Back to Iraq

Just days before HBO film crews were to descend on Walter Reed Army Medical Center to record the plight of the Iraq war’s wounded soldiers, the Pentagon nixed the plan – fearful of publicity that was about to surface over lax outpatient care.

The cable channel’s longtime documentary chief, Sheila Nevins, had lined up “Sopranos” star James Gandolfini and around-the-clock access on the heels of 2005’s Emmy-winning “Baghdad ER.” A dozen filmmakers were stationed throughout the hospital.

But when the government changed its mind, Nevins and Gandolfini were forced to Plan B.

The result: “Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq,” a stark, intimate look at the physical and emotional toll for many of the military’s more than 25,000 war wounded.

“Alive Day” – the phrase is an homage to the date the wounded survive death – was set on an off-Broadway theater stage, where Gandolfini interviewed 10 Army soldiers and Marines with injuries ranging from brain damage to triple amputations.

Filmed by “Baghdad ER” co-directors Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill, “Alive Day” is interspersed with home videos, pre-injury tapes in Iraq and harrowing insurgent tapes of roadside bombings.

Army Sgt. Bryan Anderson, who lost most of two legs and his left hand to an explosion in October 2005, is seen earlier as a spunky high school gymnast. Now, Anderson tells Gandolfini, he’s grateful he can still use a fork.

Gandolfini, whose Tony Soprano was TV’s quintessential tough guy, says he was more disturbed by the emotional toll on the wounded than by their catastrophic injuries. At times, he was moved to tears.

“All of them in their own way get to you,” says Gandolfini, who conducted the interviews while wrapping the “Sopranos” finale. “But I was proud at how dignified, strong and smart they came across.”

The press-shy actor has repeatedly deflected the media spotlight from himself to war veterans, such as Marine Cpl. Jacob Schick, who has had 46 operations.

“I’m trying very hard not to make this political or about me. It’s about what they need and what they’re going through,” Gandolfini says.

He hoped his fame would attract viewers as well as help the wounded open up.

“These guys watch ‘The Sopranos.’ They feel that they know you. That helped talking to them,” he says.

Retired Capt. Dawn Halfaker, a former high school and West Point basketball star whose right arm and shoulder were amputated after a rocket-propelled-grenade attack in June 2004, momentarily breaks down in the documentary as she tells Gandolfini her fears over potential motherhood and whether she’ll be able to pick up her child.

“I was able to reflect and open up about realities I don’t want to face,” says Halfaker, now head of a defense consultancy and a Georgetown University graduate student.

Gandolfini, who visited troops in Iraq on a USO tour in 2004, brought unexpected sensitivity to the documentary, Nevins says.

“When we first met him at Walter Reed and saw him going from room to room, he insisted on no cameras and anonymity,” she says. “I knew there was a connection with the warriors.

“Celebrities tend to ruin documentaries (but) he was a good interviewer. He made them comfortable and at ease.”

“Alive Day” is HBO’s third Iraq war documentary, after “Baghdad ER” and “Last Letters Home: Voices of American Troops From the Battlefields of Iraq.”

It won’t be the last.

“More of these severely wounded are coming home,” Nevins says.

“It’s sort of a sad sweetness. They survive. But what kind of future do you have at 21 when your legs have been blown off and your dreams are deflated?”