Word: garcete
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Dates: during 1955-1955
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...this-is-how-it-really-was quality, Heartbreak is far more than a newsreel. It threads its story on the trial-by-fire of young Lieut. Gérard Garcet, a replacement starch-fresh from St. Cyr. At first Career Officer Garcet learns a basic lesson-war is mostly waiting...
...last, with spring, comes the call to action. Garcet takes the long jeep ride into combat, full of zeal and professional hopes ("Promotions do not come to young lieutenants promenading on the Champs Elysées"). He soon learns that he is the New Boy at the Old School; his fellow officers reminisce about when the war was really tough; his hard-bitten platoon promptly dubs him "Battling Baby-Face...
...takes Freshman Garcet several lonely months before he breaks through to acceptance, and he does it the hard way. In a successful dawn attack on a Chinese hill position, much of his platoon is wiped out, and he is badly wounded. Back in the aid station, he hears from a dying platoon member the first words of greeting, eloquent in their sense of sudden loss: "I wish I had gotten to know you better...
...deeper heartbreak, as Lieut. Garcet learns, lies not in the infantryman's Iliad of anguish and backbreaking toil at the bloody Korean ridge. It lies in the bitter knowledge that at home the sacrifice has largely gone unnoticed. For France's "les oubliés" (forgotten ones) and for all the others who went to Korea, Heartbreak Ridge is both a stirring reminder and an epitaph...
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