Thursday, October 11

"Babe" Ciarlo, Italian American, Hero of Ken Burns "The War"

The ANNOTICO Report

 

A story that needs no introduction, and guaranteed to grab your heart.

The Soldier Who Should Have Lived

 

Greensboro News Record - Greensboro,NC,USA
By Thomas Nelson

Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2007 

Babe was like a character in a novel. And then I realized he was no character. And this was no novel.

As I watched Ken Burns’ epic documentary, "The War," on UNC-TV recently, it set me to thinking about a lot of things. My father, actually my mother, too, served in the Second World War. He served as a sailor and she as a nurse.

I suppose for cosmopolitan flair I should mention they fought on our side, our being American. But this is not about my parents. It’s about a guy named Babe whom I only met two weeks ago. Ken Burns introduced me, in my kitchen, through my television. I really don’t know, or rather I don’t remember, Babe’s last name. It was Italian American. I remember that much about it. Babe had a lot of sisters and, as the youngest of that brood, and the only boy, he was tagged with the name of Babe. A family has to love a guy to name him Babe. They must have really doted on him. I feel sure about it.

Babe burrowed into my mind the moment I met him. I keep thinking about him the way a person keeps thinking about a sharply drawn character in a good novel. Day after day he sticks with me. But he is not a character of fiction. He was once as alive as you or I until fate claimed him. Babe was killed fighting with the American army against the Nazis in Italy. Yet he was once real and vital and younger, a lot younger, then than I am now.

Those of you who watched "The War" know Ken Burns tells the story of America’s involvement in World War II through the eyes of those who were there. There are numerous veterans and those who knew them in this documentary. Each tells a story of World War II. Many are first-hand accounts, some touching, some horrific, some just matter-of-fact. Babe’s story is told through his sisters’ words and through Babe’s letters home from the front line of war. Babe was drawn as caring, kind and constant until that day in 1944.

I found myself partial to Babe’s story among all the compelling stories in "The War." I followed his progress from Pearl Harbor Day to his final day on a muddy road in Italy. He was my favorite actor in a real-life drama that read like a suspense novel. I wondered: Why did Babe enlist? What was his motivation? I tried to get into his mind as he had gotten into mine. Was he scared? He must have been scared but his character never reveals fear. Babe’s letters home to his family are relentlessly upbeat. Would he survive the war? I kept imagining his character walking up the front steps of his Connecticut home into the arms of his family. The American in me really did believe it would end happily ever after for Babe.

I even imagined his sisters, all those sisters, kissing him, throwing their arms around him. Welcome home, Babe, welcome home.

Authors don’t kill characters like Babe. At least, American authors don’t. But it was not Americans writing this larger-than- life epic called World War II. Other people had put their pen to page, and the premise of their story would be murderous and its final chapters dark as they often are in the literature of the Old World. This was a foreign novel written by foreigners. Among these outsiders, I rooted for Babe like I would for my own son. Come on, Babe, you can make it. You got this far. You can make it. But he didn’t.

I find myself very angry that a noble, finely drawn character such as Babe was wiped off the page so close to the end of the story, just when you felt sure he would survive.

Only, Babe is not a finely drawn character on an author’s page and the war that claimed him was no novel. If only it were so.

The writer is an associate professor at the Elon University School of Communications.

http://www.news-record.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/
20071010/NRSTAFF/71009025

 

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