The first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan focus on the invasion of Omaha Beach in Normandy. The boats float to shallow water to unload their personnel under a barrage of German gunfire. Bodies fall right and left.
Bullets pierce bone and meat, blood spills so much that the ocean runs red.
Allied soldiers race madly, insanely, up the beach, and it's simply astonishing that anyone could emerge unscathed through that maelstrom of bullets and grenades. A different one. Potentially as deadly as storming Omaha Beach, but somehow it doesn't seem quite as worthy of the risk. The Ryan family in Iowa has lost three of its four boys to combat in one week. The mother is to receive all three telegrams in one day.