Steamboat Willie was supposed to surrender himself to an Allied unit and become a POW. Instead he is found with the attacking Germans. It’s possible that he ran into a unit of Germans on his way to turn himself in, but it’s more likely that he waited until he was out of sight, then found his way back to his army. Whatever else can be said about Upham, finding out that the German who he argued to keep alive was now a part of the force that had virtually wiped out his unit was at least part of his motivation to kill SW.
Actually when I asked the question I thought the soldier who killed Mellish and the soldier Upham shot were the same person.
Whoops, see what I mean about shaven-headed men in uniform looking similar!
I viewed Upham as a generally sympathetic character who was out of his depth, he obviously wasn’t of the same aggressive character as the others but he did share most of their danger and made himself useful as an ammo-carrier and interpreter. The other soldiers seem to like and respect him by the end as well, even Mellish who gave him a hard time at the start.
I also thought the german soldier on the stairs walked past him both because he thought he wasn’t a threat and was also beneath his contempt and that he shot Steamboat Willie (who I thought was the same soldier who killed Mellish) because he was telling the others that Upham wasn’t a threat and didn’t have the guts to shoot them.
An interesting character indeed.
A somewhat similar character is portrayed in the old Charlies War comic that was published in the UK, a pacifist is placed in the main characters unit and states that he is utterly unable to commit violence even to save a member of his family, however when the decisive moment comes and the main character is engaged in a losing hand-to-hand fight with a German soldier the pacifist picks up a shovel and kills him, but never really recovers from committing that act and views it as a betrayal of his beliefs, necessary to save his friend though it was.
A remarkable historical irony is that there was a real Upham in WW2 who was rather a long way from being a coward.
He was a New Zealander who won not one, but two Victoria Crosses. Only combat soldier ever to have done so. Absolutely solid cast iron 'nads. With uranium plating.
To throw in another but of confusion, is the German soldier firing the bolt action rifle who shoots Miller at the bridge either one of these two German guys?
Yes, it’s Steamboat Willie.
I think Upham gets a little bit of a bad rap (just a little bit). Remember, this was the first battle that he was a full-fledged participant in. And even in this battle, he wasn’t expected to actually fight, he was just supposed to be shuttling ammo to people who needed it.
His character was interesting cause it was basically a case of taking a “civilian,” with normal civilian morality, and throwing them into a wartime environment. So when the other soldiers thought it was a no-brainer to kill Steamboat Willie (from the POV of soldiers who’d been involved in countless grinding battles), Upham was appalled. And when Upham needed to call upon his courage and actually take on a German soldier to save Mellish’s life, he was unable to do so. I don’t know what percentage of us would have been able to do that if thrown into that situation. Probably enough to shame those who couldn’t do it, but not a majority of us.
His killing of Steamboat Willie was a “too little, too late” gesture to show that he finally understood why he should have been killed.
People’s reactions when exposed to combat for the first time are highly variable and anyone who thinks Upham was just a coward is fooling themselves. That’s how a LOT of soldiers in the U.S. (and every other country) armed services reacted to their first taste of combat. Many went in fully intending to fight and ended up shitting their pants, cowering in terror, or both. It’s not a voluntary reaction.
The rest of the squad have all seen and survived combat before. They’re the end result of the test of combat. Upham’s the beginning of it.
Was this deliberate on the part of the writers? It’s not a particularly common name after all.
I disagree with that entirely. Killing Willie the first time they captured him was arguably justified - they couldn’t guard a prisoner, and if they let him go, he’d just rejoin the German army. Killing him at the bridge was a straight up war crime. The front had caught up to them. The area was swarming with Allies setting up to permanently hold the bridge. They were more than adequately supplied and reinforced to hold POWs. Upham doesn’t shoot Willie out of war time necessity, he does it out of petty revenge and self-loathing. Upham has progressed through the film from wide-eyed idealist, to coward, to common murderer. He represents the moral casualties of the war - how it can break people spiritually as well as physically, how war can produce monsters in equal measure to heroes.
I don’t speak German so I don’t know what Steamboat Willie was saying to his comrades at that point but I got the impression that he was telling them that he knew Upham and knew that Upham wouldn’t shoot them, ie: he and by extension the rest of them presented a threat to Upham.
If this isn’t the case then yeah, its pretty hard to justify.
Methinks you refer to Colm Meaney as the pilot in Die Hard 2.
I don’t think so. For one, Willie has no reason to question Upham’s bravery. He thinks that Upham won’t shoot him in cold blood, because of their previous encounter. His words to his comrades were probably him assurances that Upham was a good guy, and that they wouldn’t have to worry about winding up in a ditch somewhere - a very real danger to any soldier that surrendered, on either side of that monstrous conflict.
More importantly, though, is the fact that Upham is guarding those Germans because they’d just surrendered in the face of an overwhelming force. That force is still present. Even if the Germans thought they could take out Upham, there still in the middle of a major Allied advance, and would quickly be gunned down by all the other Allied soldiers in the immediate area.
There’s no good argument to be made that any of those prisoners represented any sort of a threat at that point. Upham shot Willie out of shame and rage, not out of any sort of necessity.
Pffffttt…close enough… 
Watched Intermission recently as well in which Gleeson, I mean Meaney, has a significent role. Nasty film but it did have its moments.
You’re probably correct, but it would be interesting to know what Steamboat Willie is saying to the others to be sure.
I partially agree with your point, you’re right that killing Steamboat Willie at that point was completely unjustified. It’s what I meant when I said “too little, too late.”
I don’t think Upham was a wide-eyed idealist, I just think he had a totally common romantic view of war, which was shattered when he faced the reality of it. And I don’t think he was a coward, as RickJay explained. I also don’t think he was a monster or a common murderer.
Steamboat Willie’s reappearance is exactly what the other soldiers were saying would happen if they let him go. He rejoined his army, and went back to killing American soldiers (Capt. Miller in particular). Upham and his humanitarian ideas were proven wrong (at least in that particular battlefield context), and this time around, he wasn’t gonna make the same “mistake.” Of course, it was too little, too late for him to change anything at that point (and really, if it hadn’t of been Steamboat Willie, it would have undoubtedly been some other German soldier in that spot shooting Capt. Miller). And like you say, his reactions were partially driven by his shame from doing nothing to help Mellish.
Does Upham know that SW killed Miller? I know I did, as a viewer of the movie. But does Upham see SW kill Miller? I think he does, but I don’t remember… it’s been a while.
I hated Upham in the film, and I had no sympathy for him. I don’t know what I would do in facing combat for the first time, but it’s not like he didn’t go through basic training and have an understanding of the concept of war. Also, that wasn’t his first encounter with being in battle. Rushing the nest where SW was first encountered was pretty hairy, and even if he didn’t take a shot, he could have been killed. He was close enough to the action.
The German soldier that came down the stairs looked at him like a scared child. As people have mentioned, a non-threat. That was a man’s fight for life in that room upstairs, and Upham wasn’t going to do anything to the German. Pathetic.
But killing SW to me wasn’t a war crime. Upham was one against a number of german soldiers. Sure, they surrendered, but Upham didn’t have any confidence in himself that he looked like he meant business. SW knew him and he knew SW. He also heard what SW said to the other German soldiers. Shooting SW certainly made the others take notice, and the odds of them taking Upham lightly were lowered considerably. Upham could have believed his life was in danger.
If I could predict my behavior in a chaotic scene like that, I would have killed SW at the first opportunity. Does that make me a war criminal? We couldn’t take prisoners. We couldn’t be sure he’d run into allied personnel and surrender. The only way to make sure he didn’t get back into the fight and kill allied soldiers was to kill him then and there. I could have lived with that decision. I couldn’t have lived with myself if I saw him fighting again… forget about it if I saw him shoot someone I knew and respected (like Miller); I would have lost it.
I haven’t seen the movie in years (since it was in theaters, actually), so maybe my recollection is off, but by the end of the movie, hadn’t the Allied forces relieved Miller and Ryan’s squads at the bridge? The first time they captured Willie, they didn’t have any way to hold prisoners, but I don’t think that was true at the end of the film: they weren’t an isolated squad behind enemy lines, they were on the Allied side of the new battle front, surrounded by allies, their mission completed, with a clear path back into newly liberated Europe. There’s no reason, in those circumstances, that they could not take prisoners. Indeed, Upham only shoots the one German, correct? If executing the prisoners was a tactical necessity, why does he only kill the one who recognized him from before his fatal failure of will?
I don’t recall if Upham knew that Willie had helped kill Miller or not, but I don’t see that as excusing much. It’s an act of vengeance, against a man who hasn’t committed any crime not shared by any of the Allied soldiers. I can understand that, under the circumstances, that wouldn’t mean much, after you’ve seen your friends slaughtered, but that doesn’t make the action right, and given how he’d acted during the battle, it’s hard not to see Upham’s execution of the POW as an attempt to make up for a failure of duty with an act of savagery.
Does no one know what SW said to the other prisoners Upham was guarding, or what Upham said afterwards? Surely that would shed light on the issue.
Upham says “Drop your weapons, all of you, drop them!”
SW says “I know this soldier… I know this man.”
Afer Upham shoots SW, he yells the German equivalent of “Get out of here!”
Okay then. Maybe it wouldn’t.
When Upham holds his rifle on the German squad, it’s mere seconds after the P-51 blows up the tank. I don’t think any new Allied soldiers are present - the Germans are all running from the planes bombing the hell out of them. These particular Germans jumped up and were trying to run away, when Upham pulled the rifle on them and told them to drop their rifles. They’re very much still in combat mode, not clean-up mode - if Upham had an automatic weapon and mowed them down instead of giving them a chance to surrender, he would have been perfectly justified in doing so.
ETA: I agree it’s purely vengeance for Upham to kill SW. Having never been in a situation even remotely close to what they put him through in the movie, I decline to judge him harshly for either cowardice or vengeance.