I’m a schoolteacher. I teach English composition… in this little town called Adley, Pennsylvania. The last eleven years, I’ve been at Thomas Alva Edison High School. I was a coach of the baseball team in the springtime. Back home, I tell people what I do for a living and they think well, now that figures. But over here, it’s a big, a big mystery. So, I guess I’ve changed some. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve changed so much my wife is even going to recognize me, whenever it is that I get back to her. And how I’ll ever be able to tell her about days like today. Ah, Ryan. I don’t know anything about Ryan. I don’t care. The man means nothing to me. It’s just a name. But if… You know if going to Rumelle and finding him so that he can go home. If that earns me the right to get back to my wife, then that’s my mission.
You want to leave? You want to go off and fight the war? All right. All right. I won’t stop you. I’ll even put in the paperwork. I just know that every man I kill the farther away from home I feel.
I don’t gripe to *you*, Reiben. I’m a captain. There’s a chain of command. Gripes go up, not down. Always up. You gripe to me, I gripe to my superior officer, so on, so on, and so on. I don’t gripe to you. I don’t gripe in front of you. You should know that as a Ranger.
Well, in that case… I’d say, “This is an excellent mission, sir, with an extremely valuable objective, sir, worthy of my best efforts, sir. Moreover… I feel heartfelt sorrow for the mother of Private James Ryan and am willing to lay down my life and the lives of my men – especially you, Reiben – to ease her suffering.”
You take a standard G.I sock, cram it with as much Composition B as it can hold, rig up a simple fuse, then coat the whole thing with axel grease. Now when you throw it, it should stick. Its a bomb that sticks, its a “sticky bomb”. Think of a better way to knock out the tracks, I’m all ears.
Private, I’m afraid I have some bad news for ya. Well, there isn’t any real easy way to say this, so, uh, so I’ll just say it. Your brothers are dead. We have, uh, orders to come get you, ’cause you’re going home.
This Ryan better be worth it. He’d better go home and cure some disease or invent a longer-lasting lightbulb or something. ‘Cause the truth is, I wouldn’t trade 10 Ryans for one Vecchio or one Caparzo.
