By Matthew Price and Gene Triplett
Staff Writers
Vets leave 'Flags of Our Fathers' with differing impressions. Veterans who saw the Clint Eastwood-directed "Flags of Our Fathers" this week came away with differing impressions while others stayed away.
But all expressed admiration for the men who inspired the film.
"I think they were all heroes," said Billy Dale, 58, of Oakwood, who saw the film Friday at Quail Springs Mall. "I'm about ready to go out and buy war bonds today."
Dale, who served in the Army in Vietnam, remains interested in military history.
"There were a lot of realistic fighting scenes, but overall I thought the movie was anti-war," said Kenneth Berry, 65, of Oklahoma City, who was stationed at Fort Benning, Ga., during the Vietnam War. "I didn't actually fight in combat so maybe my opinion is a little different."
Berry thought the film emphasized the negative aspects of the main characters -- and the later glossing over of the facts of the Iwo Jima flag-raising -- too extensively.
Rick Rowe, 58, of Bethany, quartermaster at Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1857 in Oklahoma City, received a pass from Paramount Pictures to attend a sneak preview of the film.
"Well, I'm an eight-year former Marine and a Vietnam veteran," Rowe said. "You're steeped pretty much in Marine history when you serve in the Marines. My dad and my uncle were both in World War II. My dad was Navy and his older brother was a Marine."
Rowe sympathized with the conflicted feelings of the three surviving flag-raisers in the iconic, Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph, who were brought back to the states and used as public relations pawns in the government's last-ditch effort to win the war with the Seventh War Bond Tour.
Rowe was an aviation Marine who worked on radios for jet aircraft. He was not in combat.
"I have not seen it, and I don't even know of anybody that has seen it," said Arvon Staats, 61, assistant service officer at the VFW post and an Army veteran. "I have read the book and found it to be a very good book, but I haven't been to the movie, and of course I'm a veteran myself. "
Staats is not a combat veteran, having been stationed in South Korea in the U.S. Army at the time of the Vietnam War.
"But we did have firefights where I was," Staats said.
Staats said he probably won't go to the movie.
"I've read two or three books about Iwo Jima. From what I've read it's probably the bloodiest and one of the worst battles our men have ever been through," he said. "I mean, the Japanese were dug into those caves and things and were firing at our guys on the beach. It was awful. How somebody could come out of that with their mental faculties, I really don't know."
