Clancy Sigal: The Bloody Consequences of Military Hubris

Clancy Sigal is a screenwriter and novelist in Los Angeles.

D-Day – 6 June 1944, when Allied forces stormed into Hitler's Fortress Europa in Normandy – is rightly celebrated for the valor of the American and British citizen soldiers who scaled the fearsome cliffs of Pointe-du-Hoc and other dug-in Wehrmacht concrete bunkers on Omaha, Utah, Sword, Gold and Juno beaches.

Most of us have seen Saving Private Ryan, or have movie memories of The Longest Day or TV's Band of Brothers. That's because D-Day is photogenic and "iconic". The "longest day" is preserved in popular and institutional memory as a thrilling military success, which, as we know, has many fathers, while failure is an orphan. D-Day's message is that US military strength and pluck overwhelm, and always will.

But what happens after Matt Damon's Private Ryan is saved and John Wayne, with his broken ankle, takes Sainte-Mère-Église?.. .....