Trigger

Whenever you watch certain movies or show's you find yourself connecting to them even if it's not entirely your situation. The movie brings up a time when the world that just seems to never let go. As you can see by this marvelous segue I'll be bringing up a movie that does that for me.

The movie is by Stanley Kubrick and the name of it is Full Metal Jacket. Now I never went into a combat situation and I've never seen anyone shoot another person but as most of the movie covers a boot camp situation I can relate at least a bit.

My brother watched it with me and had to ask some questions about military life especially how accurate the movie is to some details. Which reminds me the drill sergeant in it was spot on. Especially seeing as the whole bit was unscripted. We didn't have drill sergeants in the navy however I know boot camp was instilled a fear of petty officers into new recruits.

However as the time went I had one of my best memories ever in that place. At the end of boot camp was a test known as battle stations. There were many events in it most of which was a hell of a lot of fun for me swimming, shooting, seamanship things like rope tying, firefighting, and staying up all night. It sounds like a great summer vacation except for the running and yelling that went with it.

The lead up to this night sucked but "Battle Stations" was fun. Anyway there was a time when people had to make decisions in this exercise. And a few days before the Captain of the Base had made a speech where he talked about leadership, sacrifice and willingness to lay down our lives for our country. It inspired quite a few people.

I thought that I'd seen better speeches made by members of the Elko speech and debate team.

Anyway when the night of battle stations came there was a question asked of everyone there which was basically this: Who hear is ready to give their life for your county. and we were asked to move from one line to another if we would. Everyone but me and our scribe moved over to the other line.

And then the Petty Officer came over and had to ask us why we made this choice as it was rather unusual to see people in the Military not go over to the other line and was about ready, at least as far as I could tell, to bring me back into line as well as our scribe. And so when asked I gave that great answer that makes me proud of me, and of my memory that allowed me to think of what I value which is great movie lines. and I said I didn't join to die for my country, I joined to make the other bastard die for his. This made the petty officer smile. And he promptly told the other line that they had all died. (Dieing was the penalty major mistakes that night) and that we are supposed to be the smartest military in the world and that to think on our feet and be able to work on our own to complete a mission was quite necessary.

I'm fairly sure that he didn't plan on saying this but I think that this particular man was smart enough to turn a good answer to his way of working. Anyway the scribe who stood next to me didn't have my knowledge of movie lines and had to respond that he joined for the same reason as me. He was promptly made fun of for joining only for college benefits. Poor guy, the snappy line quota was taken for the day.

There were some sullen faces in the other line who complained of being confused by the speech earlier that week which made that bit of that night really good. I love sore losers when I get to be the classy winner. It makes me feel so good. Granted I'm not being classy here but nobody there is reading this now so I get to lord it over nobody YES!

Bringing things back to movie. I'm not a big fan of war. Lets try and figure out how to not have war especially if we can do it without bad protests that don't work. I just remembered the protesters who showed up at funerals. ugh. Seeing as I've brought you down from a blogger's high I can now leave you.