Aggie13B said:
HBOs "Generation Kill", gave the best view of an average enlisted persons life. I wasn't in the invasion of Iraq nor was I a marine but the same BS they dealt with and the same stupid and asinine conversations between dudes in the same humvee was pretty spot on. My first deployment was the surge in 2007 and after watching Generstion Kill several years later that very well could have been my platoon and the vehicle I rode in on screen.
Now I can't speak to the accuracy of the invasion or what they saw in combat just the interactions amongst the people.
I had the experience of watching this series and then traveling to the battlefield, much like watching the Gettysburg movie then visiting Gettysburg National Battlefield.
Was at Talil in 2009 and ran the roads (Highway 1/ MSR Tampa ) and Route 8 and 7 (AKA "Ambush Alley") the routes that Task Force Tarawa took through Nasiriya on a daily basis. Traveled the exact route that Jessica Lynch and the 507th Maintenance Company took through the city and met their eventual demise. Also went right by the hospital she was rescued from.
You could easily see the why the Marines took such heavy losses with their LVTP-7s.
Traveled Route 7 north all the way to Al Hay.. exact same route the 1st Recon Marines took in the series.
The series got the scenery about as close as you could get to the actual locations. On Route 7 north to Al Hay it is scrub brush desert similar to the high basins in Colorado and Wyoming with lots of irrigation canals, thus lots of farming. Very unlike the sea of sand south of Nasiriya towards Basra on Tampa.
The banter back in forth in the trucks is spot on with what I witnessed. My experience was not Marines but a Massachusetts National Guard company from Boston with fill-ins from Tennessee and Georgia in Afghanistan. The differences in the dialects alone was hilarious let alone the topics of discussion and "the stupid and asinine conversations". Yep, that statement pretty much nailed it.