Comments by "Thump Er the Sweaty Fat Guy" (@SweatyFatGuy) on "Band of Brothers Actor on Filming Iconic WWII Miniseries | James Madio" video.

  1. I bought the Band of Brothers DVD set at the BX at Osan AB ROK in 2002. The story of Carwood Lipton made me a better NCO, Major winters made me a better leader, everyone in Easy Company impacted me in some way. Every time life got difficult for me, deployed or in the states, going through divorces, dealing with being disabled in 2004 after decades as a very capable man, I would reflect on what the men in WWII went through. No matter how bad it got for me, I had it better than they did. I saw Private Ryan in the theater, not many years after my first war in 90-91. That movie messed me up, it pulled me in so it was like I was there with them. When the stickybomb vaporized the guy planting it, I checked myself for fragments of him, while sitting in the theater. The flag waving at the end broke me entirely. I could not watch it at all until 2000, when I got it on DVD, sat in my room on base and forced myself to endure 5 minutes more every day until I could watch the entire movie without getting triggered. That made me a better NCO too. Band of Brothers was a very different experience. My experience with war was completely different from those two movies. My first base in 1989 was Frankfurt Germany, and I traveled around Europe seeing the places where they fought. They found a buried cache of mortars and other armaments on base while excavating for a building in 1990, they were buried there in 1945. My first trip to the desert was in 1991. The fourth was in 2001, the last in 2004. I still can't watch movies about the desert conflicts. If I do, I can smell them, feel the heat and sand hitting my face, the tiredness sets in that I felt back then. Its like reliving it again, and the last two deployments were very safe in Kuwait. 33 years later and I can vividly remember the tiniest details from the first, and the winters in Germany, working outside in the blowing snow. So very different than the 130F heat in the desert, and the smells you never forget. I ate bacon every other day for a year just so I would stay in the present day when I smelled it. Its called flooding, its what I did with Pvt Ryan. There are things you never forget, the best you can do is remove the emotional marker from the memory. The things those men from the larger conflicts can't forget makes mine look about as serious as a kid not getting a toy at the store... and my peers who had jobs far more dangerous than mine. Tell James Madio and the rest of them, thanks for the shows. They're appreciated more than they can imagine.
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