Interview outtakes from THE WAR:
"There was an experience that gave me a real understanding of home. No matter how great, no matter how small, no matter how indifferent, no matter how stupendous, regardless of the facts, home has unique quality that just cannot be exceeded. Home is the ultimate value that humans venerate. You can understand an experience we had at the end of the war where leaving our place of battle, we were in a giant convoy, uh, hundreds and hundreds of, uh, trucks were on the way from wherever we were to the port of La Havre, uh, um, in France. And ahead of us was a truck that contained six French former prisoners of war. They were on their way out of Germany in an old three-wheel truck, and, um, uh, we went through gorgeous, beautiful German country and they were completely indifferent to the beauty. They kept looking over the h-, hood of the car. In the four days that it took us to get there, when we came to the border of France, they became more animated. They really came somewhat alive. They became more like... You saw a smile perhaps for the first time on their faces, and they became more animated as we went deeper into France. And finally we came to a little town ? an ugly, miserable little coalmining French town. The Frenchmen all jumped out of the truck in tremendous animation, threw their arms around the first person they saw and kissed them, bent down and kissed the ground. They whooped and hollered and yelled in a way. Yeah, this was a, the, uh, open expression of, uh, home, home, home, I love you. And, uh, that is the way all of us really felt perhaps greater or lesser when we got home. Home was the most wonderful place the world ever contained." |
