else in history. When they rampaged through China whole cities of MILLIONS were killed, or if not killed then put in as slaves to be used for the next siege. This continued on throughout most of Asia as the mongols rampaged through it all. What of the Japanese and the massive amounts of killings they inflicted on China? I think I have read somewhere that most Chinese arent happy that that point is often overlooked. More Chinese died by Japanese during the invasion and then occupation than practically all of the deaths in Europe inflicted by Stalin and Hitler combined.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2002-09-02 06:40pm

It remains a sad footnote in history, though, that many people knew of the death camps during the war and refused to do anything about them. The United States Congress, for example, refused to pass legislation condemning the camps before the war began for the United States. There were also many people in Europe who had a pretty good idea of what was going on. There is even evidence that many Soviets redirected fleeing Jews into areas where they would be captured by Nazi troops and (presumably) executed. One of the "Great Sins" of the Catholic church was that it was silent on the matter during the war. While the average citizen or even the average soldier probably did not know exactly what was going on, it is unrealistic to claim either that no one knew what was happening, or that everyone who did know was doing everything they could. It is sad, yes, that not everyone was willing to help, but that is what happened.