First Episode: Didn't cry, no big deal.

Episodes Two-Five: Cried occasionally, with increasing frequency as the episodes continued. Scenes involving Edelweiss almost undid me.

Episode Six: Became so emotionally drained, wasn't sure if I could make it the rest of the way through. After a week break, felt like I needed to be a good soldier and continue the journey.

Episodes Seven through Nine: Couldn't make it through the opening credits without crying (note: the opening credits feature a montage of important images throughout the series, so I had reasons to be affected when a soldier drops his helmet in homage to his injured friends or when a piano flashes by in a decimated city). Continued crying intermittently throughout episodes.

Episode Ten: Couldn't make it through the opening menu without crying. By the end, I was sobbing so hard that my "I never cry" husband was experiencing sympathy sobs with me (actually, I think it was so moving that he would have been sobbing of his own accord). We sobbed together on the couch for minutes after it finished.

Phew! So, with so many tears, was it worth watching? Yes.

I have a better sense of the trauma of war that I ever wanted to have. I hope it's the closest I come to experiencing war that I ever have to come. It was agonizing, even though I was only experience the stories through the medium of television, distant from the reality of it. The technique of opening every episode (and in the final episode, ending) with stories by the surviving veterans was incredibly moving, and gave a real sense of history to the story.

I found myself thinking about the distant ways my own life has touched war. A friend who's grandfather is a WWII veteran, a shy man who rarely talked about the war, and in the past decade or so, finally began expressing his experiences through painting his experiences in Europe. Remembering our kind neighbor who was a Vietnam Vet, who probably never got the respect that he deserved, having fought in the "wrong war." He helped us build our playhouse in the backyard when my brother and I were kids, and took us fishing. Later he went off his rocker from shell-shock. My parents tried to explain shell-shock to us. I didn't really understand, but came away with an eery nightmarish sense of what it must be. I realize now I was probably pretty close to the truth.