Land of the Home

Land of the Home. Free of the Brave. Music and Animation by Jay E Moores. Now on Spotify!

When I was a kid I asked my grandfather why he walked with a limp. He told me a story about how he got injured in World War II. During the Battle of the Bulge he said a mortar went off and it blew his head and chest apart. As he lay there dying, he overheard the medics say, “This one is far too gone to save, let’s move on.” And he had to scream, “I am alive!” to be rescued. He said all he could think about was getting home to my grandmother. He promised her that he would come home to marry her, and he kept that promise. They rebuilt his skull with a metal plate that would forever set off airport security. They would repair all of his chest wounds and heal his body, although forever riddled with scars where the crippling shrapnel had pierced the flesh and blood of his able and lithe 20 year old body. I was to be born twenty years later in 1964. Long enough for the man to heal, raise a couple daughters who then married, so that in turn I was born. I owe my very existence to the fact that my grandfather had the tenacity to get home after that injury. My grandfather walked with a limp, and I knew why. He was afraid the fighting would get to us if he didn’t go to war. He didn’t want to see war in our backyard, and he felt it was coming, especially if he didn’t do anything about it. He went so the crosshairs of the battle would be on him because he did not want to wait until the enemy was taking aim at one of us. In the land of the home. Free of the brave.

The army characters in the video above were generated using the AI feature in Buildbox Classic, touched up in Photoshop, bone animated using Cartoon Animator, and the final video was edited using Wondershare Filmora. Animated GIF eagle logo was made using Inkscape, Photoshop, and Adobe Image Ready. Music was recorded using Garageband. Nerd out!