Free Reading Post 1

I am going to be reading the book The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell. It is about a young soldier’s tour in Afghanistan. It is his story of the horrors he faces while on tour. This book got me thinking. I want to join the army after college to fight in Afghanistan. I’ve seen the position of a soldier glorified in commercials and on television. I would like to have the honor of being a member of the armed forces very much. I would be a national hero. I would fight for America and all my friends and family. I know the things I would see there would be disturbing and awful, they might even haunt me forever. However, I do not fully understand the true weight of what I would see. I am told that it will change my life, but there is now real way for me to understand what they mean. The only way for me to truly understand the horror of war is to experience it for myself. I think that it will be easy and I will enjoy it. I have a feeling that I am wrong and my gut instinct tell me that I am, but because of the media glorifying war I cant. I want to be one of the men in the marine commercials, twirling my rifle on the crest of a mountain.  It is very unlike that I will ever be able to do that. Movies like Blackhawk Down showed disturbing images in combat scenes, but they never really sunk in. My thoughts were that it’s only a movie and if it was true it would never happen to me. I feel like I am invincible, like most people in America. Obviously, I am not, but I cannot help it. America has allowed me to grow up without the terror that others face daily. I think that fighting would be fun, that I can handle the boiling hot weather in the desert, sleepless nights would be easy. I know I’m wrong, but I cannot shake the ideas engraved in my head. The media is to blame for that. They glorify war as well as being a warrior. I hope that this book will help me truly understand what I want to get myself into.