The prism in which I see the film now has changed.

Years ago I always saw this through the prism that these men gave their lives to get Ryan out of the War and that if it weren't for Ryan and the mission involving him they wouldn't have died.

After seeing it again years later I no longer look at it that way. The one soldier even angrily yelled to Ryan something like "Hey Asshole! Two of our guys got killed looking for you." As if they were going to be safe if they weren't looking for Ryan.

It was World War II, what were they going to be doing if they weren't searching for Ryan? They were going to be in battles. These were very small skirmishes. A sniper in that bombed out French town, storming a machine gun nest that Miller ordered completely outside of the Ryan mission, and the small battle at Ramelle, those first 2 were happening all over France and were not major battles. Ramelle was not a major battle, if it can be classified as a "battle" then it was a small one. I'm sure if they weren't on this mission they would be in much bigger, deadlier battles so I no longer really see it as if "Ryan" put them in harms way. The war did that.

A German sniper? A machine gun nest? A battle over a bridge? They'd be experiencing that anyway on bigger levels without Ryan so I don't look at it that looking for Ryan got these guys killed.

What if Ryan left and didn't stay at Ramelle? Well, Ryan got to go home, not the other guys. They'd just be right back to fighting the war. They were probably going to be in the Battle of the Bulge in which had 75,000 U.S. casualties.