Let Private Ryan Live

As a teen in the 1980s, I sometimes jogged with my dad when he was home, which was uncommon. At the time, I still lived in the shadow of JSOC, and it was a way to spend time with him. He warned me that he wouldn’t slow his pace for me and that I’d have to keep up. I wanted to show him I was strong, determined, and could go the distance. I think we both enjoyed sweating under the hot sun.

Dad wasn’t particularly talkative on our runs, but neither was he stoic. He had an athletic build, which I was glad to have inherited, but was never impressed with overly muscular physiques. During one run, he remarked, “90 percent of fatigue isn’t physical; it’s mental.”

One day, when I was probably 16, we were running his circuit along the stretch of Morganton Road. It was a hot day, and we’d approached a gradual incline that continued for the better part of a mile. Instinctively, I dug deep and pushed forward. I’d rather push at a sustained brisk pace than drag it out and suffer longer. At first, Dad tried to keep up but then faltered. I slowed my pace.

“No, don’t let me hold you back,” said Dad.

I hesitated. I didn’t want to leave him. I wanted to run with him. That was the whole point.

“Go on,” he said. I could hear a tinge of disappointment in his voice that he couldn’t keep up.

His voice wasn’t raised, but he was firm and direct. There was also acceptance in his tone.

I kicked back into high gear and finished the run at a brisk pace.

Ten years later, in August 1998, I was in Commissioned Officer Training, beginning my active duty as a second lieutenant in the Air Force. A few of us from my flight went to see the movie Saving Private Ryan. We all walked out of the theater with a profound sense of awe and perspective on how our peacetime medical service in the USAF compared to what we’d just watched.

But I cringed at the movie’s parting message. When Captain Miller tells Private Ryan, “Earn this,” with his dying words, he places an impossible burden on Ryan. How can one man possibly “earn” his life at the cost of another’s, let alone the deaths of several men who were sent in to save him? How can one man deserve to live when so many others died?

The answer is he can’t.

At the end of the movie, Ryan is an old man who has, by all accounts, lived a good and full life surrounded by loving children and grandchildren. But he can’t fully enjoy it.

At Miller’s grave, Ryan asks his wife to tell him he’s led a good life and that he’s a good man.

Why?

Because Captain Miller, despite his good intentions, had in some ways sabotaged the rescue of Private Ryan. Instead of saying, “Go and live your life,” he demanded that Ryan pay a debt that he could never repay. Captain Miller held him back.

It’s a movie. And I understood the sentiment. But I think anyone who gave their life for another and could see those they died saving struggling to “earn” their lives would say to them:

“No, don’t let me hold you back.”

“Go on.”

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Mike Warnock is the editor-in-chief of The Havok Journal and a retired U.S. Army major and Air Force veteran. He served 20 years on active duty across both branches, led surgical teams as an operating room officer-in-charge, later held clinical, administrative, and inspector general roles, and retired in 2019. A nurse with 23 years of combined civilian and military experience, including two Iraq deployments, he writes from a grounded perspective shaped by military service, medicine, war, and family. He holds a bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and a master’s degree in military history from Norwich University.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.