UNITED STATES—This Memorial Day really had me thinking about my grandfather who died in 2021 as a result of contracting COVID-19. My grandfather was 99, on the cusp of turning 100 in a few months before his death. It was a turbulent time for my family and one that left so many of us heartbroken and just shattered.

I was watching the movie “Saving Private Ryan,” a flick I have seen before, but it has been quite some time since I watched, because it is perhaps one of the greatest war flicks I have ever seen. It is visceral, brutal to witness, and the violence is just riveting and unapologetic. Why does that movie mean so much to me and my family?

Well, it’s because my grandfather was a World War II veteran. Yeah, I’ve known that for a significant period of my life, but it was almost like a little secret in my family. It was something we didn’t bring up in conversations as much because it was emotional for my grandfather, to say the least. That opening sequence captured on film by director Steven Spielberg is perhaps the most powerful ten minutes of cinema I can recall in my entire time as a cinema buff. I mean those soldiers preparing to get off those boats and as soon as the doors are let down the gunfire is immediate.

They are ambushed, they are literally being pelleted away with bullets from the enemy. I mean there is a scene of a soldier who loses his arm and is searching the beach for it, he picks it up and is on his way. The scene is so short, but riveting as hell as the same time. Then you have that scene of Tom Hanks’ character picking up his helmet off the sand and its full of blood; literal blood. Hanks’ character puts the helmet on as blood and is just pours from his head. Haunting to watch.

I’m trying to set a scene that not many can understand because my grandfather was one of those soldiers on that beach that day. Just seeing what transpired in the movie pales in comparison to what he actually witnessed and endured. He hasn’t shared the tale often, but from what I know, he was thrown out of a helicopter, directly into those frigid waters with bullets all around him. He explained that experience is one of the reasons that he never flew.

We’re talking about in the 40s, so for nearly 70 years my grandfather never, and I mean never got on an airplane again. If he had to travel it was done via car or bus. He told me it was so much mayhem on that beach with many of his comrades being killed and not making it back to the USA. He mentions that the Germans and Japanese constantly threw racial slurs at him, ones he didn’t understand at the time, but later found out.

Not only was he a solider, but he guarded the enemy when they were captured by U.S. soldiers during this bloody war that changed the United States of America as we know it. He couldn’t even mingle with his White-counterparts that he fought side-by-side during the night hours. Yes, racism, prejudice and discrimination even existed during war.

I knew what my grandfather sacrificed as a kid, but I didn’t understand the gravitas of his role in fighting in WWII until I got older. He sacrificed a lot; he received very little in the process when he returned to the USA. His White counterparts easily received loans to get homes, he on the other hand because of the color of his skin had a bigger fight to earn a loan to purchase a home.

It amazes me that people can fight for their country and not receive the respect and the accolades they should. It is almost like we forget so easily when we should be recognizing and reflecting a lot more than what we do. My grandfather was a hero, a hero that I should have appreciated more when he was on this Earth and the things he sacrificed so I can live my life the way that I currently do without the prejudice, discrimination and hatred that he experienced during the war and after the war. Heroes don’t always wear capes.