War/Tear Jerker: Difference between revisions

** Well, imagine if you're one of the families of the unfortunate ones who died. What would you feel?

** Adding onto that note, the Cold War's proxy count is only speculative. You don't even get the joy of a numeral finality. And the stories, fictional and real, are every bit as harrowing. (Spy Came In From The Cold for one.) By the way, for a world war 2 one shot in the general style of a cold war film, and one of the most incredible jerkers ever, try [[Black Book]].

** The Sullivan Ballou letter is sad. This troper remembers reading it as an assignment in her American History class last year and finding it more moving than a lot of the books she had remembered reading in English, even some of the sad ones.

** this troper first read the letter when she asked her father for help with finding a monologue for drama class. when she finally entered 11th grade, her father handed her a copy to give to her teacher the day they started learning about the civil war. her teacher is a very large, very masculine man. he was crying as he read the letter aloud to the class. there was a beat, and someone whispered, " that's..so..sad."

* Two instances from the Battle of Mogadishu: One, the stories of Randy Shugart and Gary Gordon. For those who don't know, they were the two Delta force snipers that were put onto the ground to protect the crew of the Super-64, the second Black Hawk to crash in the city. They asked to be put in three times before permission was granted for them to go in, because command thought it was too dangerous. These men knew that. They knew a large armed force of Somalis was moving towards the crash site. They knew that it would only be the two of them against hundreds of heavily armed, very angry enemy combatants. They knew that there was little to no chance of coming out of that site alive. They also knew that there were American soldiers down there, their brothers in arms, and that if they didn't go get them, nobody would. So they went, they fought, and they died, and saved the life of [[CW 3]] Mike Durant. They were the only Soldiers to receive the Medal of Honor for actions in Somalia.<br />Two: After the capture of Mike Durant, American helicopters circled the city with loud-speakers, broadcasting "Mike Durant, we will not leave you." Poignant in the movie, gut-wrenching when you remember that this actually happened. The dedication that these men had to each other inspires Soldiers everywhere.

* This troper was taken on a visit to the very bunker where the Battle of Britain had been organized even as it was going on and preserved more or less as it would have been at the time, complete with radios to keep in touch with the various pilots. We were then told that the girls manning the radios were often able to hear the German pilots as well, and inevitably were privy to their last moments. THEN we were told how one girl once reported a German plane shot down, and as the plane was falling from the air she could hear its young pilot, screaming for his mother.

* The German scientist Fritz Haber was forced to leave Germany or face persecution from the Nazis because of his Judaism. The Nazis killed members of Haber's own family in Auschwitz using Haber's most famous creation: Zyklon B, which he had synthesized to be used as an insecticide.

** Would that be the same Fritz Haber who is often considered the father of chemical warfare and who, in World War I, as a captain in the German army, personally oversaw the deployment of chlorine gas at the Second Battle of Ypres, at which over 6,000 allied troops died due to gas inhalation ''within the first fifteen minutes''? Not the best example of a tearjerker you could have picked. One does not excuse the other.

* Christmas Day, 1914. That is all.

* This troper cannot listen to the words, "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds," without welling up.

* [[wikipedia:E Company|This page]] about Easy Company, 2nd Battalion of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 4th Brigade combat team of the 101st Airborne Division is aboslutely heartbreaking, but when you look at the dates... This troper always gets a hollow feeling in her chest because they're not that much older than me.

** Penkala and Muck were killed when German artillery landed in their foxhole. It's always made out to be safe, and then you find this out and it's devastating.