But after serving in combat in Vietnam, my view of war movies became much more jaundiced. All war movies seemed contrived, comfortable and faked. They were cartoons, designed to make war seem easily endurable and not excessively scary.
Even Vietnam war movies were lousy: the directors/writers were intent on presenting their messages, rather than trying to show us (or the Vietnamese) in a favorable light. As with the previous generation's war movies, the firefights didn't at all sound like real firefights, gunfire sounded like blanks (which of course, they were) and grenades looked and sounded like trashcans full of gasoline being exploded by black powder.
Unlike earlier war movies, we Vietnam combatants were portrayed as witless stumblers (Forrest Gump, Deer Hunter) and/or war criminals (Platoon, Apocalypse Now).
I keep hoping for a good movie to made about us and what we did - but it likely won't come out until all of us who were there are long gone from this earth.
bkmk
Not on location such as yours, I was 15 feet from a 105, when it was fired. The sharpness of the sound, the crack in the air, was informative.
Later, I listened to a recording made by a British war correspondent, September 1944, of a German artillery barrage - the effects of the shells’ arrivals - at a location west of Arnhem, The Netherlands. With solid atructures and pathways paved in their target area, the sound, as if thousands of pots and pans all arrived and crashed at the same time, from great height . . . was informative.
From my studies, I learned that each individual’s sense of action and sound effects, varies. “The ‘report’,” varies.
“But after serving in combat in Vietnam ...”
I’d like to know what most soldiers that saw gruesome things think should be shown to the public. I hear that many soldiers don’t like to talk about what they did or saw.
Could grusome behavior be like sexual behavior in that they are personal experiences best kept personal?