The Hurt Locker

I finally watched The Hurt Locker. I can't say much about EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) other than I was stationed along side them in Iraq at Camp Victory where the movie took place. When we all first arrived in Baghdad the base was big enough for them to bring back ordnance and blow it up in the back half of the area. There's no way in the world I would want to be a bomb tech, I like being alive and getting my adrenaline rush in more adventurous ways like jumping out of an airplane or seeing new lands. There is one thing I did not think the movie did justice and needed more content; when bomb tech, SSG William James, was home it didn't go into what his mind was thinking, what life was like. It alluded to what was going on when he was in the grocery store, pulling leaves from the roof and talking to his son but I wish it would have brought it out into the open more as part of the movie. War is a drug. That phrase started the movie and in many respects it is very true. I would argue it is not war itself but what one does during a time of war. I know of many soldiers who extend or request to go back to Iraq or Afghanistan, we call them war junkies. But coming from my own experience, talking to many of those soldiers coming and going, and working next to many war vets at the V.A. now, war is not the drug, it is our role during war. Many of us did things that had life or death consequences, sat in meetings deciding missions, and went on convoys for those missions. Coming back and having to decide what kind of cereal to buy or picking leaves off the house seems trivial and unrewarding. Those of us at the VA who did those things above now sit in a cubicle processing paperwork bored out of our minds every day. I totally understand why the good SSG wanted to go back and keep doing the bomb thing over and over again. Though he is home with his family and friends he is alone in his thoughts. He is struggling with feeling important in his work as a bomb tech and being home with his family doing "trivial" things. It's like a chaplain in the guard once commented after returning from a year in Kosovo. "I met and worked with the church leaders for the Serbs and the Muslim Imams for the Kosovars to keep them from killing each other. I then return home and attend my first church meeting where the congregation is arguing over having either blue or red carpet in the sanctuary." Trivial!!!!! I wish The Hurt Locker would have discussed his actions at home more explicitly where everyone would have understood what was going on in his mind. I wish it would have been more about the movie than making it look like he wanted to abandon his family again for war in the end. I am not a war junkie and war is not my drug..... but doing what I did there and doing what I do now has no comparison. If it wasn't for my wonderful wife and 2 kids I would be volunteering to go back to Iraq and to Afghanistan as much as possible.