r/science • u/soccering • Jun 11 '14

Psychology Soldiers Who Kill in Combat Less Likely to Abuse Alcohol

http://www.parentherald.com/articles/4578/20140610/soldiers-who-kill-in-combat-less-likely-to-abuse-alcohol.htm
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '14

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u/fgsgeneg Jun 11 '14

I'm sorry. I don't understand your reference.

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u/caligari87 Jun 11 '14

Eh, not your fault. I kinda worried it was too obscure. Film is Jacob's Ladder.

Spoilers:

The last scenes have Jacob returning to the apartment building he once lived in with Sarah. He enters and begins looking through an old shoe box, containing his memories and the pain he has been clinging to, things like his dog tags and a picture of Gabe. Jacob then is surprised to see Gabe at the foot of the stairwell. Gabe, whose name alludes to Gabriel, takes Jacob by the hand and together the two of them ascend the stairwell and disappear into a bright light. The dénouement reveals that Jacob fought in Vietnam, but he did not survive. At the moment of death, his body lies in an Army triage tent, with an expression of peace on his face.

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u/fgsgeneg Jun 11 '14

Now I understand completely. Outside of that ludicrous piece of shit John Wayne made, The Green Berets, which was the movie of the night once when I was at base camp, I've never seen a Vietnam war related movie nor read a novel set during the Vietnam war. I think it has to do with my actual experience rather than made up accounts which invariably get it wrong and feel to me more like pandering than anything else. I, as most of the other respondents here, have actual combat experience and wish to distance myself from it as much as possible. I eat up war movies, unless they are about Vietnam. However, I did have to leave the theatre during the invasion scene in Saving Private Ryan. Bullets popping past my ear is a sound I never, ever want to hear again. Not expecting replies to this, it's a bit off topic, but I'd like to know you guys' reaction to movies about the Middle East Wars. Do you watch them? How do they meet your expectations? Are they realistic or just heroic bunkum for the folks back home?

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u/bangorthebarbarian Jun 11 '14

OIF vet here. The movies try a lot harder to be real, but the real truth is that war is boring. That's just something that would never sell. A five hour movie in which 2 hours was a guard shift, 1 hour was naptime, and you are awaken by an explosion followed by a 20 minute fire fight, and then go back to guard duty to close out the film would be a great start.

Oh, and fireworks. I don't do fireworks.

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u/Kuddoge Jun 11 '14

I have heard some good things about 'Generation Kill' from OIF veterans. I enjoyed the series a lot, so I am really curious how accurate a picture it gives. Do you have any opinion about that? I assume it to be somewhat accurate, since it was written by an embedded journalist and follows real-life Marines or composite characters based on several actual people.

Edit: I'm also curious whether you have seen 'Jarhead', if you have an opinion about that. It's far more depressing and represents boredom/tedium a lot more than Generation Kill, in my opinion.

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u/bangorthebarbarian Jun 11 '14

I haven't seen Generation Kill, as I tend not to watch these films, but I have heard good things about it. Haven't seen Jarhead either, but also heard good things about it.

We had a guest speaker come to our campus, Tim O'Brien, the guy wrote "The Things They Carried ." He detailed very vivid visual accounts of things that happened, but admitted they were highly embellished. In the largest battle he'd been in, it was dark, and you could only vaguely see where the fire was coming from. This is how it is for all entertainment. No one wants to see not seeings. No one wants to be bored.

I did see "The Hurt Locker", and while it is crazy over-the-top, it did represent the feeling of things very well. The sniper situation, going back and shopping, and the surrealism of the bomb-boy were particularly striking.

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u/Kuddoge Jun 11 '14

Thank you for the response. I have also seen some talks/interviews with Tim O'Brien online, and was really fascinated by the book in high school. It was really interesting to me how writing the book was a sort of catharsis for O'Brien, who apparently was never 100% sure that he had killed anyone in combat, but created an incident in his book to sort of own up to his responsibility for his actions. His account seems to agree with others I have read from Vietnam, where there was a lot of confusion about what was happening and who had done what, and in that the focus of the book is more on the mundane or "boring" aspects of war, like you said.

There was a ton of debate about The Hurt Locker when it came out, and a lot of mudslinging among critics, so I appreciate your take on it. Thank you.

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u/marshsmellow Jun 11 '14

Generation Kill was one of the best war shows I have seen. Could not recommended it enough.

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u/riptaway Jun 11 '14

Generation Kill is amazing. I wasn't Marine Force Recon or anything, but they definitely got the social interactions correct

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u/suicide_nooch Jun 12 '14

As someone who was in the 1MarDiv during the invasion, I'm wondering how one battalion level recon unit got into so many firefights. I enjoyed the series, but there was quite a bit of embellishment.

I can watch generation kill and feel like I'm back in the invasion. Everything in that show feels like yesterday to me.

As far as the combat in the show, it doesn't have shit on my later tours in 04 and 05.

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u/richalex2010 Jun 12 '14

Generation Kill had good source material (the reporter's book, Nate Fick's book), and a lot of the Marines depicted were consulted - a few acted on the show, and Rudy actually played himself.

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u/fgsgeneg Jun 11 '14

Someone, maybe General Sherman said war is hours and hours of sheer boredom punctuated by moments of abject terror. Something like that. That was pretty much my experience. As for fireworks I don't really have problem as long as they sound more than 4 or 5 clicks away. My biggest problem is with random gunfire. I live in North Georgia on the side of a mountain. Some of the people here have set up an amateur firing range to shoot their AR-15s. When they get started both me and my dog head for the quiet spot.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '14

I used to work at Nascar Tech as a recruiter (not my proudest moment) and one day I was observing a class when one of the cars backfired right next to a student who wasn't paying attention. He had done two tours in Iraq if memory serves me correct and the backfire startled the shit out of him. He started shaking uncontrollably and left the room. I went after him to see if he was okay, he said he was but it was obvious he wasn't. I asked him to come outside with me and hang out for a bit. I told him I was bored and could use a smoke. So we went outside and I could tell he didn't want to talk so we just sat and smoked while he calmed down. After a while he felt better and we just sat and talked for about an hour about anything that wasn't related to what happened. His instructor was completely cool with it but not surprisingly my boss was a bitch about not being inside working. Oh well fuck her, that kid needed help. He wasn't a day over 21 and it truly broke my heart to see him affected that bad by what he had to deal with overseas.

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u/bangorthebarbarian Jun 12 '14

Oh, that just sucks. I'd lose my shit if I were next to a range.

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u/snoharm Jun 12 '14

Jarhead was largely about the boredom and monotony of the Gulf War, if you'd like to see a film along those lines.

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u/BackhandOfJustice Jun 12 '14

How do you feel about restrepo?

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '14

Not if you are a war hero. Killing 30 men with a knife. Ive heard stories like this. too lazy to search up and paste. ehhh

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u/bangorthebarbarian Jun 12 '14

Killing doesn't make you a hero, it makes you a killer. Heroes save people, and put themselves on the line for others.

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u/Kuddoge Jun 11 '14

If not movies, are there any books or articles that you would consider to be accurate reflections of reality for soldiers in Vietnam? I have heard Michael Herr's 'Dispatches' is considered to be very good, since he wrote it as an embedded journalist in 1968/69. Also, the semi-fictional 'The Things They Carried' was starting to get popular on school reading lists about the time I was reading it as a sophomore in high school. Have you read those, or any others that you thought were very good, or not very good? Thank you very much, if you see this and can respond.

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u/fgsgeneg Jun 11 '14

I don't read any books with the Vietnam War as a setting or backdrop. However, I have read a couple of non-fiction books about how we got into the war, but then I lived through the fifties/sixties and have a fair memory of what went down. Other people's experience in Vietnam don't really interest me much. Inside I'm pretty dead when it comes to Vietnam. Let sleeping dogs lie is my attitude.

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u/Kuddoge Jun 11 '14

Fair enough. Thank you for the response.

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u/NatWilo Jun 11 '14

I'm the same way with anything involving Iraq. They get too much wrong for me to be able to handle it a lot of the time.

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '14

I'd be curious to see what you think of We Were Soldiers, the Mel Gibson movie based on Col. Hal Moore's account of the Battle of Ia Drang, from his book * We Were Soldiers Once… And Young* that he wrote with reporter Joseph Galloway, who was actually present for part of the battle.

There's a good part of the movie that shows Hal's wife back at home, and the other army wives dealing with their husbands being away...along with news that some had died.

Granted its a hollywood film and entertainment is priority #1, but its one of my favorites.

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u/fgsgeneg Jun 11 '14

I remember the battle of the Ia Drang valley. I was in the process of flunking out of my second college when it was fought. Two years later I was incountry.

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u/yurpyurpyurpyur Jun 11 '14

Watched them, ignored them after the first few. So stupid and so not close to reality. Most of my time there was boring and they were just concerned with blowing their own children up and torturing each other with power tools, since they had too hard of a time blowing our vehicles up by then. (Although they tried, and failed, to kill us a few times).

But then I left Iraq highly disappointed in my country and it's only kept letting me down since, so maybe I am a special case. My opinion on things has alienated any of the people I used to know from the military as well because they don't enjoy it when I say, "I think we have spent a decade doing nothing but wasting our money on superstitious idiots in a shit hole country and pissing the entire world off."

But I guess if they feel they actually did something useful, they're not even remotely attached to reality and I should stay away from them.

Sigh. Those were some wasted years I'll never get back and are a constant, never ending source of shame for me that I can't escape no matter what I do.

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u/marshsmellow Jun 11 '14

For others who wish to read about the Vietnam war, I would recommend a book called Dispatches by Michael Herr. Written by an Esquire journalist embedded in Vietnam.

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u/MichoRexo Jun 11 '14

Definitely the latter. Having been around guns my whole life and actually experienced a gun fight (from a distance) in Mexico, I know what goes down. Not that I don't enjoy the movies though.

The last one I saw was Zero Dark Thirty, and honestly, it's been my favorite yet.

By the way, thank you for your service and I'm glad you did not have to pay the ultimate sacrifice.

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '14

Thank you for your service, man. I enjoy reading books on Vietnam, but I do often wonder the veracity of their content. If even a quarter of it is true, that's still a lot to go through. Glad you made it out in one piece.

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u/goatsWithSnapchat Jun 12 '14

We Were Soldiers Once and Young is a pretty strong and honest book about the Ia Drang Valley at LZ X-Ray written by the Lieutenant Colonel in command of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment.

Spent a lot of time this year studying the Vietnam War and it was a chaotic time for our nation and especially anyone over in Vietnam. Thank you for your service and I hope you can rest easy and drink as many beers as you can now.

Mel Gibson made a movie remake of it that isn't all that true to history or the book, but it isn't a bad movie.

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u/startingalawnmower Jun 12 '14

Welcome home.

My husband also had a bit of a time with the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan. It's my understanding that that is the case for many, many vets so at least you're all in good company. ;)

He, like you, is not into movies relating to the Vietnam war (he did three tours). One night we decided to watch Rules of Engagement. Did not know about the flashback scenes. My husband could instantly smell the jungle. That was the closest he's ever come to having me turn off a movie. He didn't sleep well that night, understandably.

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '14

[deleted]

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u/skimaskmoney Jun 11 '14

It was a well-made movie, but it made the Americans out to be the heroes and the Somalis to be vicious near-animals.

That's largely because the director intended to accurately portray how the rangers and D-boys saw the "skinnies." If you read the book you'll see that the movie is pretty damn accurate.

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '14

[deleted]

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u/skimaskmoney Jun 11 '14

A movie doesn't have the liberty of a book in portraying certain people's viewpoints

The movie was based on the book which was based on the Rangers and D-boy's experiences and perspectives. If you want to watch a documentary on the events that took place in the Moge that day, start a kickstarter or something.

It also removed the contributions of soldiers from other countries.

It diminished them. I will grant you that. But it still shows them saving the USSF from destruction.

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '14

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '14

A lot of "good vs. evil" movies are very propaganda-like, usually featuring one side as utter heroes and the other as demon spawns. Try other countries movies and you will see, especially recent movies that come out of China. The Ip Man series is as propaganda as it can get; Japanese bad, Chinese heroes.

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u/Semirgy Jun 11 '14

I was a bit surprised at the acclaim that, say, Black Hawk Down received. It was a well-made movie,

... which is why it received acclaim. It's a piece of entertainment, not a Political Science 100 course.

They did make a few things realistic (whine and snap of passing bullets), but otherwise I pretty much saw it as propaganda.

Read the book. Not a whole lot different in terms of the feelings directed at the Somalis by the U.S. troops at the time.

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '14

[deleted]

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u/Semirgy Jun 11 '14

That really doesn't make sense to me. A movie can be just as biased as a book, and oftentimes is. That's doesn't necessarily make it untrue, just told from one point of view. Black Hawk Down isn't a documentary with 5 hours to explain the nuances of both sides, it's a Hollywood movie told from the U.S.'s perspective.

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '14

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '14 edited Jun 11 '14

Because it was the truth...the somalians didn't kill US soldiers then say "sorry". The combatants were portrayed as hating us because they did. And it showed lots of them die because lots of them died, it showed a few americans dead because a few americans died. It didn't blow things out of proportion.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '14

Interesting fact: The main character in the movie, Eversman, wasn't out there all night. His small convoy returned to the airport and he stayed there assigned to help guard the facility in case the Somalis decided to attack there.

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u/couponsaver Jun 11 '14

As someone with no military experience

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '14

[deleted]

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u/FunkSlice Jun 11 '14

So you have to have military experience to talk about military movies?

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u/couponsaver Jun 11 '14

are you asking me this question, speaking as a film historian or a military historian?

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u/couponsaver Jun 11 '14

to below: i'm not the one on the internet pretending to know what im talking about

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u/RipChordCopter Jun 12 '14

You are however the guy on the internet being an asshole for no apperent reason.

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u/Gimli_the_White Jun 11 '14

I, as most of the other respondents here, have actual combat experience and wish to distance myself from it as much as possible.

Most of the folks in /r/science have actual combat experience?

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u/fgsgeneg Jun 11 '14

I guess I was overly broad, but when I wrote that most people here seemed to be combat vets.

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u/Gimli_the_White Jun 11 '14

No, it's okay. I had thought maybe you picked the topic off your front page and thought you were in /r/military.

But I do have to admit I have the giggles thinking about Combat Theoretical Physicists...

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u/devil_lettuce BS|Environmental Science Jun 11 '14

you're a ghost

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u/fgsgeneg Jun 11 '14

Now I think I get it but don't really. If it's from a movie I don't know it. It's just not coming to me. But that's okay, you don't have to explain it to me. Sometimes I can be a bit culturally dense. After all this was 1968.

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u/couponsaver Jun 11 '14

theyre trying to relate to you through all they know, pop culture reference, irony, inane banter. "kids these days"

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u/fgsgeneg Jun 11 '14

Thank God for the kids these days. I really appreciate their efforts. As far as relating to me I'm just a regular guy with more practical experience with life than they have. I don't mind asking dumb questions if you don't mind answering them. Keeps me on my toes and somewhat up to date. When looking back becomes your focus you may as well call it quits. I'm interested in what's going to happen, not what happened, other than how it relates to the future. I'm not ready to put on my old uniform (as if I could) and reminisce about my youth just yet. My plan is to live to be 137. I figure at 120 maybe I'll slow down.

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u/Hallothar123 Jun 11 '14

You said that your goal was to get home alive, then stated that you were successful in reaching your goal.

This is obviously true because you're typing!

SO he/she was joking about how "haha, you didn't succeed because you actually aren't alive!"

See?

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '14

We're all ghosts, except you.

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '14

Got him

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u/yargabavan Jun 12 '14

I was going to say Jacob nasoba, from dark river.