The stoicism of World War II veterans, their reluctance to share their war stories, even with those closest to them, has long been something of a cliché. Members of the “greatest generation,” as we call it, have always been terse about the seminal moments that earned them the title.

My father, Frank Mankiewicz, was a case in point. He died in 2014, but before that, he was a statesman in public life. He’d been the Latin American director of the Peace Corps, press secretary for Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign, political director of Senator George McGovern’s and the president of National Public Radio. He wrote a book on Fidel Castro and proudly found himself on Richard Nixon’s enemies list. Before all that, he was an entertainment lawyer, once getting Steve McQueen acquitted of two (driving-related) charges in a single day. He was a dynamic storyteller, and he relished telling them — unless they had to do with his service with the 69th Infantry Division during World War II.

So what did get my father to open about the war, if not his friends or family? Film. 1998’s “Saving Private Ryan,” to be particular. My father didn’t land on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944 with the men represented by Tom Hanks, Tom Sizemore, Vin Diesel and the rest of that ensemble cast, but he saw considerable action. He fought with the 69th from France to Belgium and into Germany — his infantry was the American unit that met the Soviets near the town of Torgau in Germany, where the eastern and western fronts came together.