jarhead johari

before i start reminiscing, please click here and fill up my johari window. yup. i got sucked into this as well.

right... now to the movie, jarhead. a film about the experience of a squad of marine recon snipers as they enter boot camp and eventually find themselves in the deserts of saudi arabia during the first iraqi war. and these poor sods went through so much shit to train for that one important trigger squeeze, only to be denied that opportunity at the last minute.

the same thing happened to me back in the army. imagine training 2 years of your life, for the one exercise that culminates all the sweat and blood poured out during training. you're tasked with carrying the biggest, meanest gun in an infantry platoon: the machine gun, which hails scores of 7.62mm metal death upon the enemy with the click of a trigger. imagine lugging that 11kg gun around the jungle, with the hopes of getting at least a kill during the 3 day exam exercise to round off your training. and you don't see a single bad guy throughout.

if you girls really wanna know what it's like for your boyfriends who are combat fit and out there in the army as fighting soldiers, i think jarhead is a pretty good way to understand what the heck's going on in their lives for those 5 days a week. sure, the american army's a lot more retarded, and some of the crap that happens there is exagerrated plus there's a real war thrown into it. but i think it sums up a soldier's life from the insanely charged boot camp set up to an annoymous or possibly ignominious end of it all...