The Hurt Locker and Enduring Images Puts us in the Foxholes

Whether you believe in the war we are fighting in Afganistan or not, you probably wondered what it was like to be a soldier. What is it like to face death everyday? How do you feel after you shoot someone just because he/she we are told is our enemy? How do you see your friends die beside you and go on?
“The Hurt Locker” is a powerful dipiction of a soldier’s life. The tense stillness you experience as the bomb disabler labors in an eighty pound suit toward the explosive.
Any minute an insugent can appear with a rifle to stop his progress. At any time the bomb could detonate. Everyday he faces the same danger, always on guard, keeping alert to keep alive. The adrenaline is addicting and when the same soldier goes home he feels lost. In the war he was saving people, at home he is cleaning the gutters.
The movie deserves the Oscar because it brings to the viewer the realities of war without making a statement for or against it.
Enduring Images by our friend Dr. Paul Fazekas, Bill and I read together last summer. We were only 19 when the Vietnam War ended but we remember many of the events Paul spoke about in his personal account of being a soldier in that war. We were there with Paul, in the midst of the confusion, the despair of soldiers fighting a loosing battle in a war they did not believe in. Forced to kill he suffered alone after returning, unaware that he too had the symptoms on Post Traumatic Shock, a new dianosis, one he treated himself as a pschycologist.
Enduring Images will grip you with it’s honesty and hope. Every soldier active or now home should read this book. Every soldiers’ family and friends will gain an understanding of war and how to help their loved one when they return. You can find it on Amazon.