The Hell Hole

   "Restrepo" is a movie that gives a good representation of the war in Afghanistan. The movie does a great job of showing the war through the soldiers perspective. The movie takes place in Korangal valley. Many of the soldiers call it the "hell whole". What made the soldiers fear Korangal Valley, and why was it so dangerous?
    In My Worst Nightmare and the Korangal Valley , it gives a great example of the fears of the soldiers when they return. "I was laying prone on the rocky ground, something I hardly ever did in Afghanistan.My heart pounded so loudly I thought it would break through my chest. I had never been more nervous. I feared for my life. I was sitting at the rocky outcrop on the southern part of the Korengal Outpost, the KOP. Taliban swarmed up the hillside, surrounding me. The men who were with me fell back; I couldn't stem the retreat. I knew at that moment I would die on that hill. And then I woke up, alone in my apartment in Vicenza, Italy. It was the worst nightmare I'd ever had. In my dream, I had returned to the Korengal Valley, later nicknamed the "Valley of Death." I only spent a couple months in the Korengal, but it felt much longer. The place haunted me before I arrived in Afghanistan; it still haunts me."

   







       
         The Korangal valley is vastly known as one of the deadliest terrains in the world. Vanity fair's Into The Valley of Death gives some good input into this. " One platoon is considered the tip of the American spear. Its men spend their days in a surreal combination of backbreaking labor—building outposts on rocky ridges—and deadly firefights, while they try to avoid the mistakes the Russians made. Sebastian Junger and photographer Tim Hetherington join the platoon’s painfully slow advance, as its soldiers laugh, swear, and run for cover, never knowing which of them won’t make it home."

    In conclusion, The Korangal Valley is popular for its deadly terrain. The valley will bring horror to soldiers before, during and after they get there. They live everyday knowing somebody could shoot at them at any time, and that's what makes this valley so dangerous.

Go Your Own Way

In the movie, Hurt Locker, they show how emotionally difficult the war in Iraq can really be. Lots of soldiers don't really show what they really feel inside. You'll see multiple times in the movie many soldiers breaking down at different times. Whether it's in the shower or on the job, they all have there breakdowns. The question is will the soldiers ever recover from what they see and do in Iraq?
You'll never know what the soldiers go through until you actually go threw it, but you get a sense of this through the Hurt Locker. one soldier that has an interesting take on the war is SSG James. James throughout the movie is always is a hard ass. You'd think he has no emotions whatsoever. One scene in the movie sticks out to me. Out of anger of what happens to his young friend, he is on a mission. James takes it upon himself to go after the person that detonated the tank and things get interesting. They split up and hear Eldridge in some trouble. Some guys take Eldridge, and James shoots him while shooting at the two guys carrying him away. After that night James breaks down in the shower just thinking about the war and everyone that is hurt by it. 
In an article in This Emotional life says this, "These soldiers say  ‘that they are just not the same – don’t know why, but they feel changed, and the important stuff around them has changed.’  Combat will do that to almost anyone – everyone is changed, for better or worse, and sometimes both better and worse. These are not the great traumas of the war, but much more corrosive micro-traumas: an inability to relate in comforting and familiar ways and the tendency to feel like an alien when doing the most ordinary things." This sums up the way the soldiers feel when they're there and come back after a long time in Iraq.
Things can get rough in Iraq when you know every time you go out, your'e just rolling the dice to see if you'll come home that day.This Youtube video i came across really shows how the soldiers of this movie were impacted in the war. The soldiers sometimes tell themselves to "go your own way". But that could often lead to more lonely days.

The man next to you

Black Hawk Down can be a very emotionally difficult movie to watch. The soldiers were so close to each other, and it made it more difficult when lives were lost. A lot of men did some very courageous things in the war, but why did the soldiers not consider themselves heroes?
    Soldiers in the war are just fighting to live another day. When they fight in this war, they actually have to shoot woman and children firing at them. As tragic as that is, this was the reality of the war in Somalia. When thinking about these things, the soldiers can feel more like murderers than heroes.
    In battle, its all about the men fighting by their side that keeps them going. When you spend as much time in war with the same men, you'll become very close and form a great relationship with them. In a battle they would do anything for each other. They make sacrifices for each other and sometimes those can result in death.
A lot of people didn't think that our soldiers should be out there anyway. People would ask them, "Do y'all think you're heroes or something." For many of them the answer would be no. As Eversman would say, "Nobody asked to be a hero, sometimes it just turns out that way."
The conversation Eversman and Hoot have sums this up pretty well. Hoot says, "Y'know what I think? Don't really matter what I think. Once that first bullet goes past your head, politics and all that shit just goes right out the window.
When I go home, people ask me, "Hey Hoot, why do you do it, man? Why? You some kind of war junkie?" I won't say a goddamn word. Why? They won't understand. They won't understand why we do it. They won't understand it's about the men next to you... and that's it. That's all it is."

My name is Justin Hoyt, and I'm a Freshman at JSU. I play baseball at JSU, and i'm a left handed pitcher. I'm from Birmingham, Alabama, and attended Oak Mountain High School. I was born in Columbus, Ohio, but moved to Birmingham when i was five. My parents are John and Kathy Hoyt. i have a younger brother named Dylan and an older bother that's a Junior at JSU named Tyler.