Scene from the movie, “Platoon”

Richard Sahn

The other night I was watching the movie “Platoon” on television. An American soldier was killed every few seconds while the platoon was immersed in a firefight with North Vietnamese regulars near the Cambodian border. In one scene the body of a dead GI was used as a shield as bullets were being fired at his body. Indeed, the horrors of combat were not minimized by the screenplay writers and director. After the carnage bodies of GI were bulldozed into a mass grave.  Both sides were undoubtedly under orders to kill anything that moved if it looked like the enemy.

As a professor at a rural college in Pennsylvania I see students, male and female, walking around the campus or in class in their camouflage uniforms. They may be in the Army reserves or National Guard on their way to or from exercises…