I like seeing the process that brought the local boys to the front lines. I've done that, and the comparison is interesting. "Shreveport 3 miles". I grew up in Galveston, right down the coast from Shreveport. Joined the Army in Austin, after my buddies and I parted ways (on good terms). Then the movie turned to the subject of slavery... "A mighty nation engaged in a Holy
Crusade"..! That's not exactly the way I experienced it, In 1956, when I was 4, slavery had been abolished, and I hadn't paid any attention to race before then, except for one lady. Ms Jenny. She raised me while my Mom worked, in Galveston. She was the best, and I named my little girl after her. In the little towns in Texas (Northeast Texas, my grandparent's farm), there were no
blacks, so they never came up in conversations. Back then, conversations evolved around people You Know. There was no 24/7 news or internet. Life was about what happened where You Were. Harvest or planting, stray dogs that you saw (and usually shot). The bi-monthly church pot-luck spread. A ride to the next biggest town in your great-uncle's car for shopping every two or
three weeks. He'd take me along to seine for bait for when he went fishing, and I got good at casting that net. That was life in those little towns. No slaves, and no discussion of slavery. That fell into the 'outside of my world' category, so it never came up. In this movie, when they discussed the hanging of the black man..did you see celebration? No, you saw them question the logic
of that. The south, most of the people, were never exposed to slavery. Why we blame the South for the enslavement of others, escapes me. The South were, in some part (my part), raised by the blacks. There were two different worlds back then, in the 50's, as I'm sure, during the Civil war. Ms Jenny raised me, but she wasn't a slave. She was family.