`Saving Private Ryan' Wins High Marks For Accuracy

SAN FRANCISCO - Stephen E. Ambrose has written several World War II books, including three that focus on the Normandy landings: "Band of Brothers," "D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II" and "Citizen Soldiers."

None of them pull any punches about what happened that day, when American troops were slaughtered by German machine guns, particularly at Omaha Beach. Allied bombers were supposed to wipe out the German machine-gun nests before the landings, but it didn't work out that way.

"Many tons of bombs were dropped," said Ambrose during a promotional tour in the Bay Area for Steven Spielberg's new D-Day film, "Saving Private Ryan." "They killed a lot of Norman cattle but no Germans."

He thinks this is the first D-Day epic that suggests how disastrous the landings were for soldiers who were slaughtered even before they hit the beaches. Although he's seen Darryl F. Zanuck's Oscar-winning 1962 spectacle, "The Longest Day," more than 20 times, Ambrose regards it as a "kindergarten" movie about war.

"In Zanuck's film, everyone who gets hit is dead, instantly," he said. "But in most cases, those soldiers didn't die immediately. They usually knew they were going to die, they wanted their mothers, they wanted morphine. It took a long time. Zanuck doesn't show you that. Spielberg does."

He regards Spielberg's movie as the first mature film on the subject.

"This is graduate school," he said. "I never in my life thought I'd see this in a movie. The only thing missing is the smell of battle."

Spielberg lists Ambrose as an adviser on the film, which was officially written by Robert Rodat. Spielberg, several cast members and a few other writers, including Frank Darabont and Scott Frank, contributed to the script. Ambrose claims he wasn't directly involved.

"He's got me down as historical consultant," he said. "What happened is, he took my books and made a movie. I wasn't involved in the writing of the script and I was never on the set. I saw the complete movie as my first contact."

He claims some of the dialogue was inspired by the books, as well as several specific incidents: "There's a scene where a soldier is holding the arm he's just lost. I can tell you which page that's on."

Still, he has no complaints.

"I don't know the first thing about writing scripts," he said. "It's not my talent. I deal with facts and things that really happened to people. It would never have occurred to me to tell this story. It's just great what this writer did."

The basis for the screenplay is the story of Fritz Niland, who was taken out of the fighting because most of his family had already been wiped out in battle.

"They got that story out of `Band of Brothers,' " said Ambrose. "Two of Fritz Niland's brothers were killed on D-Day. There the similarity ends."

Niland's mother received all the telegrams from the War Department on the same day. The Army wanted to remove Fritz from combat as soon as possible, so a chaplain, the Rev. Francis Sampson, was sent in to rescue him after someone made the connection with his brothers.

Spielberg's film transforms the chaplain into eight fictional soldiers, ordered by Gen. Marshall to find Pvt. Ryan (Matt Damon), a paratrooper, now behind enemy lines, who is the Ryans' last remaining son.

"It's a stretch that they would send eight soldiers, but it could have been hard to find him," said Ambrose. "The paratroopers were scattered everywhere."

Niland was taken out of battle partly because the Sullivan family had lost five sons on one ship in 1942. The U.S. government was sensitive to the possibility of that happening again.

Lloyd Bacon's 1944 film, "The Sullivans" (aka "The Fighting Sullivans"), told the story of the Sullivan boys. Recently shown on American Movie Classics, it concentrates on the boys' childhood.

Their final scene on the ship is handled very quickly. It's a relatively painless "lights out." In reality, at least one of them took hours to die in shark-infested waters.

"The Sullivans received an enormous amount of publicity, though the Navy did a lot of covering up" said Ambrose. "The Sullivan boys suffered terribly."

Ambrose has gone on to other subjects recently, including his acclaimed account of the Lewis & Clark expedition, "Undaunted Courage." He doesn't think he'll return to D-Day.

"I've reached the end of that," he said. "I've learned all I want to know about World War II."