My Salt River Brass Band's Veteran's Day concert will include John Williams "Hymn to the Fallen". I'll announce the number thusly:
Hymn to the Fallen, from John Williams’ score for Saving Private Ryan, is a memorial the soldiers sacrificed in the Normandy Invasion.
The film is based loosely on the 4 Niland brothers. The military had a loosely enforced policy of not placing brothers in the same unit; the policy was better enforced after the November 1942 sinking of the light cruiser Juneau in the Solomon Islands; it went down with the 5 Sullivan brothers. They’d enlisted together just after Pearl Harbor, with the stipulation that they be allowed to serve together.
Later in the war, the Niland brothers were assigned to different units, but two were killed landing in Normandy; a third brother was already missing and presumed dead over Burma. Army leaders sent word for Fritz, the surviving brother, to come home before their mother lost a fourth son.
In the film, he’d been dropped behind enemy lines on D-Day and spent five days in the French countryside, eventually earning a Bronze star in combat for taking a French hill. When found, he was shipped back to the U.S., though badly wanting to remain in combat – accurately portrayed in the movie.
The haunting Hymn to the Fallen is the conclusion of the film, some decades later: a time of remembrance, set at the American military cemetery in Normandy.
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