Movie: Where Soldiers Come From
Genre: documentary
Synopsis: This documentary starts out shortly before the 2008 presidential election. It follows five recent high-school graduates in a small town in the Upper Michigan Peninsula. These five have grown up together and are inseparable friends. Two of them enlist in the National Guard and talk the other three into also enlisting. The five are trained in a unit that disposes of IEDs. Ultimately, the unit – and the five friends – get sent to Afghanistan. The documentary shows the men discussing whey they enlisted, it shows how they react to being deployed and how they are physically and mentally changed for the rest of their lives. It also follows their families and girlfriends so we can see the effect the deployment has on them . . . and how they deal with the changes in their sons/boyfriends when they return.
My two cents: I have seen a lot of movies/documentaries about soldiers in the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Until this now, “Stop Loss” was the only one that really touched on how soldiers handled things when they were back in the states. “Where Soldiers Come From” gives us a real-life look at the impact a soldier’s deployment can have on their families and loved-ones. It also shows how a single deployment can so totally change a man for the rest of his life. An example of how the family can suffer was given by the father of one of the soldiers. He said that every time the phone rang, he was afraid it was a call to tell him his son had been injured or killed. Every time he heard a car door slam outside his house, he was afraid it was the Army coming to notify him that his son was dead.
Bottom line: I have never had anyone I know, much less a family member, deployed in a combat situation. This is one of those movies that I feel people in my situation need to see in order to gain some kind of understanding about the degree of the sacrifice made by our soldiers and their families and loved-ones and corresponding high cost of war.
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