The Valour and the Horror

World War Two, saving private ryan, Second World War, W.W.II

Ý Ý Ý Donald Pearce

DONALD PEARCE As quoted in "The Valour and the Horror"

A captain of the North Nova Scotia regiment.

On a wounded soldier at VerriËres:

V&H 01:47:29:00 A solitary German sniper put one through his stomach at 500 yards. He had staggered to a small barn and announced I'm hit and I think it's bad. And he lay down, we covered him with a small blanket to keep him warm. He began to thrash, and roll around, in his deep, musical voice, curse and swear, pounding on the barn floor with his open hands and the back of his head. Four men tried to hold him down, and he fought them off, and continued to roll and pound and shout...for a long while, there in the dust. He was a full six hours dying.

On God, at attack on church, August, 1944:

V&H 02:29:56:00 When we were shelled, I watched others praying and I felt sorry for them...I thought only a weak-minded person could drag theology into this stark and meaningless place. So instead of taking God's name into my heart, I took it in vain again and again, silently, though others may have thought me praying.

On patriotism:

V&H 02:40:16:08 Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori...How sweet and good it is to die for one's country. I think of those I knew, now dead. There was something sweet about their death, and glorious...We must all go at last, and they went, followed by men who laboured with them and loved them. All this a civilian can never know.