Saving Private Ryan Clerk Mom General

I think the un-sung hero of this entire scene has to be the clerk. Someone going through what has to be hundreds in piles. Able to catch such a thing, then go to a whole other desk to find another matching brother is quite incredible. I think its a very honorable way to show our women back home. A mother that truly cares.

The most heart wrenching scene of the whole movie. One can't imagine how many mothers dreaded seeing that car coming to their house.

Anyone still watching this on Memorial Day 2024? I am.

My Dad, Told the Navy he was Not color blind....he lied. He fought for us, no one could stop him. He married the prettiest girl in the world for 54 years. He was the Best Man in the marriages of his three sons. Because He was the Best Man.❤

It's so utterly human, she instantly realizes what has happened when she sees the priest come out of the car with the officer and is so emotionally and physically stricken that she can't stand.

What really impressed me during that scene as the General read the letter from A. Lincoln was the way he set the letter down but continued to recite it, word for word, showing what a deep impression that letter made on him.

The chain-of-command actually working here to bring this woman's observation and concern to to the Chief-of-Staff is beautiful.

The reading of Lincoln’s letter went through me like a knife

What got me the most was that General Marshall had Lincoln's letter memorized. People like that are very rare, especially these days.

Respect to that generation

I first read the lines from Lincoln's letter many years before Private Ryan came out. I was in Hawaii and went to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, The Punch Bowl. It is engraved on the marble wall above the Gardens of the Missing. It teared me up then and teared me up now. My wife's Grandmother had a flag with four blue stars like that, fortunately none of them turned Gold but Iwo Jima pushed that hard. My father served in the Navy in the Pacific and he came home. I was born in 1946. Thank you to all the service men and women who protect us. (PS, I served for 22 years US Army.)

JESSE WE NEED TO SAVE RYAN.

Still brings me to tears.... "I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. Yours, very sincerely and respectfully, A. Lincoln"

The first time I saw this scene I totally lost it when General Marshall closed the book, sat down, and finished the letter from memory. One of my favorite scenes of all time ..... wow

To me, the saddest part is the sound of typing. A room full of women typing up death letters, 8 hours a day, every day. Mothers and/or wives of soldiers doing all they could but having to read about others died, typing up the letters accurately to be delivered to women just like them?

Here in the Netherlands there are still people who know that we owe an incredible debt of honor to those who made the ultimate sacrifice and the families they left behind. I am one of them.

"In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war...fathers bury their sons." This scene says that harder than any other war scene I can think of.

This scene is soul crushing. The sight of the mother, unable to stand, bracing herself for dreadful news, one cannot help but shed a few tears watching this scene.

The General perfectly cast. Flawless scene.

Never, ever forget the young American men who fell for the freedom of this continent. God bless the USA.🇺🇸