So, I found myself watching Saving Private Ryan again the other night. It’s been a while, honestly. Gets me every time, that movie.
And this time, like pretty much every other time, I got stuck thinking about Corporal Upham. You know, the translator guy they pick up. The one who’s clearly not cut out for the front lines.
My gut reaction, especially during that scene on the stairs while Mellish is fighting for his life upstairs… well, it’s always been pretty harsh. Sitting there, paralyzed, while his comrade gets killed. It’s brutal to watch, and my first instinct is always anger. Frustration. Thinking, man, what a coward. How could you just sit there?
Digging into it a bit more this time
But watching it this time around, something felt a bit different. Maybe I’m just getting older, or maybe I’ve just had more time to think about things. I started trying to put myself in his shoes, really try.
I remembered this feeling I had once. Nothing like war, obviously. It was way less intense, just a really high-pressure situation at an old job. Everything was going wrong, people were yelling, deadlines were crashing down, and for a solid minute, I just froze. Couldn’t think, couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. My brain just sort of… short-circuited. It was embarrassing as hell afterwards, felt like I completely failed the team.
Now, that little office panic attack is absolutely nothing compared to the sheer terror of a World War II battle. Apples and oranges doesn’t even begin to cover it. The sounds, the smells, the constant threat of death… unimaginable, really.
But that feeling of freezing? Of your body and mind just refusing to cooperate when you’re overwhelmed? I got a tiny taste of it that day.
Thinking about Upham through that lens changes things a little:
- He wasn’t a hardened combat vet. He was basically support staff pushed into hell.
- He was likely seeing violence and death on a scale he’d never conceived of.
- His reaction, freezing on the stairs, maybe wasn’t malice or pure cowardice, but a system overload. Pure, unadulterated terror shutting him down.
It doesn’t excuse the outcome. Mellish’s death is horrific, and Upham’s inaction is a direct part of that tragedy. But calling him just a coward feels too simple now. He seemed more like a representation of what happens when an ordinary person, someone not built for that kind of horror, is dropped into the absolute worst situation imaginable.
It’s easy for me, safe on my couch, decades later, to say what he should have done. But being there? Hearing that fight? Feeling that fear? I honestly don’t know how I’d react. I’d like to think I’d be brave, but who really knows until they’re tested like that?
So yeah. Still a tough character, still a difficult scene to watch. But my judgment isn’t quite as black and white as it used to be. It’s more complicated. More human, I guess. Still makes me think, that’s for sure.
