“Sir… Sir they’re shooting at us.”
“Well shoot back.”
Almost any soldier who has been in a combat situation can relate to Black Hawk Down. For me though, it’s a special movie. I always feel silly when I tell people that it had a lot to do with me joining the Army, but it, in fact, did. I saw it in the theatre with three friends and midway through it I leaned over to one of them and said, “We should do this.” All three of us went to join the Army and were deployed to combat zones. Initially I just thought that it was a cool movie. Being a Ranger looked like the coolest most hardcore thing that a person could I was down. I probably watched that movie a hundred times before I ever shipped off to basic. I would watch it and get excited thinking about the extreme scenarios and situations that I might soon find myself in, and the crazy missions I would be conducting. What I saw then was an adventure movie. Of all the times I watched the movie before I went to combat I can honestly say that I never once “teared up”.
The movie that I see now that I’m out of the military and have done it all, isn’t the same movie that I saw then. It strikes me in a completely different way. I don’t see a bunch of young guys gearing up for a day of excitement, but rather a group of friends who just wanna get the mission over with, cracking jokes to hide their nervousness. I actually feel anxious when they’re in the birds on their way to conduct the raid. It’s the ending though, that truly gets to me now. I never understood before, the final two speeches at the end of the movie (the video clips that I have added). I just kind of thought they were sappy scenes to end the movie with. However, now I understand that those two scenes sum up the entire point of the movie, that war is hell and the only thing that keeps you going is your friends. I never understood that. Now I know exactly what the guys in these scenes and saying, and honestly, I got choked up when I was finding these clips.
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