By Kevin Lee Associate Editor

A war rolled into Mobile on Sept. 8 led by a field marshal more benign than bellicose.

It brought to the fore conflicts of our past, present and future, laid bare parts of ourselves from which we still turn yet showed the promise we also hold.

The general of this media militia was acclaimed documentary maker Ken Burns and the tank he rode was his latest project “The War,” a film showing the effect of World War II on four average American towns.

A native of Michigan and the Northeast, even Burns could easily see the impact of the conflict on Mobile.

“Mobile was completely transformed by WWII,” Burns said. “It was a sleepy little town with some experience building ships that was completely changed by the war industry. The federal government even made a film in 1943, ‘Wartown,’ about the change and the pressures it brought.” Plenty of footage from that very film is found throughout Burns’ work.

Burns slipped into the Azalea City several times over the seven years it took to make the film and was always looking for something new.

“Everyday is an unexpected surprise,” Burns said. “We wanted to do this from the bottom up so to speak, to talk to everyday people and get their recollections on the war. No generals. No celebrities.”

“The surprises were in the people we met. People like Dwain Luce who came across a concentration camp in Europe and once faced with the horror and brutality of it, forced the people of the nearby town to give the victims proper attention and burial.”

“People like Maurice Bell who was on the U.S.S. Indianapolis when it was sunk and he went into the water for days where he saw friends and shipmates eaten by sharks while they waited on help. He’d see people disappear and then just these little billows of red where they were.”

“People like John Grey, an African-American who went to war then came back to face Jim Crow when he supposedly had just been fighting against those kind of things.”

“You’re always a detective on these,” Burns revealed, “always looking for something new, something you didn’t have before.”

The documentarian found the evidence in abundance here.

“World War II isn’t that far away,” Burns said, “and there are still people alive who lived it, who still live in the houses they lived in then.” His crew used Mobile’s historic architecture with aplomb, featuring Midtown locales in many shots that appear as if they were staged 60 years ago.

The personal artifacts of those inhabitants also came in handy as home movies and other “found” footage dot the documentary, accenting its personal tone. The grainy images of children playing in a spray of water or families in dappled sunlight unavoidably draws a line of connection between the viewer and the stories told.

Burns also cited the University of South Alabama’s photo archives as a rich resource.

A public screening of excerpts featuring Mobile was staged at the university’s Mitchell Center arena where close to 2,000 people showed for a preview of the work that will air on public television on Sept. 23.

Burns noted in an opening address that the premiere would come 17 years to the day from the debut of his first landmark work, “The Civil War.”

“So in 17 years,” he joked, “all we’ve done is lose the word ‘civil.’”

Burns underlined his approach with a quote from Winston Churchill: “The best history is when the heroes of the past whisper in our ear” and lamented the standard oblivion among the comfort of contemporary American citizenry.

The film itself is everything you expect from Burns: first rate production values, excellent usage of sound and music, top notch editing, good contrapuntal use of color with black and white film, voiceovers that enhance the prose they read. Even the maps used to show troop movements and the like appear consistent with the period look of the other footage though they were created specifically for this work.

It’s moving and powerful and everything you would expect from the creator and subject.

Be warned though: the battle footage is graphic and a dutiful reminder of the essence of war.

In true objectivity, the movie also touches on less savory aspects of Mobile especially in regard to an archetypal caste system more prominent in the 1940s. The aforementioned John Grey openly recalls the resentment that emerged toward blacks who didn’t “stay in their place” or who showed any signs of success.

Sadly, the film’s stated fact that the overwhelmed public schools were pronounced “worst in the nation by the U.S. Office of Education” brought outright laughter from the crowd.

In another passage, two women remarked on the massive influx of outsiders during the war, rural Alabamians who flocked by the thousands into Mobile looking for jobs at the shipyards and Brookley Air Base, pushing housing and infrastructure to its limits.

The narrator quoted one Mobilian whose open derision wondered how they could make the new residents leave as quickly as possible when the war subsided. Another participant recounted in her “Garden District” accent how the locals looked down upon the newcomers as “rednecks.” Both comments elicited chortles from the more finely attired attendees in the “reserved seating” section.

However, when one émigré from Millry recalled, “The air of the old aristocratic Mobile people was really, you know we had to put up with a lot,” little tittering was heard from the “good seats.”

Excerpts from Eugene Sledge, a Mobilian whose exemplary war memoirs “With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa” brought Burns’ focus to the Azalea City, also hinted at darker realities. The writer who hailed from a privileged and comfortable background noted how his wartime experiences forever killed his belief in man’s intrinsic goodness.

And the sacrifices highlighted by Burns and his insistence that fellow Americans learn from and honor them? Perhaps a hearty salvo in the face of Sledge’s doubts.

And the hope we all harbor through the struggles of our past.

Kevin Lee is Lagniappe associate editor. Contact him at klee@lagniappemobile.com.

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