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War as entertainment

Jul-31-2005 » Filed Under: 1/25 SBCT

This is a very long article, but well worth reading in full.

Link to Full Article
Reality meets fiction on a new show about Iraq conflict

By Kirsten Scharnberg, Tribune national correspondent. Reporter Kirsten Scharnberg was embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq and has reported extensively on the war

NEW YORK -- A much-touted television drama about the war in Iraq made its debut in living rooms across America last week. In the show's final scene, a convoy of military vehicles rolls over a roadside bomb, and a young man who had joined the Army with the hope of eventually being able to afford college writhes in pain, one leg nearly severed.

About the same time, in a very real war zone several thousand miles away, in a place where no director can yell "Cut!" or request another take when something goes wrong, an explosion shook a northern Baghdad neighborhood. According to news reports, fire and searing shrapnel ripped through Humvees and flesh, and two U.S. soldiers lay dead when the smoke and chaos had cleared....

On televisions in Seattle on Wednesday, actor-soldiers detained a dozen insurgents; on the streets of Mosul, Iraq, soldiers from the base in Ft. Lewis, Wash., detained 11 suspected terrorists. On TV screens in America, a young Army wife cheats on her deployed husband; on bases all across Iraq, troops are finding that time away from home has contributed to divorce rates among Army officers and enlisted personnel nearly doubling. On previews for this week's "Over There" episode, a panicked wife gets the dreaded call that her husband was gravely wounded in combat; in Indiana last week, the family of Spec. Adam Harting received the visit every military family prays will never come--from grim-faced Army officials informing them that their 21-year-old son had been killed in Samarra...

The first episode of "Over There"--a series produced by Steven Bochco, the famed writer and creator of such television stalwarts as "Hill Street Blues," "NYPD Blue" and "L.A. Law"--was all about the action of war, the horrible moments when soldiers lose comrades and question what ever made them volunteer for such a profession.

But ask your average soldier to tell you about Iraq, and he or she will very often weave a much quieter narrative--of delivering supplies to Iraqi schools, of working with Iraqi soldiers eager to learn from their American counterparts.

There is no doubt that trust is built in trenches, under fire. But camaraderie--that is established under more pleasant circumstances.

On Forward Operating Base Marez in Mosul, the snipers of the 1st Battalion of the 24th Infantry Regiment gather almost every night to play Texas Hold 'Em poker. A drama like "Over There" would surely depict these young infantrymen talking with haunted emotion about the fact that in the past 10 months, 5 of their 15 snipers have been killed and nearly all the rest of them wounded.

But in reality the men don't talk about grief as they lay down their red, white and blue chips and smoke the cigars they've ordered on the Internet. Their memories are private. Without fanfare, one young man wears a baseball cap sent to him by the mother of a killed sniper....

Throughout the first episode, the squad members are shown getting to know one another, learning the backgrounds of each other's nicknames, asking about families. Not since Vietnam, when drafted soldiers were assigned to whatever unit needed a new body, would most U.S. soldiers be getting to know each other on the ground in a war zone. Most active-duty soldiers have trained together for months--if not years. They don't need to ask the origin of nicknames; they gave them to each other.

In May, when Sgt. Benjamin "Rat" Morton, 24, was killed in Mosul, his fellow soldiers gathered to mourn him. One friend stood in front of the hundreds of somber soldiers and told the story of how Morton once spent so long inside a Humvee during a weekend training exercise that when he finally got out, the litter-covered seat where he had been sitting looked "like a little rat's nest."

Bochco's Iraq shows soldiers agonizing over whether they have permission to return fire at attacking insurgents; in the real Iraq, no G.I. would dream of not firing back to save his life or the lives of those around him. In Bochco's Iraq, soldiers eat Meals Ready to Eat in makeshift field tents; in the real Iraq, the days of MREs are largely over because million-dollar mess halls--that serve lobster and crab legs once a week--have been built on bases throughout the country. In Bochco's Iraq, living conditions are austere; in the real Iraq, some bases have Harley-Davidson reps who promise to have your new bike waiting when you get home....


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