spoiler: Voight in tense scene w/ Fonda/Dern...???

I have the movie in the player right now, I watch it every so often, and think this is one of the greatest pieces of film making and acting, ever.

When Bob and Sally were at the beach, she was sitting on his lap, and said tearfully these exact words:

"I don't know what's gonna happen with Bob and me, Luke....it's very scary for me to think that maybe it's not gonna work out with him...because we've been together for so long...."...

Sally was almost like a sheltered child-bride when Bob left for Nam, and probably thought she loved him and he loved her when she married him-a mistake easily done at a very young age, that brings together people who have nothing in common as persons, and split up later, when they want a more real life.

She had experiences at the V.A hospital that made her grow up as a person real fast, and one of them was the disillusionment with the proper Officers' Wives Club, who didn't care about the real needs of the heart-breaking injured men at the hospital.

So she had started to face reality directly, and admit to herself that her marriage is not good~she was already not seeing herself continuing being married to Bob...that's something she did not do until then, but used to put on a brave face and absorb Bob's insults and behavior like "cheery Sally, the Captain's wife"...as she had described herself to Luke, in the yard of her home at night. Now she had changed, as she said to Luke, and was not glossing over the problems.

Bob said just before he left for Nam, in their kitchen "There's nothing I can do here in California...that's where I belong...I am a Marine".

When he came out of the meeting with the brass, Sally found him standing still with a darkened face and a faraway expression...they had told him that they didn't want him in the Corps anymore, and you can almost see him thinking that his life was over, ergo, the ritualistic undressing and his suicide swim (separating from the Marine Corps-death follows).

Luke was gentleman enough to not pressure her -we saw how he really felt when she announced to him that she was going to Hong Kong for a week: his smile died, he pulled his wheelchair back and wished her a good trip impersonally, re-joined his buddies playing ball, but sat there, with his head down, not playing any more.

He loved her, but knew it was not his place to demand anything~it had to come from her.

Sally and Bob were two very different people, but Sally and Luke were very similar, compassionate, human, ready to stand up and help someone in pain, and speak out about what really matters.

The movie really gave us all the information we needed, to know these 3 people, the silent lovemaking between Bob and Sally before he left, spoke volumes about the lack of love and especially intimacy between them: He just sighed at the end, was facing away from her, far away really, and she was staring at the ceiling. He had just gotten some relief, he did not make love. Is that a couple in love, where one is leaving to go to WAR??? Where were the tears, the desperate holding, that would be normal in such a situation, if there was love between them?

I was married for years to a Marine and an Air Force person, I WAS Sally, and the truthfulness of some scenes was hair-raising, such as the drunken party with Bob and the soldiers he met at the Officers' club, after his return:

The bonds that developed between these men had become deeper and more important than any other bond, and his alienation from his wife (not that he was close to her to begin with) was complete when he returned, even before he learned of the affair.

The same thing about the deep bonds between the soldiers was shown during Sally's visit in Hong Kong-Bob left her at the bar they were at, to run after Dink who had left for another bar!

The film is so multi-faceted, it presents personalities, as well as the effects of war on those personalities. A brilliant film, and so very realistic!