Those who feel it was a cop-out for Ireland to have been neutral in the second World War can take some consolation from the Irish Army storming the Normandy beaches in the most realistic depiction of D-Day ever seen on the screen.
Real veterans of that bloody June 6th, 1944, when their comrades were cut to pieces by the German defences have found the battle scenes of Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan so realistic that they have in some cases needed counselling.
Spielberg's re-enactment of D-Day has literally traumatised some of those who survived it as long-suppressed memories of the horrors came to the surface again.
The invasion of Nazi-held Europe was re-enacted on the Wexford coast with the help of thousands of Irish Army extras. They were veterans of the Brave heart epic but had to adapt from swinging Scottish broadswords to lofting hand-grenades and wielding flame-throwers. Let there be no jokes about deafness but the Irish extras had to endure what has been called "certainly one of the most powerful battle scenes ever put on film".
Spielberg's film is breaking the box-office records this summer across America and is also prompting fresh debate about what the second World War meant to the American psyche.
It was the last of the heroic wars. The Korean War is mainly remembered as the background to one of the most popular TV series ever, M.A.S.H.
And the Vietnam War is for many a tragic waste of American lives which should never have been allowed happen.
Spielberg has long been fascinated by the second World War. As a teenager, he made a 40-minute, 8-mm colour, silent film called Escape to Nowhere about the war in North Africa and won first prize in an amateur competition.
His Private Ryan has been inevitably compared with that other D-Day epic made 30 years ago, The Longest Day with its cast of celebrities popping up all over the place and John Wayne wiping out the Boche.
Incidentally, there was an interesting Irish connection there also. The film was based on the book by former war correspondent, Cornelius Ryan, a Dubliner who went to CBS Synge Street before joining the Daily Telegraph.
Private Ryan must also be Irish, of course, even if he is played by heart-throb Matt Damon. After Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) gets his decimated company off Omaha Beach he is charged with the mission of rescuing Private Ryan who had parachuted behind the German lines on the eve of the invasion.
Ryan's three brothers have just been killed in action on other fronts and the mother on the farm in the Mid-West has been given the shattering news. Gen Marshall, the chief of staff, has given orders that the fourth brother must be found at all costs and brought back to his mother.
This recalls the real tragedy of the five Sullivan brothers (the Irish again) who were all killed when their ship was sunk in the Pacific war. After that, brothers were not allowed to serve on the same ship.
Some critics have been baffled by Spielberg passing from the opening 20-minute bloodbath as seen through the eyes of the participants to a fairly conventional war movie where a small group spends the rest of the film on their mission to find Ryan.
Having shown the horror of warfare in a way never seen before, what was Spielberg's message as the eight soldiers risk their lives to bring another one back safe to his mother?
Spielberg has tried to answer some of the questions. "How do you find decency in the hell of warfare? That was what attracted me to the project."
He identifies with the coward in the group whose lectures on the ethics of warfare gives way to blubbering paralysis in action. So is this the anti-war film to replace All Quiet on the Western Front?
Is it anti-war at all? Many see it as a faithful and inspiring portrayal of a generation of ordinary Americans who did their duty when the call to arms came to save civilisation from the fascists. Would this over-weight, spoiled generation do the same? The Gulf War was a picnic compared with Omaha Beach.
The Germans are not demonised in the film. It is the Americans, enraged by the slaughter on Omaha Beach, who shoot surrendering prisoners.
Spielberg says he wanted to show the experience of those young men as it really was. He seems to have succeeded. Veterans have praised it as the best war film they have ever seen. The opening sequence is what it was really like on D-Day. Take a bow Irish Army.
The middle-aged children of those veterans are learning for the first time what they really went through. When the GIs came back, most of them did not want to talk about it.
But one thing was sure. John Wayne in The Longest Day was not what it was like. You never saw him vomiting or shielding his groin when the German machineguns opened up.
See Private Ryan when it comes to Ireland and thank God and de Valera that we were neutral.