Bottom of the Barrel in Bahgdad = 06-07-2025
At the beginning of my senior year of high school, I joined my school's newspaper. My first “big” story (if you could even call it that) was to interview this one teacher I had my freshman year about his time in the Iraq War. He wasn’t one of those copy-paste G.I. Joes, he was stationed at a radio with a headset telling pilots where to park their asses. I was supposed to watch this show during this time, before my story got published. It wasn’t even a deep story, just a shitty little film list where I gave my thoughts on war films I really liked that subsequently got absolutely gutted and had any of my thoughts blocked out of it, but so it goes, and it happened to all my stories I got published. I kind of hated newspaper for this reason.
But onto my “review”.
I had been wanting to really sit down and watch this show in its entirety for so long, but I couldn’t because of my oh-so busy schedule (of course). I finished watching the last 3 episodes as of June 6, 2025, and I was honestly kind of just left thinking, “Why the fuck did I not do that sooner???”
I really cannot express just how much I loved this show. I am a huge history nerd, and I recently have begun doing more of my own research into the happenings of more modern wars such as the Iraq War, and I'm on my own little mission to get a full accurate kit and uniform from the era. But that's besides the point of this review. One major point of the show I had discussed with my teacher in that previously mentioned interview was the realism of the show and how accurate it was to the real life happenings of the war. Even though he was mostly stationed at a radio with a headset for most of his time in the military and didn’t experience any combat, we discussed how surprised he was to hear terms and lingo in the show that would otherwise go unused in the average Hollywood blockbuster film. And most of the credit for this goes to the author of the book which the show is based on, Evan Wright. Similarly to the character “Rolling Stone”, he too was an embedded reporter with a group of soldiers heading off to invade Iraq. This unique perspective is what manages to set Generation Kill apart from any other war film/show. That’s what makes it so good, and so special. It doesn’t give the viewer a clean and polished image of a soldier who has been briefed on what to say or do for the embedded reporter we follow around, and I think that it is great even just for that. It doesn’t suffocate you saying, “WAIT WAIT!!! YOU HAVE TO REMEMBER WE WERE THE GOOD GUYS HERE! WE NEVER DID A SINGLE THING WRONG!!!” Because that isn’t true, anyone with a brain would know. The soldiers the show follows around for its duration say some disgusting shit, shit that you know they wouldn’t want their mamas to know they ever even uttered. It shows you exactly the type of men and boys that were being sent over to places they probably couldn’t even point out on a map. You aren’t getting a media trained soldier giving “his” thoughts on what he’s being sent to do in some foreign land he has never seen before and will never see again.While I do enjoy a good war film or show that acts as though the good guys or “our” guys could do no wrong, especially since that seems to be all of them, seeing such an uncensored and unfiltered portrayal is nice, it's refreshing.
Honestly, I fail myself in the way I can’t give a real good review on this show. I want to say something intelligent about it, I want to say something brand new and never before thought of, but I can’t. I wish I could, but I’m kind of stupid. I’ve seen and read and listened to other people discuss this show, and discuss the Iraq War as well, and they really do a much better job than me at giving insightful thoughts and ideas on both subjects. However, right now I am reminded of a poem I read, written by Andrea Gibson titled For Eli:
Eli came back from Iraq and tattooed a teddy bear onto the inside of his wrist above that a medic with an IV bag above that an angel but Eli says the teddy bear won’t live and I know I don’t know but I say, “I know” ‘cause Eli’s only twenty-four and I’ve never seen eyes further away from childhood than his eyes old with a wisdom he knows I’d rather not have Eli’s mother traces a teddy bear onto the inside of my arm and says, “not all casualties come home in body bags” and I swear I’d spend the rest of my life writing nothing but the word light at the end of this tunnel if I could find the fucking tunnel I’d write nothing but white flags Somebody pray for the soldiers Somebody pray for what’s lost Somebody pray for the mailbox that holds the official letters to the mothers fathers sisters and little brothers of Michael 19, Steven 21, John 33 how ironic that their deaths sound like bible verses the hearse is parked in the halls of the high school recruiting black, brown and poor while anti-war activists outside walter reed army hospital scream 100, 000 slain as an amputee on the third floor breathes forget-me-nots onto the window pain But how can we forget what we never knew our sky is so perfectly blue it’s repulsive Somebody tell me where God lives ‘cause if God is truth God doesn’t live here our lies have seared the sun too hot to live by there are ghosts of kids who are still alive touting M16s with trembling hands while we dream ourselves stars on Survivor another missile sets fire to the face in the locket of a mother who’s son needed money for college and she swears she can feel his photograph burn how many wars will it take us to learn that only the dead return the rest remain forever caught between worlds of shrapnel shatters body of three year old girl to welcome to McDonalds can I take your order? The mortar of sanity crumbling stumbling back home to a home that will never be home again Eli doesn’t know if he can ever write a poem again One third of the homeless men in this country are veterans and we have the nerve to Support Our Troops with pretty yellow ribbons while giving nothing but dirty looks to their outstretched hands Tell me what land of the free sets free its eighteen-year-old kids into greedy war zones hones them like missiles then returns their bones in the middle of the night so no one can see each death swept beneath the carpet and hidden like dirt each life a promise we never kept Jeff Lucy came back from Iraq and hung himself in his parents basement with a garden hose the night before he died he spent forty five minutes on his fathers lap rocking like a baby rocking like daddy, save me and don’t think for a minute he too isn’t collateral damage in the mansions of washington they are watching them burn and hoarding the water no senators’ sons are being sent out to slaughter no presidents’ daughters are licking ashes from their lips or dreaming up ropes to wrap around their necks in case they ever make it home alive our eyes are closed America there are souls in the boots of the soldiers America fuck your yellow ribbon you wanna support our troops bring them home and hold them tight when they get here
I really enjoyed reading this, I wrote it down in my little red notebook after reading it so I could always have it with me physically. It reminds me of the last episode, “Bombs in the Garden”, towards the ending as Rolling Stone leaves Iraq, back to the real world, and we’re given a glimpse into how the last 21 days of invading a country has impacted the characters. Or, at least how it impacts Ray. He goes off to play a game of football with some of the other guys and gets into a fight with Rudy. Rudy pins him down and beats him a little before they’re pulled apart, and Ray walks away yelling and crying. It isn’t an obvious wailing type of cry, it’s all of his frustration and stress and anger coming out all at once over a football game as he walks away wiping his face. It made me feel something, and it still does now as I think about it to write this.
I don’t wanna say I understand him, because of course I don’t. I’m not a soldier, I’m not a marine. I’m a college student and have only been near guns to mess around at a shooting range with. But I feel like I get how all of his emotions come rising up and erupting into a messy and angry display. I know I have a temper, and I know it gets the better of me at times, and I’ve seen how it erupts within me in a similar way to Ray in this scene. I know that sometimes when I get mad, I start crying and yelling and screaming until my throat hurts, and I know that in those moments, I want to beat the shit out of whoever it is that has me so upset. I feel violent and hurt. And I see some of myself in Ray throughout the whole show. Is that a good thing? Who knows, I don’t know, this is just the way I am. But, if anything, I really liked the inclusion of this scene in the last episode. It reminds me of the scene towards the ending of 1917, where Schofield crawls his way out of the river, across dead, floating bodies, onto the shore, and breaks down into tears. A pause in the action in 1917 before the grand finale, and a way to sort of slowly set viewers back down into the real world for Generation Kill.
Overall, what more can I really say that hasn’t been said before? This show has been out for almost 20 years now, it’s been reviewed countless times, and honestly whatever I say about it is nothing interesting at all. I just really liked it, and I wish I had watched this when it was assigned to me even though my thoughts still would have gotten cut out and rewritten to be “school appropriate”. I’m glad I was able to buy it as a little graduation present to myself, especially considering I kinda got nothing else besides a Barnes & Noble gift card from my cousin. If I can come up with a more detailed follow-up review during an eventual rewatch, I absolutely will. But that really is all I have for now. Bye.