Bryan Cranston was the perfect orator to tell the gruesome, devastating story of Jack Moran on Memorial Day. Jack Moran, per PBS' website, was a young 18-year-old who eagerly enlisted in the Army to beat back Germany. As the website explains, "In the first six days of combat, his unit had 96 men killed and 113 wounded. After his first month in combat, he'd seen enough death and destruction to last a lifetime." Cranston took us through a detailed oral history of Moran's experiences in the war.
I have no snarky commentary or sappy Memorial Day platitudes for you. Instead, just in case you're strapped for time and can't watch it yourself, I'm going to quote some of Cranston's speech.
"We were just a bunch of smart-a— kids, 17 and 18. [Moran's group] thought it was going to be an adventure. We didn't have any fear. We were just, "Let's get over there! Let's get into the fight!" Cranston began. "I saw 7 guys go down in 15 seconds. My best friend from Basic, Hugh Gorman, got shot in the face by a German machine gun."
As the following verbal imagery is quite explicit, I'll skip over it and move on.
"We dug a circle of foxholes and stayed quiet. The Germans had us surrounded. The kid in the foxhole next to me got a bullet between the eyes. All we could do was pull his helmet down and try not to look."
Bryan Cranston Tells The Harrowing Story Of World War 2 Survivor, Jack Moran
"Six days, we were pinned down. Our food ran out after three. When we got thirsty, we ate snow," Cranston continued. "The Germans threw a lot of heavy mortars at us, the 88s came in thick as snowflakes. It got so bad, I knelt in my foxhole. I held up my arms, and I said, 'Please, stop! Please, God, stop the shelling!' That was the first time I ever cried in a war — and the last."
The totality of Moran's WW2 experience is something unfathomable to me. As Moran even recounts through Cranston, I can't compute humans being so flagrantly cruel to one another. But Moran used his story to inspire younger people and give them a sense of pride and appreciation. Memorial Day couldn't have been a better avenue for just that purpose.
"If I can do that, then it'll be worth every drop of blood we shed."
