This is powerful.

yes a very powerful movie
that's a short reply to your comment

here's a longer ones if anyone wants it


i wonder if some guys are just born to lose

i don't mean to sound indifferent or dismissive
but eddie slovik overplayed a real bad hand in a real high stakes game

and the sad irony was he ended up getting killed
because he was so afraid of getting killed

by the time his transport ship landed in europe
the u.s. war machine had a desertion problem on its hands
and it was going to find an answer

maybe the yanks hadn't expected it
given the successes since d-day
but german soldiers were defending german soil
much more fiercely than french soil

and the u.s army's replacement system was such that
it threw its newest infantrymen
into front line battles
which were now bogged down
right at the german border

by fall/winter 1944 - when eddie arrived - those reinforcements
were a bunch of guys - thousands - the army had deemed
unfit to serve during the war's first three years
but wars tend to deplete inventory

and these formerly rejectable
now of necessity acceptable troop trainees
were sent where needed as needed
no time was given to 'fit in & blend in'
it was just 'get in & dig in'
war is hell
stupid too

shipped out from a 'repple depple' - replacement depot
like so many spare parts which in reality was what they were

so on one hand you had battle-tested soldiers
defending their homeland

on the other
guys like eddie slovik

who'd already been told by uncle sam
'we don't want you' and figured
they'd never even see a u.s. army base bunkbed
let alone a muddy fox hole on the front line
likely as not too next to some guy
they'd known since breakfast ... maybe

all this in a country that was damp, cold,

and thousands of miles away from home
and the warm sheets they'd been sleeping on
til uncle sam decided to down-grade his draft rules
happy gung ho warriors these guys were not

the first result of all this was a horrific
american blood-letting in a dense dark german forest
(the same one where hansel&gretel had played by the way)

the second result was a lot more eddie sloviks
(can you blame 'em, really?)

and the third result was the yankee war juggernaut
needing a poster boy to solve its now
not so little desertion dilemma

the men fighting the battle in the bloody forest wanted to stop bleeding
the men planning the battle in the bloody forest needed them to keep bleeding
hello pvt slovik

still eddie provided the warcrazies the rope to hang him
or more accurately the ammo to shoot him dead

he - an ex con - prewrote his desertion confession
while being awol for six weeks
after spending all of one day at the front
and he handed it to the first officer he saw
when he finally came back

eddie man why so bold in your cowardice?
why not a little subtlety?
why not just keep getting lost?
you'd been just another awol problem for the company clerk
just another dogface for the stockade guards

not getting shot at was the idea
even if it meant military prison
slovik already'd done time twice back in the states
sitting in a jail cell good
dodging bullets at the front bad

eddie was one ballsy slacker and with a plan too
he'd ended his declaration of independence from the u.s. army
with the words 'AND I WILL RUN AWAY AGAIN ' his capital letters

this buck nothing private was telling
the shiny brass generals what the deal was here
when it was the generals' cards, the generals' rules,
and the generals' game
slovik wasn't just a bad gambler
he was a dumb - cocky - gambler

it was like being the table short-stack
and going all-in with 7 high against the chip leader
no
more like some guy playing liar's poker
and letting everyone except himself
look at their card

but that's not the worst of it

at his court martial with the death penalty a real possibility
eddie stood mute - he chose not to testify
after the war one of his judges wrote in a magazine article
that they'd taken slovik's silence as an arrogant ploy

trials judge the facts and penalize the culpable
guilty for slovik was a given
what'd the judges think of eddie's brash writing beforehand
and zipped lipped act afterwards?
not much
they voted for execution -- unanimously

eddie was on a roll - downhill

and then when the date for the firing squad was set
and the gamble starting looking a little shakey

slovik penned a letter asking for some have mercy
he wrote to the guy who invented the eisenhower jacket
but eddie spelled the general's name 'eisenhowser'
true story
it'd been a comedy if it weren't such a frickin' tragedy

i do agree with your thread title tho, it was a very powerful film

eddie slovik was a not so big not so smart
guy from the polish slums of detroit
and life sure didn't stuff his pockets full of good breaks
but he did get a couple

a beautiful woman loved him
(their wedding photograph will break your heart
they really were a lovely couple)
and at least 2 army officers gave him a chance to tear up
the suicidal awol statement that got him shot
but he didn't take it because

evidently it was a known fact among the deserter's club
that no american soldier had been executed
since abraham lincoln was president
4 score and not 20 but at least 2 american wars before

eddie bet - boldly - that trend would continue in place

and it must've looked pretty safe
but it wasn't
because in wartime nothing much is
especially an ex-con's foolhardy bet
against a war machine that held all the cards
when it had a bug-out problem it needed to squash

poor eddie - no joke
he got shot for being afraid of getting shot
some guys just really are born to lose