In fact no less than twice does Spielberg produce anecdotes that might be considered parables on the dangers of promiscuous compassion. In one, an infantryman yields to his better instincts and attempts to save a French child from a combat zone. He is rewarded with a bullet in the diaphragm from a German sniper, and bleeds out pitifully in the mud. He's Christ in the rainy muck, crucified on a cross of compassion. They intend to execute him, as was occasionally done, if little talked about afterward.
Force seems to prevail.
Surprise of surprises, when next we see him, he's in the camouflage smock of the Waffen SS and is a tough, resilient, powerful soldier. He kills and kills and kills, finally snuffing the most precious of all lives the movie has evoked. In Saving Private Ryan , compassion is equated with catastrophe, with the softness that intensifies, rather than solves, problems. Force ends issues, settles them permanently and rightly. Spielberg's Upham is a smart guy with a quote for everything who, when the chips are down, fails completely.