War Stories

“Was it natural for a twelve-year-old kid to be so totally engrossed in something that glorified death and destruction?”

At this early stage, Daniel’s misgivings about his son’s obsession with video games are evident. Surprisingly, Daniel has not been as affected by Jacob’s stories as his son is. He never showed the same inclination to glamorize war or felt the attraction to become a soldier himself; instead, he became a student of history.

“That was another thing about war, besides the noise, pain, death, destruction—it smelled bad too.”

This moment provides the reader’s first glimpse of The Realities of Combat, as seen through Jacob’s eyes before the battle of Sainte-Régine. Young Jacob has been in combat for more than a year and has lost his initial starry-eyed perception about what engaging the enemy might be like. In many future passages, Jacob will also focus on the unpleasant tactile sensations of being a soldier. These can’t be conveyed in a video game.

“Trevor doesn’t care about history. He’s just obsessed with your grandpa’s larger-than-life war stories—which, by the way, get even less believable over the years. […] That’s not history; that’s superhero comics.”

Julia makes this comment while considering whether to allow her son to accompany Jacob and Daniel to Europe. Like Daniel, she recognizes the glamorization of war for what it is. By comparing Jacob’s stories to comic books, she also associates the 93-year-old with the immaturity of teenage boys who are fascinated by such material.

“‘You’re always accusing me of making war look too glamorous to the kid,’ Jacob challenged. ‘Well, this is his chance to see exactly how glamorous it wasn’t.’”

To some degree, Jacob’s perception of his own wartime experience shifts to more realistic descriptions once he’s back in the land where all his adventures occurred. It is much easier to embellish war stories from a distance. Being confronted by multiple rows of graves in Normandy makes that illusion harder to maintain.

“World War II wasn’t won by giants, but by the courage and deeds of individual soldiers, one at a time. Soldiers just like Private Firestone.”

This comment is made by the military escort who accompanies the Firestones on their tour of Fort Benning. At this stage, Trevor is still enthused about all the trappings of war, yet the guide’s comment grounds those high-flown perceptions in the workaday experience of individual men. This comment is the first hint of The Personal Price of Victory.

“Maybe he really was destined to be a hero. Either that, or the fool who does something stupid and gets everybody killed.”

Jacob has just rescued Freddie from being gored by a bull. While his army buddies applaud his courage, Jacob offers this rueful comment. He doesn’t yet recognize the prophetic nature of his statement. He will indeed become a hero for liberating Sainte-Régine, but his actions will also get an entire family killed.

“For sure, nothing in this awful and chaotic place resembled the charts and maps they’d been shown. And with so many of their people suddenly and tragically out of the picture, did it even matter?”

Jacob is describing the landing on the beach at Normandy, which turns into a disaster. Nothing goes as planned, and the enemy is ready and waiting to slaughter the incoming forces. In video games, the rules of engagement are clear, and unforeseen mistakes don’t occur. In real life, even military planning will make mistakes. Sadly, such miscalculations cost lives.

“Yes, Dad, I get the difference that when you die in real war, you stay dead. I know that. I just didn’t know it happened to Freddie, that’s all.”

Trevor has just expressed his horror at the idea that Freddie died in a random accident when he stepped on a land mine. This moment is the first point at which war becomes a personal experience for him. He knows Freddie through Jacob’s many stories about him. The reality of that death is brought even closer when the Firestones find the young man’s grave in Normandy. Even vicariously, Trevor experiences a sense of loss that makes war less of a fun game and more of a tragedy.

“Every single one of these graves is more than a life lost. It’s a family torn apart and generations that will never be born.”

Daniel once again tries to make Trevor understand the personal cost of conflict. Every soldier who dies affects not only his family back home but also the family he will never have because he died prematurely. Daniel sees the long-term community consequences of a war. Trevor simply wants to destroy enemies as if they were ducks in a shooting gallery.

“We just go from war to war to war. We never seem to learn. Hitler was one of the worst, but there’s always someone who wants to take over. Why is it so hard to understand that we have to find a way to live together?”

Despite Daniel’s objection to glamorizing war, he appreciates the urgency of stopping men like Hitler. Sadly, he points out that Hitler will have successors who are equally intent on ruling the world. Daniel’s final question laments the willingness of others to follow them; it should not be so difficult, he argues, to find ways to respect one another.

“He had found himself surrounded by so many bodies—from both sides in this war—that it became difficult to remember that these had once been people. Brothers and sons. Husbands and fathers and friends…Friends. The word was a sucker punch to Jacob’s gut.”

At 17, Jacob started out with much the same attitude as Trevor. He wanted to kill the enemy and become a hero. The real experience of combat has made him personalize war. The loss of Freddie brings this fact home to him. He is able to translate his personal loss into a sense of empathy for all the other losses suffered on both sides of the conflict.

“No matter how much you plan and strategize and calculate all the angles, once the shooting starts, it’s basically chaos.”

Jacob has just recounted the story of how his unit was nearly destroyed by friendly fire. Again, Trevor is appalled to realize that real warfare doesn’t go according to plan. Video games are programmed to follow specific rules. Combat isn’t. Jacob points out the randomness that prevails in the heat of battle.

“‘It may be glamorous to imagine fighting an enemy,’ Dad added. ‘But bombs and bullets don’t care who they hit, and the real enemy is the fighting itself.’”

While playing video games, Trevor is in control of his character and the tasks he will perform. This scenario is totally unlike real war, where the variables are infinite, and mistakes are common. While real life is generally fraught with error, mistakes don’t generally cost lives. When armed soldiers make mistakes, their errors can’t be undone.

“They passed several French villages, some of them completely destroyed, others totally intact. It made Jacob reflect on the randomness of this war, where the difference between life and death was a roll of fate’s dice.”

At multiple points, Jacob escapes disaster through sheer luck. In this quote, he is recalling his unit’s march to Paris and the devastation they see along the way. The ambition to become a hero depends on free agency. As Jacob rightly points out, much of his survival as a soldier depended on sheer accident. Again, this reality is nothing like the carefully orchestrated narratives of online gaming.

“‘I’m older than you, so I’ve heard a lot more of his stories,’ Dad explained. ‘After a while, they all run together, and the only thing I remember about war is I want no part of it. It breaks things and people.’”

While Trevor focuses on epic battles, he fails to see the individuals who were part of those battles. Even Jacob recognizes that individual soldiers must perform small tasks to accomplish large goals. In this quote, Daniel is once again emphasizing the personal cost over the political victory. It isn’t only buildings that get bombed. It is also the people inside.

“‘Real should be good,’ Trevor argued. ‘G.G. was a hero! This was the greatest part of his whole life!’ ‘He was a hero,’ Dad conceded. ‘But when it comes to war, real is never good. People were dying every day, all around him. Now, for the first time in decades, he’s back in the place where it happened.’”

The closer Jacob gets to his destination in Sainte-Régine, the more the reality of war weighs on him. He could fictionalize and embellish his war exploits for Trevor’s benefit from the comfortable distance of Connecticut, but returning to France reconnects him with not only his heroic deeds but also his worst mistakes.

“What was past was past. A terrible thing had happened. It would not be remedied by another terrible thing, regardless of one man’s guilt.”

Juliette has turned a corner in her attitude toward Jacob. Her perception of him was shaped at a distance. She had heard stories about the monster who destroyed her family, but seeing the man in person alters her perspective. She understands that one violent act can’t be fixed by another. Philippe has yet to learn this lesson.

“This was why he had enlisted in the first place—to make a difference. Sure, he understood that he’d done his share countless times in this war. But as one soldier of hundreds of thousands. This was something else—an operation that couldn’t have happened without him. A whole town would be liberated thanks to his actions.”

Young Jacob is being seduced by his own dreams of glory. In this quote, he sounds very much like Trevor. He has just hatched a plan to disable the Nazi gun in Sainte-Régine and save the entire town. His ego is running amok, and he isn’t thinking of the collateral damage that his actions might cause.

“He had repaid them by bringing disaster down on their heads. And the worst part: There was nothing he could do to make it right. As he stalked through the orchard, he cursed the day he’d enlisted in the army. He’d wanted to make a difference. Well, he’d certainly managed that.”

Jacob has just learned that he inadvertently led the Nazis to the Lafleur farm, and the family was slaughtered. The bitterest irony is that his desire to distinguish himself individually is exactly what caused the disaster. He made a difference, and he made a mistake that can’t be fixed. Such unforeseen consequences don’t happen to heroes in video games.

“But when Jacob sighted down at the boy, he beheld no menace, only terror. There had been so much death and suffering already. What could possibly be gained by killing this poor scared kid in the aftermath of a battle that was already over?”

Jacob has just decided to spare the life of another German soldier who crosses his path. He is tempted to rectify his earlier mistake by killing someone who had no part in the Lafleur tragedy. Fortunately, Jacob realizes that revenge holds no solution. This quote parallels Juliette’s earlier realization that vengeance against the elderly Jacob won’t bring her family back.

“I could have been expected to have half the brains God gave geese. But instead I was an idiot. A lot of innocent people paid the price for it, and I wasn’t one of them.”

Jacob has just told Daniel and Trevor what really happened to the Lafleurs. Daniel tries to comfort him by saying the tragedy wasn’t his fault, but Jacob refuses to absolve himself. He ignored the basic rules about how to engage an enemy, and that decision cost many lives. Once again, the random destruction of war is emphasized over the clear decision-making that a hero in a video game exhibits.

“Chaos was the word G.G. had once used to describe war. It looked cool on a movie screen or in a video game. But when real lives were being lost, snuffed out by sheer random chance, there was no glory.”

Trevor makes this comment as he tries to process what Jacob has just told him. His idealization of his great-grandfather is now tempered by the recognition that battlefield heroics are an illusion. Most of what occurs is dictated by random chance. All along, Trevor has keyed on the hope of achieving glory through battle. This quotation is his first admission that there can be no glory in a war dictated by the whims of chance.

“That brief embrace between G.G. and Juliette had been nothing less than a gigantic weight lifted from the old man’s shoulders—one that had been crushing him for most of his long life.”

Trevor comes to this realization as he watches Jacob and Juliette hug one another. In this moment, he understands The Personal Price of Victory. Jacob may be a war hero, but he is also a man haunted by his past mistakes. Ultimately, the individual lives lost will matter far more than the military victories gained.