Until the late '90s, that is, when he read that U.S. vets were dying at the rate of 1,000 per day. Suddenly, Burns felt he couldn't let their memories die with them.

These aren't our ancestors, he thought. These are our fathers, our grandfathers.

Also, it didn't hurt that his friend Tom Brokaw had blazed the trail with his hugely successful "Greatest Generation" franchise.

Brokaw, an adviser to War, "did an amazing service to our country by giving an unusually reticent generation permission to speak," Burns says. "He probably should be given a medal for that."

Burns is not so quick to endorse "greatest" laurels. The war "brought out the best and worst in a generation, and blurred the two so they became, at times, almost indistinguishable.

"We live in a media culture where we're dialectically preoccupied with labels. What you need is art that can see both."

"Seeing both" caused quite a commotion for War during its production. In January, Hispanic groups such as the Congressional Hispanic Caucus attacked Burns - and PBS - for the absence of Hispanics in the series.

Numerous independent filmmakers urged Burns to maintain his own artistic vision and not to bow to outside pressure. They worried it might set a dangerous precedent.

After thinking "long and hard," Burns added two Hispanic vets and, for good measure, an American Indian. The former appear at the end of the first and sixth episodes; the latter in the fifth. In total, they add 20 to 30 minutes' length to the film, Burns estimates.

Did Ken cave? No, he simply lives to fight another day.

"I'm Br'er Rabbit. I got to go back in the briar patch and tell more stories," Burns says, recognizing a good sound bite when he hears one. "I didn't change the essential integrity of the film. It was a win-win."

Politics (meaning potential funding) had nothing to do with it, Burns insists.

"In the political world, where I don't exist, people use rhetoric and yell at each other. I wanted to be above that. Politics, for me, has always been a small p. I like to see the larger, more complicated thing."

Burns is "fairly confident" the situation won't repeat itself with other groups in future projects.

Smart money says it won't be Hispanics. Burns says they'll appear in almost all six episodes of his next opus, on the National Park Service. After that, in '09 or '10, he'll take on Prohibition.

And at some point, he plans to update an earlier film - another Burns precedent - his '94 marathon Baseball.

On the personal side, Burns' life is equally full.

He and his second wife, Julie, 41, have a 21/2-year-old daughter, Olivia. His eldest, Sarah, 24, a writer, is married to one of his producers. Lilly, 20, studies history and film at Columbia.

Meanwhile, Burns' love affair with PBS continues unabated. He just signed an exclusive deal through 2022, which will mark 40 years with the public network.