Critical Thinking/Discussion Questions - Wallace Carden

1. How would you feel about America after being a POW under Nazi-controlled Germany?

2. In the film (8:00), Wallace Carden stated, “The state of humanity is about the same, I think, ever since Adam and Eve, really. I think it’s getting worse because everybody wants to be a terrorist now, it seems like, don’t they? And harm someone else, don’t matter who it is, they want to harm someone else, don’t care who it is.” Do you agree with his assessment of today’s society? Do you think that humans have always been just as violent, “since Adam and Eve?”

3. Physically, Wallace Carden completely changed while he was a prisoner of war. Wallace described his physical condition upon liberation: “He took me back to First Aid station, and the girl there, they came in, and she said, ‘I got to take some blood,’ and doing this and she poked around, ‘Well, if I’ve got it in.’ She poked around twice, she ran out crying, says, ‘I can’t get any blood.’ So they sent another man in there, and he was…he did OK. He didn’t get too scared. And I probably weighed…they said I weighed less than 80 pounds. That’s what they said there, and I weighed less than 80, and I did weigh 195 when I got in the combat.”

How do you think this could change the way that Wallace viewed himself? The way that he viewed the world? How did Wallace keep from giving up when he was so physically damaged and deprived of nourishment? Do you think this changed him after he returned to America, and if so, how?