Forgiveness and Healing for Two Old Soldiers -

 . . ."Both wounds were healed when the two men met at an Easy Company reunion.  Having seen Vietnam vets meeting their enemies inspired Bill Maloney to invite German soldiers to the Easy Company reunions.  The Easy Company men were receptive except for a couple, including Philadelphian William Guarnere, who told Fritz that he would have killed him 60 years ago, punctuating his comment with a throat slash.  Malarkey saved the scene by toasting Fritz and welcoming him to the Band of Brothers.". . .

 Forgiveness and Healing for Two Old Soldiers - American Thinker  . . ."Authored by figures such as James Patterson, Clive Cussler, and especially Tom Clancy, dad books helped to enforce the narrative of the American Century.  In this narrative, (Anglo-) American democracy struggled with and ultimately overcame fascism and communism and is currently battling various rogue terrorist actors.

"There are "dad shows" and "dad movies," which along with dad books form "dad media."  Within dad media, a middle-aged American male — usually a vet — acts as a spy or commando fighting to make the world safe for democracy.  Dad media usually depict a flawed American military and intelligence establishment, and there are bad apples in the American establishment.  The system itself, however, is fundamentally worth preserving.

"One of the most popular stories in dad media is the struggle between Western liberalism and German National Socialism and its axis partners in Italy and Japan.  There are many dad films that tell this story, including The Dirty Dozen (1967), The Longest Day (1962), The Great Escape (1963), and Patton (1969).  While many of these films were released during the Vietnam era, the 1990s, saw a renewed interest in the second World War.  With films such as Saving Private Ryan (1998) and Terrence Malick's masterful The Thin Red Line (1998), a new generation was able to watch (usually with their dads) America's struggle against Germany and Japan.

"One of the most powerful and popular examples of dad media was the 2001 HBO series Band of Brothers.  As the War on Terror rolled out, Americans sat transfixed to their TVs, viewing the struggles of Dick Winters, Don Malarkey, and Carwood Lipton of the 101st Airborne Division's "Easy Company" from Camp Toccoa, Georgia to Berchtesgaden, Germany.  Soon available on DVD, Band of Brothers became one of the first "binge series" as well as one of the first "boxed sets" of TV shows.  While the series was deeply patriotic, it did not flinch in revealing some of the faults of its characters as well as some sympathy to the lives of German soldiers — there is the famous "German general speech" at the end, in which the members of Easy Company realize that, while their cause was just, the members of Wehrmacht against which they fought were also soldiers.". . .