:Response to War and Peace

I have been reading the book “Fallen Angels” and one line that stuck out to me for some reason was when Perry went out on a loan patrol with Charlie Company. They just got picked up at the LZ and Perry leaned out the chopper and saw a few muzzle blasts coming from the “thick green carpet below” him. He flinched every time he saw the muzzle blasts. And the men on the chopper started to kid around with him about flinching. The guys said “if you see the muzzle blast, it means that the bullet missed”. This obviously means that he would have been dead. It so weird to me because the men seemed to calm about that. It seemed as if was almost comfort for them, like they don’t have to worry about see the muzzle blast because they would be dead. Its crazy how adapted men can get to war. Even how the men just joke about that is a way to cope with the situation. I believe this helps men cope with the possibility of death. It is not that they don’t take death seriously, because they do. But instead of worrying about it so much they turn it in ways to be less negative about and maybe build some moral. There is a blog entry in the sandbox called “Semper Gumby” and its written by a soldier in Afghanistan. He talks about flexibility a soldier must maintain when things are constantly changing, the soldier stated “When things are constantly changing, as they have been during so much of this deployment, there is a simple motto to keep us going: “Semper Gumpy”. Semper Gumby is Latin for “Always Flexible”.” The soldier talks about being flexible and he uses the Cartoon Character Gumby when describing this. The soldiers took pictures of Gumby on weapons and vehicles and such. And this another way of just joking around and being yourself when you in such a situation. I think this is a good thing for soldiers to do when they are put in a situation like these. They just try to make the best of their situation, even when it comes to joking about many serious things like war.

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