It's not easy, said Joe Colgan. Not easy to sit in a darkened screening room and watch some of the last days of the son you remember from hiking and camping trips, from the times the two of you tossed a football back and forth.

"But it's helpful for me to see just what he was facing, to understand the things he was going through," said Colgan, 63, yesterday after watching a screening of the upcoming war documentary, "Gunner Palace."

Filmed by former Seattle resident Michael Tucker, the movie shows the Army's 2nd Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment, riding patrols and conducting raids in a dangerous section of Baghdad in early autumn of 2003.

Among the soldiers is Lt. Ben Colgan, 30, a 1991 graduate of Des Moines' Mount Rainier High School. Colgan was killed by a roadside bomb Nov. 1, 2003, just weeks after he was filmed in Iraq. Besides his parents, he left behind four brothers, three sisters, two daughters and a wife pregnant with their third child.

The movie, to open in theaters in March, takes its name from Colgan's 400-person regiment, nicknamed "The Gunners," which operated out of a bombed-out Baghdad palace formerly owned by Saddam Hussein's older son, Uday, killed in July 2003.

COURTESY PALM PICTURES Army Lt. Ben Colgan of Kent is shown on patrol in Baghdad just weeks before his death in this photo from the upcoming movie "Gunner Palace."

Joe Colgan said his son mentioned the palace in e-mails home: "He said it had a pool, but he also said they were getting mortared a lot."

Some members of the Colgan family met Tucker this week and attended a screening of the film last night at the Seattle Art Museum.

Joe Colgan is a longtime Catholic peace activist. In the 1970s, he and his wife, Patricia, sometimes took young Ben along when they demonstrated against the nuclear-armed submarine base at Bangor.

Although they opposed the war in Iraq, they didn't discuss their position with their son once the fighting started.

"Ben knew how much I was against this war, but I always said, 'I'm right beside you in spirit.' And that's still true," said Colgan, who wears a crucifix containing some of his son's ashes.

"I know he really felt like he might be able to do something good for those people. That's what he wanted."

Ben Colgan enlisted in the Army right after high-school graduation. He served in Special Forces and the elite Delta Force before going to Officer Candidate School. On graduation, he was assigned to the artillery unit.

KEN LAMBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES Joe Colgan holds a bracelet he wears to remember his son, Lt. Ben Colgan, who died while serving in the Army's 2nd Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment, in Iraq. A new film called "Gunner Palace" is about Ben's unit in Baghdad.

His widow, Jill, a Missouri native, lives in Kansas with their daughters, Grace, 3; Paige, 2; and Cooper, 1, born seven weeks after Ben's death.

Watching the movie, Joe Colgan noted in the young soldiers' faces and voices the conflicting emotions of war: pride, anger, frustration, confusion — emotions he remembered from his son's e-mails.

Ben Colgan's attitude about the mission in Iraq changed over time as early optimism faded. "At first, he talked about the good things," his father said. "They were opening up schools, trying to get the water and electricity going."

But the longer the conflict lasted, the more difficult it was to see progress. And the more difficult it became to tell which Iraqis were friends and which were foes.

One Iraqi man, seen in the early part of the film working for the Americans as an interpreter, is later suspected of helping insurgents and may have provided information that led to the deaths of Ben Colgan and two other soldiers in the unit.

The day before his death, Ben Colgan's parents received his last e-mail, with an especially pessimistic view. "You could tell he was down," Joe Colgan said. "He said, 'It's getting real old and getting real crazy.' "

While some soldiers in the movie mug or clown for the camera, and some deliver potent rap lyrics about their situation, Colgan was reserved and quiet.

In a scene near the movie's end, Colgan is seen talking to an older Iraqi man on a Baghdad street. Their voices can't be heard, but at the end of the conversation, the man grasps Colgan's arm warmly, and the two wave as they part.

Shortly afterward, Tucker's voice as narrator tells of Ben Colgan's death, adding, "Ben's death was close to home. He was from Seattle like me. I knew the kind of house he grew up in. And the mountains he dreamt of. He had two daughters. Looking at my own daughter, I couldn't think of his death, only his life."

For Joe Colgan, the pain of being reminded of his son's final days is worth it if the movie prompts some Americans to take a closer look at war and the suffering it causes.

"What I'd like to see is a lot of open and honest talk about war, just what it is and just what it is about," he said. "I think if we could put these things in perspective, then we would never go to war unless we absolutely have to — and maybe a war like this wouldn't happen."

Jack Broom: 206-464-2222