Generation Kill

[Ken White]

of NW Europe in 1944-45; the USMC owes much to the Pacific 1942-45.

Maybe too much in both cases...

[oblong]

I know this may not be the most substantial post.

But my girlfriend sat down with me while I was watching the second episode. For the next hour, she was asking me "who is that? "why did he do that?" "what did that mean?

Two questions stood out, however: "Are Marines really that funny?" and "Are Marines all really that good looking?"

[120mm]

I know this may not be the most substantial post.

But my girlfriend sat down with me while I was watching the second episode. For the next hour, she was asking me "who is that? "why did he do that?" "what did that mean?

Two questions stood out, however: "Are Marines really that funny?" and "Are Marines all really that good looking?"

It sounds like your girlfriend might be shopping.

But, never fear, I "won" my wife from a much better looking Marine Officer. He was bigger than me, too.

[bourbon]

That was a powerful final scene with the Johnny Cash tune. (YouTube clip)

[BayonetBrant]

FWIW, here's some long commentary by one of the guys portrayed in the book. He notes places where the author did screw some stuff up, and places where the author's perspective might've gotten in the way of his interpretation of what was happening, as well as places where the author was spot-on.


http://commentaryongenerationkill.blogspot.com/

[Tom Odom]

Great find. I wonder is LTC Shoup related to General Shoup?

Tom

[BayonetBrant]

keine ahnung.

I just read the commentary. I haven't read the book yet (still buried under grad school reading) and waiting for the entire series before I start watching it on TV.

[bourbon]

Brant,
Thanks for sharing that. Good read.

Fwiw, Evan Wright (the reporter), has an extensive note in the comment section. (August 25)

Another comment, posted August 23 by J.M. Keynes, is worth echoing:

BTW, for anyone interested, a new edition of Wright's book has just been published, with a "new afterword" that contains some interesting surprises, both pleasant and unpleasant. You'll also appreciate the clever cover. (If nothing else, drop by your local bookstore and skim that chapter over a cup of coffee.)

[Umar Al-Mokhtār]

I've done some work with Mike and asked him, he's not.

[Noble Industries]

I was in the book store yesterday, the book has been re-released with a new afterward, I read it. Wright says that when the book first came out, there was a quote in it from a Marine, that said combat was like playing Grand Theft Auto. This particular quote was cited often as an example of how today's youth cannot distinguish between reality and video games.
In the time since the book was published, Wright realized that this was more indicative of the nationsinability to distinguish between the realities of war, and the fantasies of media and video games. Rather than this particular Marines inability to do so. I thought this was particularly sharp.[/QUOTE]


As someone who is just trailing out of being classed as youth this is something I can identify with. Will not military myself I remain close to some who serve in Australia’s defence force. The comparison between video games an actual combat seems to be valid. Perhaps it is the desensitisation of the current crop of young adults populating the armed services or something larger. Once you have become accustomed to eyeballing a target through a scope and putting rounds into him, then to transfer that experience to combat may not be to far fetched. Video games as training methods are becoming more main stream.

[Jason Port]

So, I just finished a crash viewing of all seven episodes. I set aside things like first name references as making the show palatable by a wider audience than just old warfighters, (like my wife) and the racial talk as mild exaggeration for bs-ing between brethern, the show as a whole took me right back to the right seat of an uparmored turtle HMMWV rolling out of the gate to kick in some doors. While never in the current fight, the show's sounds, images, and intensity brought me right back into the mindset, and reminded me of a great bunch of guys I once knew. (and for every Marine in the AO, I can think of one or two cavalrymen I knew just like them, especially Encino Man, and Captain America.) I really liked the series, and I plan to read both books to try and understand the realities of the story more.

[Schmedlap]

I just watched the first three episodes of this. The main characters - the team leader and platoon commander - seem normal. A few others do too. But many of the characters strike me as exaggerations of quirky personalities. Much of the series seems exaggerated - the trigger happy behavior, the outlandishly incompetent officers, the racial trash talking seemed over the top. Racial slurs are commonplace in every unit that I was in, but they were not used in the way that they were used in the series. It was common to have a close-knit fire team (in real life, not the show) that included a black, hispanic, asian, and white and for each to call one another by the corresponding racial slur. It was kind of a way of showing that they were such good friends that they could get away with it. In the show, it seemed more adversarial, not like anything that I ever saw in any unit that I served in.

The lack of initiative shown by the leaders in the show also struck me as exaggerated. There were several instances where the platoon commander was asking permission to do something that I would expect a team leader to do without asking. It seemed like it was embellished for the screen.

Haven't seen episodes 4 through 7 and I don't see them listed on Netflix, so I probably won't get around to them.

On a side note, I also watched The Battle of Algiers. I haven't gotten around to reading A Savage War of Peace, yet, but the movie struck me as a good one to help a lay audience understand a few concepts about insurgency and COIN.