Dale A. Dye reflects on his family, forged through shared suffering and survival.
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As a guy with no living parents or siblings, I don’t spend a lot of time contemplating the concept of family beyond my own wife and kids. Asked to expound on the topic, my emotional response is to think about the small coterie of living individuals I grew to know and love as brothers at war.
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I am blessed to be one of the fortunate few in society that can claim two families. It has nothing to do with ancestry and everything to do with being related by blood. As a guy with no living parents or siblings, I don’t spend a lot of time contemplating the concept of family beyond my own wife and kids. Asked to expound on the topic, my emotional response is to think about the small coterie of living individuals I grew to know and love as brothers at war. While those folks may not be relatives, they are most certainly related to me forever by shared experiences and blood-spilled in Vietnam.
Mom and Dad did the groundwork, but my brothers at arms made me the person I am today…for better or worse.
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Much of my thinking about all this was stimulated by working on the hugely-popular WW II TV mini-series “Band of Brothers,” a project that remains one of the most celebrated explorations of wartime relationships ever made. Interviewing surviving veterans of Easy Company, 101st Airborne Division depicted in the series, the subject of their ongoing connection with each other always seemed to take priority over any stories about the brutal actions they’d fought in during the war. Like most aging war veterans the world over, these men weren’t glib or given to emotional conversation. Questioned about their feelings for each other, they’d often simply shake their heads and tell me it was hard to explain; that I might not understand. They weren’t wrong about much but they were wrong about that. I know about a band of brothers and I know how strong those relationships are. I get it…and I celebrate it every time I think about family.
Not that I don’t appreciate the crooked and cockeyed branches of my own ancestry but it just doesn’t carry the emotional weight of a simple phone call or email from one of the Marine Corps brothers grafted onto my family tree through shared suffering and survival in mortal combat.
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Not that I don’t appreciate the crooked and cockeyed branches of my own ancestry but it just doesn’t carry the emotional weight of a simple phone call or email from one of the Marine Corps brothers grafted onto my family tree through shared suffering and survival in mortal combat. They are siblings —brothers from another mother in military parlance—as close and important to me as any relative in the more common sense of the word. And like most relatives in a traditional family, they had—and still have—impact on my life. It’s no stretch to say those blood brothers helped mold and nurture me more than anyone else in my lifetime. Mom and Dad did the groundwork, but my brothers at arms made me the person I am today…for better or worse. That’s family for you by any reasonable definition of the term.
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Marine officer Dale A. Dye rose through the ranks to retire as a captain after 21 years of service in war and peace. Following retirement from active duty in 1984, and upset with Hollywood’s treatment of the American military, he went to Hollywood and established Warriors, Inc., the preeminent military training and advisory service to the entertainment industry. Dye has worked on more than 50 movies and TV shows, including several Oscar- and Emmy-winning productions. He is a novelist, actor, director, and showbusiness innovator who wanders between Los Angeles and Lockhart, Texas. Look for Dye’s new Shake Davis novel, Havana File wherever good books are sold.
Photo by the US Army
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“…and upset with Hollywood’s treatment of the American military, he went to Hollywood and established Warriors, Inc., the preeminent military training and advisory service to the entertainment industry.”
Oorah that.