“When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her.” Oscar Wilde

    Our media has a huge influence on the public’s belief of war.  When we think of war, we usually think about The Patriot, Saving Private Ryan, Pearl Harbor or my favorite Braveheart.

“Fight and you may die, run, and you’ll live… at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin’ to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take… OUR FREEDOM!” (Braveheart, 1995).

    While thinking about war movie I think about how movies desensitize people to the reality of war or how they are can be used as propaganda.  Moreover, I see children wanting to be the hero and thinking that war is glorious.  I must admit that I would never have presumed that military personals would actually think of themselves in a war movie rather then actually being in war.  The only way I could comprehend this is due to the psychological toll that plays in war, and rather then acknowledging the death of a comrade, a soldier rather believe that his role has had a valor end and will eventually be played over and over again in a major theatrical presentation.  Therefore, I was truly surprised while reading Walter Dean Myers, Fallen Angels to read about Lobel explaining how they are just playing roles in a movie.

“I’d be real nervous, except I know none of this is real and I’m just playing a part.”

“What part you playing?”

“The part where the star of the movie is sitting in the foxhole explaining how he feels about life and stuff like that. You never get killed in movies when you’re doing that. Anytime you get killed in a movie, it’s after you set it up.”

“You play a part when we were on patrol?”

“That wasn’t a patrol,” Lobel said. “That was a firefight.

“Anytime anybody is getting shot at it’s a firefight,” Lobel said. “Anyways, I was playing Lee Marvin as a tough sergeant. That’s my best part.”

    This insert in the novel among others truly peaked my curiosity on whether or not soldiers in the Iraq War and if they find themselves playing a role.  Therefore, I went on a mission to find if possible, if American soldier have fallen to this media’s view and play a role themselves.  To my surprise, I located two fairly quickly.  When a Team Units, by Mike T. posted April 2, 2008 gave an example purposely placing themselves in their own movie.

“It got to a point today where we were all so frustrated that we started calling our new home “The Last Stand”. We decided which actors would play us if a movie was to be made about us, and I was very lucky. I got Jude Law, so hell, it couldn’t be that bad of a movie! We all know what we have gotten into, and respect that all of us are nervous and even scared about the situation. We all have many things to go home to and we only hope to do it together and in one piece.”

    The other blog I found tied the best with Fallen Angels because it examined how the soldier (Bill) actually found himself playing a role throughout his missions rather then the previously blog and how they jokingly focused on who would play their characters. The blog is called Running into Trouble by Alex Horton posted on April 8, 2008.

“Bill, always up front, poked his head out to scan the area. In response a volley of rounds passed by his head close enough to damage his ear and kick up dirt right next to him. He fell back screaming a line of obscenities, and we all thought, well, Bill’s dead.

“Bill was convinced he was in a movie, so he was one for theatrics. When he got up and we all realized he wasn’t dead, he stuck his M-4 around the corner and began shooting wildly. Unshaken, the persistent machine gunner kept up his fire.

….We were to turn the corner and charge toward the road, which was several hundred yards away. I thought of the final scene from Gallipoli, where the dude charges across no man’s land only to get gunned down after a few steps.

…..Cooler heads prevailed on the decision to charge, and we decided to go back the way we’d come and flank around to the neighborhood from the left. The first run was the most dangerous, so a few smoke grenades were tossed to hide our movement. Like mad we ran to the next house, going as fast as we could under our equipment. We sprinted through hues of yellow and green to reach momentary safety. I looked back to see action star Bill, running with one hand on his rifle, shooting through the smoke. He tripped and came crashing down onto his face, in between the houses. Fuck, now he’s really dead this time. He got up and finished the stretch.”

    After reading the blogs the question still remains why act like and your in a film rather then believing each mission is real. As stated above, I believe it is a coping mechanism and aids in desensitizing the soldier, but there could be other possibilities. The only other solution to demonstrating these actions would be that they never presumed they would actually be able to die and portrayed the movies as what actually occurs during war. Furthermore, many enlisted soldiers are between the ages of eighteen to twenty-two and therefore, do not truly understand that war is horrific, and there is no hero.

Richie Perry states“Yeah, but you know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking that whatever I tell him he’s going to start thinking about heroes and stuff like that.” Pewee states “Heroes?”  “You know, to a kid if you kill somebody and the somebody is supposed to be a bad guy, you’re a hero”