Saving Private Ryan's Brush with Fact

The current hoopla over the blu-ray release of Saving Private Ryan has rekindled discussion about the movie. Viewers too young for its initial showing are expressing interest in the movie and the story surrounding it. Unfortunately, the story from Saving Private Ryan is based upon fact. Two separate families went through similar situations in WWII.

Saving Private Ryan is specifically based on the story of four Niland brothers. Although none of the men actually served together, they all joined the services for the war effort. In mid-May, 1944, Edward Niland was shot down, and his body was not recovered. Just three weeks later, during the early June invasion of Normandy, two other brothers, Robert and Preston Niland, were killed. Although the youngest brother, Fritz Niland, was also at Normandy, he survived. Somehow, someone in the Army was alerted to the fact that he was the last of the four brothers, and he was shipped back to the U.S., where he spent the rest of the war as an MP.

As it turns out, Fritz was not the only Niland survivor, however. Brother Edward, presumed dead, had actually been held in a POW camp and was liberated almost exactly a year after his capture. Both men lived into the 1980s.

A lesser known story today is that of the Sullivan brothers, five young men who also served in WWII. These tight-knit brothers joined the Navy in early 1942 with the stipulation that they be kept together. Although the Navy did have a policy disallowing such grouping, it was apparently often ignored, and the Sullivans enlisted together.

The ship with the five Sullivan brothers, the Juneau, was struck by a Japanese torpedo in November of 1942. The bomb apparently hit near the ammo magazine, and the ship exploded, the wreckage sinking speedily. Because of orders for radio silence, those near the disaster didn't report it until several hours later. Although a report was eventually made, it was apparently lost in the shuffle for a number of days. The Sullivan family began to get concerned about the lack of letters from the boys, but no news was forthcoming from the Navy about the Sullivan boys.

The story of the Sullivans' Juneau in many ways matches that of the Indianapolis, related by the character Quint in Jaws. The survivors floated in the ocean, in this case approximately 100 men, for eight days until rescue arrived. In the meantime, the men suffered from exposure, hunger, thirst and shark attacks. Only ten survivors were eventually pulled from the water, none of them the Sullivan brothers.

Like Saving Private Ryan, a 1944 movie, The Fighting Sullivans, was created based upon the story.

It is through these movies that the stories of these courageous fighters live on. Knowing that Saving Private Ryan is based upon one if not both of these families is sobering. We can only hope that these stories that illustrate the horror and heroism of war help keep us from recreating the mistakes of the past.

References:

C. Douglas Sterner. "The Sullivan Brothers." Homeofheroes.com.

"The Niland Brothers." Wikipedia.org.

"The Sullivan Brothers." Wikipedia.org.