Word: platooner
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Oliver Stone honestly thought he was finished with the Vietnam War. With Best Director Oscars for Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989), and with 1993's Heaven & Earth to round out his Vietnam trilogy, the director had moved on to more current topics. Last year's World Trade Center centered around rescue workers on 9/11. Any Given Sunday (1999) was set on American football fields, not battlegrounds. So what was the 61-year-old filmmaker doing sitting in an airport lounge in Danang this week, watching himself lighting incense during a temple visit on local television...
...easy, but I can understand it. I mean, you saw a bit of it in Platoon. Not on this scale. But that's part of what the movie shows, visualizes, dramatizes - the peer pressure, the tension. [My Lai] happened. It's a fact. It's history. I'm not seeking to denigrate the average soldier. There was a breakdown in that division and there was a breakdown from the top. And I think it had a lot to do with the war policy, which was basically body counts, kill ratios, search and destroy, free-fire zones - these concepts, when they...
...uncritical cheerleader for the American military. Indeed, I'd say that some of our general officers--until this past year, when General David Petraeus and Lieut. General Ray Odierno took over--haven't particularly distinguished themselves. But the brigade and battalion commanders and the company and platoon leaders I saw in Iraq are really impressive...
Blue set off for his first deployment to Iraq on July 4, 2005. He joined the Marine campaign in Anbar province, leading a platoon in the Fallujah area. Even in the desert reaches of Iraq, Blue found ways to call Bell and his younger sister Amy Blue, who was living in Ireland at the time. "Those phone calls from him were the highlights of my days," says Amy. "Hearing him across all those miles, it was like he was right there with me." He was killed halfway through a second tour in Anbar, while riding in the passenger seat...
...read the encyclopedia. Mario De Leon re-enlisted in order to support his new family in California. Aaron Genevie, from southwest Pennsylvania, said his mom was his greatest inspiration. Daniel Scherry of Rocky River, Ohio, always wanted to be a Marine. Illinois native Lucas Starcevich helped outfit his platoon when equipment ran short. Jesse De La Torre was a jazz-playing Bible student from Illinois. They had some things in common: several were in Iraq for their second tour of duty. One begged Army doctors just to let him in the first time...