Indeed. REAL heroes never beat their chests in public. That’s what instinctively put me off about John Kerry.
I really do wish they had a better pop-culture monument than John Woo’s “Windtalkers” 2002 movie. Damn good actors (Nicholas Cage, Adam Beach, Peter Stomare, Christian Slater, etc.), but they were hobbled with a script that was more redolent with hoary WWII movie cliches than anything the Duke put out back in the day.
I’m sure there are straightforward memoirs by the participants that would have made for better material.
You’re correct, my uncles very seldom even mentioned the war, they wanted to put it behind them.