Memorial Day Wisdom from Charlie Madison

Those of you who follow my work (I prefer to think of you as an elite deep underground minority, sort of like the Apostles) may know that I revere Paddy Chayefsky, the great screenwriter. So today I'd like to display here a great speech written by Chayefsky, and performed by James Garner in The Americanization of Emily.

The speech occurs when Charlie Madison, played by Garner, visits the home of Emily, played by Julie Andrews, and meets Emily's mother, Mrs. Barham. First, some background: I met Julie Andrews, once, in the green room of the Today Show. I'd met some famous people by then, and had gotten over being tongue tied or bashful, but Julie Andrews, who I'm guessing was in her 70s at the time, was even more gracious and beautiful than she appeared in all those movies or on TV. I was tongue tied and bashful. Second, my dad looked a bit like James Garner. Every time I see Garner, I think of my dad.

My father, like my mother, was a World War II vet. They both served in the army, in Normandy. The Americanization of Emily takes place mostly in and around London during World War II. It's a comedy that is not quite a comedy, as only Chayefsky could write it.

My parents never once used the words "warrior," or "hero" to describe their own jobs in the army, nor that of anybody they knew. Not one of their vet friends who'd served, whether in the Pacific or in Europe ever used those words in my presence. For them, a bunch of kids, really, who were just out of school, or working plain American jobs – my dad was an apprentice tool-and-die maker when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, my mother was in nursing school – the war wasn't about being a warrior nor a hero. They were average citizens, like most everybody else who went to war then, and they looked upon the war as a dirty, nasty business that had to be done and when they came home they were proud of their service, but they didn't want to talk about it much.

Compare that with Hegseth and his "warrior ethos" bullshit and his glorification of violence, and his video game bro mentality. Most distressing to me is the way some high ranking officers seem to be all too willing to go along with the phony PR display.

And so, on this Memorial Day I've been thinking about my dad, and James Garner and the speech, which, as I said, takes place in Emily's home when Charlie Madison meets her mother. Emily's brother has been killed in the war. So has her husband and her father. Emily's mother appears to believe they are still alive, though we can tell this is something she knows is a fiction.

MADISON

I was offered all sorts of commissions in the Army and Navy, the one I have now, in fact. Admiral Jessup phoned me to join his staff. But I had always been a little embarrassed by my job at the hotel and wanted to do something redeeming. Have you noticed that war is the only chance a man gets to do something redeeming? That's why war's so attractive.

MRS. BARHAM

Yes, war is very handsome, I quite agree.

MADISON

At any rate, I turned down Admiral Jessup and enlisted in the Marines as a private. I even applied for combat service. My wife, to all appearance a perfectly sensible woman, encouraged me in this idiotic decision. Seven months later, I found myself invading the Solomon Islands. There I was, splashing away in the shoals of Guadalcanal. It suddenly occurred to me that a man could get killed doing this kind of thing. The fact is, most of the men splashing along with me were screaming in agony and dying like flies. I don't think any of them wanted to die. Yet they had all volunteered for the Marines, and the odds on getting killed are pretty good in the Marines. To make it more grotesque, their wives, sweethearts and mother had all applauded their acts of suicide, and their children were proud of them for it. It was then I realized how admirable war was, the most admirable act of man. Those were brave men dying there. In peacetime, they had all been normal, decent cowards, frightened of their wives, trembling before their bosses, terrified at the passing of the years. But war had made them gallant. They had been greedy men; now they were self-sacrificing. They had been selfish; now they were generous. Hell, war isn't hell at all. It's man at his best, the highest morality he is capable of....

That night, I sat in the jungles of Guadalcanal, sopping wet and waiting to be killed, and all because there's a madman in Berlin, a homicidal paranoid in Moscow, a manic buffoon in Rome and a group of obsessed generals in Tokyo....I said to myself: "Charlie, you're as nutty as they are. Worse. At least, they're not sitting here in a jungle, waiting to be killed." It was then I had my blinding revelation...I discovered I was a coward. That's my new religion. I'm a big believer in it. Cowardice will save the world. You see, cowards don't fight wars. They run like rabbits at the first shot. If everybody obeyed their natural impulse and ran like rabbits at the first shot, I don't see how we could possibly get to the second shot....

It's not war that's insane, you see; it's the morality of it. It's not greed and ambition that makes wars; it's goodness. Wars are always fought for the best of reasons, for liberation or manifest destiny, always against tyranny and always in the interests of humanity. So far this war, we've butchered some ten million humans in the interest of humanity. The next war, it seems, we'll have to destroy all of man in order to preserve his damn dignity. It's not war that is unnatural to us; it's virtue. As long as valor remains a virtue, we shall have soldiers. So I preach cowardice. Through cowardice, we shall all be saved....

We shall never end wars, Mrs. Barham, by blaming it on ministers and generals or war mongering imperialists or all the other banal bogies. It's the rest of us who build statues to those generals and name boulevards after those ministers. It's the rest of us who make heroes of our dead and shrines of our battlefields. We wear our widow's weeds like nuns, Mrs. Barham, and perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifices. My brother died at Anzio....An everyday soldier's death, no special heroism involved. They buried what pieces they found of him. But my mother insists he died a brave death and pretends to be very proud.

MRS. BARHAM

Perhaps your mother needs this pretense to endure your brother's death, Charlie.

MADISON

He's dead, Mrs. Barham. He was killed at Anzio, an occasion for grief, even anger, but why pride?

MRS. BARHAM

You're very hard on your mother, Charlie. It seems a harmless pretense, really.

MADISON

No, Mrs. Barham. You see; now my other brother can't wait to reach enlistment age. That will be in September.

MRS. BARHAM

Oh, Lord.

MADISON

It may be ministers and generals who blunder us into war, Mrs. Barham, but the least the rest of us can do is to resist honoring the institution. What has my mother got for pretending bravery was admirable? She is under constant sedation and terrified she might wake up one morning and find her last son has run off to be brave.