A lot of people bought new televisions, and remember, this was still back when the big-box TVs, with the cathode ray tubes, were the most common type. Flat-screens existed, but they were still new and expensive, so the only way to avoid getting a big-box TV was to watch DVDs on your laptop. That was fine for personal watching, but difficult if a bunch of people wanted to crowd around and watch a movie together.
Watching movies was an incredibly popular way to pass the time when we weren’t directly training for Iraq. It was bitterly cold outside and the nearest towns, Tomah and Sparta, were at least five or so miles away, and not exactly places full of vigorous “night life” to speak of. One of the most common box sets that we watched was “Band of Brothers”, which many of us watched several times over the course of our stay at Ft. McCoy– it became almost a ritual with us, as (I suppose) we were trying to put ourselves in their mindset and prepare for what our lives might look like in a few months.
What's it like to be in the Army for real, and get deployed to a place like the Iraq War? In BOHICA Blues, I turn my actual experiences into a slice of absurdist humor and walk you through this period of history from one person's perspective.
Using the classic TV show "M*A*S*H" as a guide, I created BOHICA Blues in 2013 to tell the story of what a deployment was like, with the absurdities of military life and war for all to see. It starts with the initial mobilization news, and goes on from there. BOHICA Blues isn't as "salty" as a lot of veteran humor; it doesn't have F-bombs, gore, or nudity: it could hypothetically appear on regular broadcast television.
Hopefully you can enjoy this and invite others to see what the Iraq War was like from someone who went there and is willing to share the experience with a laugh.
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