We Were Soldiers is a 2002 war film... Based on the book We Were Soldiers Once… and Young (1992) by Lieutenant General (Ret.) Hal Moore. Moore is the main character in the movie and it is about his real life experience fighting in Vietnam.
Parts of the movie were filmed at Ft. Benning, Georgia, a large Army base that sits cheek-to-jowl with my hometown of Columbus, Georgia. Some of the housing areas on Ft. Benning shown in the film date to the era of the film and are mostly preserved with relatively little change -- or were last time I was home.
I had gamer buddies in housing similar to what is shown in the film. For all I know, one of the houses in the film may even be a home where I played role playing games at times as a girl gamer in my teens.
American military culture is my first culture. What I find is that many of the Americans I don't get along with have no military connection at all and many that I do get along with have served or have been a military dependent and they get me in a way a lot of Americans do not.
Vietnam was a really, really ugly war even for war.
Average age of a soldier serving in World War II was 25 or 26 and people were enthusiastically volunteering to go. Vietnam was an unpopular war being protested and many people serving in it were drafted and didn't want to go.
Because it was unpopular, America was cycling people out of there relatively quickly. That fact combined with the draft meant that the average age of a soldier in Vietnam was just 19.
If you survive your first battle, the odds of you making it through the war go up substantially. Something needs to click psychologically to make a person willing to kill others in a shoot first, ask questions later frame of mind and that either happens in a timely fashion in your first live battle or you die in that battle.
There were a lot of "first battles" for the treadmill of young soldiers steadily streaming into Vietnam and it was a meat grinder.
The battle the book is about resulted in a lot of deaths and they began sending telegrams via cab drivers to notify the wives still living at Ft. Benning that they were now widows. The following scene is of Moore's wife Julia answering the door thinking she is being notified of his death only to find the guy is asking directions because he can't find the house in question. She initially has a fit, but then says "Wait. I'll take it to her. Tell the cab company if there are any others, just bring them to me." And there are a lot of others.
The military honors its dead and also honors the fact that the burden of service is not just borne by the soldier but also by their family. The movie Saving Private Ryan is based on that fact: They go to the front lines to get Private Ryan to safety and return him home because his three brothers have all died and they don't want to tell his mother "All four of your sons are dead."
Although it's possible that the high suicide rate in the military is partly due to people joining who are already suicidal and hoping to die in the course of service, the military itself has a healthy attitude overall towards the fact that serving as a soldier involves putting up your right hand and swearing to die for your country if necessary.
I have especially benefited from attitudes towards death in military culture, attitudes which stand in stark contrast to those of other cultures with which I have some familiarity.
My condition is a form of cystic fibrosis (CF). The CF community has a culture of death where they essentially celebrate the idea that one of their own is no longer suffering.
They speak of "another CF angel has gotten their wings" and say things like "they can breathe free now." CF is gruesome and the world has historically not offered real solutions and it's classified as a dread disease because what it does to your life and your body are so horrible.
Military attitudes toward death also stand in stark contrast to Christian attitudes towards death which more or less glorify death in a way that military culture does not. The older I get, the more I feel that Christianity has warped attitudes actively harming the world and I wish we would stop promoting the idea that all living people "are sinners" and "that's okay, no big" combined with "the only good man is a dead man who died for the benefit of others."
Thankfully, I haven't spent a lot of time in church. I spent much more time on military bases and around military personnel and their families, which armed me for the battle with my disease in ways I couldn't have possibly predicted ahead of time.
Parts of the movie were filmed at Ft. Benning, Georgia, a large Army base that sits cheek-to-jowl with my hometown of Columbus, Georgia. Some of the housing areas on Ft. Benning shown in the film date to the era of the film and are mostly preserved with relatively little change -- or were last time I was home.
I had gamer buddies in housing similar to what is shown in the film. For all I know, one of the houses in the film may even be a home where I played role playing games at times as a girl gamer in my teens.
American military culture is my first culture. What I find is that many of the Americans I don't get along with have no military connection at all and many that I do get along with have served or have been a military dependent and they get me in a way a lot of Americans do not.
Vietnam was a really, really ugly war even for war.
Average age of a soldier serving in World War II was 25 or 26 and people were enthusiastically volunteering to go. Vietnam was an unpopular war being protested and many people serving in it were drafted and didn't want to go.
Because it was unpopular, America was cycling people out of there relatively quickly. That fact combined with the draft meant that the average age of a soldier in Vietnam was just 19.
If you survive your first battle, the odds of you making it through the war go up substantially. Something needs to click psychologically to make a person willing to kill others in a shoot first, ask questions later frame of mind and that either happens in a timely fashion in your first live battle or you die in that battle.
There were a lot of "first battles" for the treadmill of young soldiers steadily streaming into Vietnam and it was a meat grinder.
The battle the book is about resulted in a lot of deaths and they began sending telegrams via cab drivers to notify the wives still living at Ft. Benning that they were now widows. The following scene is of Moore's wife Julia answering the door thinking she is being notified of his death only to find the guy is asking directions because he can't find the house in question. She initially has a fit, but then says "Wait. I'll take it to her. Tell the cab company if there are any others, just bring them to me." And there are a lot of others.
The military honors its dead and also honors the fact that the burden of service is not just borne by the soldier but also by their family. The movie Saving Private Ryan is based on that fact: They go to the front lines to get Private Ryan to safety and return him home because his three brothers have all died and they don't want to tell his mother "All four of your sons are dead."
Although it's possible that the high suicide rate in the military is partly due to people joining who are already suicidal and hoping to die in the course of service, the military itself has a healthy attitude overall towards the fact that serving as a soldier involves putting up your right hand and swearing to die for your country if necessary.
No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country. -- PattonI have a serious genetic disorder. I have lived a lot longer than I "should" have with this condition and I credit military culture to a large degree with that fact.
I have especially benefited from attitudes towards death in military culture, attitudes which stand in stark contrast to those of other cultures with which I have some familiarity.
My condition is a form of cystic fibrosis (CF). The CF community has a culture of death where they essentially celebrate the idea that one of their own is no longer suffering.
They speak of "another CF angel has gotten their wings" and say things like "they can breathe free now." CF is gruesome and the world has historically not offered real solutions and it's classified as a dread disease because what it does to your life and your body are so horrible.
Military attitudes toward death also stand in stark contrast to Christian attitudes towards death which more or less glorify death in a way that military culture does not. The older I get, the more I feel that Christianity has warped attitudes actively harming the world and I wish we would stop promoting the idea that all living people "are sinners" and "that's okay, no big" combined with "the only good man is a dead man who died for the benefit of others."
Thankfully, I haven't spent a lot of time in church. I spent much more time on military bases and around military personnel and their families, which armed me for the battle with my disease in ways I couldn't have possibly predicted ahead of time.