The Importance of Generation Kill (2008) on Our Understanding of Modern American Warfare

Generation Kill (2008) highlights the importance of storytelling in learning modern American history and the stark difference between the war of old and now.

If you know me, you know I love history. Ever since I was little, I’d voraciously read through encyclopedias and I, Survived books. As a young Jewish girl, the shadow of World War II hung over me as I read a graphic novel about Anne Frank, connecting with her birthday near to mine, our love for writing, and I was tasked to portray her in my elementary class “wax museum.” I kept my notecard of her facts with my messy elementary scrawl in my diary. As I grew, I read more and more, and my love of cinema and history collided. Notably, in 2019, I saw 1917 in theaters, and my interest in war cinema was solidified. As the COVID-19 pandemic occurred, my adolescence was halted, and I faced extreme personal challenges. I found solace in a niche community of other people like me who love cinema and history. Though I find all periods of history fascinating, war history interests me the most. I still don’t have a clear answer as to why. Maybe it’s my desire to understand human psychology, why people choose to kill each other and be cruel, and why nations decide to fight and let innocent civilians suffer.

In 2018, during a hyperfixation on Queen and Bohemian Rhapsody, I watched through Joe Mazzello’s filmography. I stumbled upon The Pacific and Eugene Sledge’s memoir, With the Old Breed, on audiobook narrated by Joe Mazzello. With the Old Breed is still considered to be my favorite book of all time. In my first college winter break of 2021, I watched Band of Brothers for the first time and revisited The Pacific. Yet, it wasn’t until summer of 2024 that I truly found my footing in my love for the HBO war shows. My thoughts on the HBO war shows are as follows: Band of Brothers is a technical marvel and profoundly moving but falls short of historical accuracy and genuine depth. The Pacific is beautifully written and produced, historically accurate as best it can be, brutal and dramatic, and showcases the depth of humanity and the moral qualms of participating in war. Masters of the Air is beautiful visually and musically, but like Band of Brothers, it lacks any true ethical dilemma, and the emotional weight falls short since we never see the consequences of their bombings, as well as the overall plot falling short once the main cast is sent to the POW camp.

Over the summer, I read and reread 15 memoirs, history books, and autobiographies related to Band of Brothers, The Pacific, and Masters of the Air. In the fall, I read Generation Kill. I have heard of Generation Kill, abbreviated to Gen Kill, in HBO war circles, but it is not as popular as the others. After reading the book, I was struck by how different modern war is from the war I know so well—the war of old and now. Over February break, my senior year of college, I finally sat down and watched Generation Kill and God, what a show it is. I was immediately struck by the striking beauty of the cinematography and how you are thrust into the world of the First Recon Marines—beautiful shots of the desert sunsets, the Humvees rolling through the landscape, and children looking on.

You are put into their world without easing in, with no training montage or backstory. The Marines are raunchy, most of the language used wouldn’t slide anywhere today, and boyish. They’re oppressively masculine, yet they are also contrastingly deeply emotional, often reduced to tears throughout the show. Yet, the things I found lacking in Band of Brothers and Masters of the Air were gone from Gen Kill. It is the one HBO war show that truly questions its morals and feels real. After finishing it, I was left with a queasy feeling in my stomach. It is so raw, real, and human. It doesn’t have the glossy patriotic finish of Band of Brothers. The one parallel to the patriotic final baseball game of Band of Brothers is the football game in the final episode of Gen Kill, which goes awry and leads to a mental breakdown and two fights breaking out. The soldiers are so traumatized from their experiences they can’t play a simple game, one that requires violence. You don’t see glimpses of the civilian cost, shown in strewn-in scenes in The Pacific, the concentration camp liberation that never happened in Band of Brothers, the Jewish self-insertion of Steven Speilberg, or the “misdirected” anger of the Germans in Masters of the Air. But that is almost all there is in Generation Kill. You see a few Fedayeen soldiers, but the focus is placed on the civilian and human cost moreso than in any other HBO war show. The intentional or unintentional harm the Marines cause, the moral weight placed on them to liberate a nation. It is the most humanistic portrayal of the Iraq war I have seen and possibly the most authentic war media I have ever seen. Usually, there is something to pick out as overly dramatic or glossy, too pointed in its messaging as “pro-American,” but Generation Kill forces you to see the unfiltered truth. Children lying dead on the side of roads, people begging for food and water, complicated ethics of chain of command. What you choose to think is up to you as the viewer. The First Recon Marines spent only 4 weeks in Iraq, yet you feel like it's much longer alongside them. Some men, Trombley, itch for and celebrate killing. Some men despise it and only do it when necessary, Colbert. “All religious stuff aside, the fact is people who can’t kill will be subject to those who can.” Generation Kill asks you if being indifferent to killing is the same as enjoying it? At what point do you cross the line from soldier to murderer? I like to say that there are “no winners in war,” and Generation Kill is the perfect example of that. The Marines are boyish men. They joke and play kill. They hide their trauma with dark humor. They talk pop culture, sing Avril Lavigne, and worship J-Lo. They are 20-30 year olds but act like teenagers. “The whole structure of the military is designed to mature young men to function responsibly while at the same time preserving their adolescent sense of invulnerability.” They aren’t fighting the “bad guys,” fascism; they’re fighting abstract ideology masked as a proxy political liberation, Bush-era oil struggle, territories, and terrorism.

Lieutenant Nathaniel Fick is the prime example of the human and moral weight of Generation Kill. Finishing his memoir One Bullet Away inspired me to write this article. He laments for the safety of his men and the consequences the war has on civilians. He is practically too emotional for warfare, too introspective, too tenderhearted—a Dartmouth graduate who studied classics and government from a wealthy family in Baltimore, a far cry from the stoic, blue-collar, hardened alpha male expectation of the Marine Corps. He is a dedicated leader and cares deeply for his men. “I had to be psychiatrist, coach, and father.” After seeing two young boys die due to injuries caused by one of his men, he writes, “The events of the day overcame me at once, and I struggled to breathe without crying. I sat alone in the dim green light of the radios. I felt sick for the shepherd boys… I hurt for my Marines, who will bear these burdens for the rest of their lives, and I mourned for myself. Not out of self-pity, but for the kid who’d come to Iraq, he was gone. I did all this in the dark away from the platoon because combat command is the loneliest job in the world.” He is deeply critical of the war and his role in it. “Thanks for what you guys did over there. Thanks for what? Killing kids? Cowering in terror behind a berm? Dropping artillery on people’s homes? There wasn’t any pride simply in being there. The pride was in our good decisions and the things we did right. I hope that I had done more right than wrong.” Eugene Sledge, a Marine veteran of the World War II Pacific theater, wrote similarly about his thoughts on war in With the Old Breed. Usually, the story ends once they return home and meet their wives, leaving the war behind. But we see that the war and the guilt he carries will never leave Nate. After returning home, he writes, “I felt lonely that night in the hotel room. No radios hissing, no stars overhead, no Marines standing watch beside me. A dark brown face stared back in the bathroom mirror, I saw lines on my forehead I hadn’t noticed before… I cried sometimes for no reason at all. On the Fourth of July, a firecracker sent me diving behind a car door, reaching for a pistol that wasn’t there.” Nate Fick’s introspective and descriptive writing made me understand the Iraq War in a completely new light and the experiences of our modern veterans. These are the people we have to support now. I hope to work with veterans in my future career and give them the support they so lack from this country. War is not something to be glamourized or romanticized. It is something to be learned from, especially from the veterans who fought in it and the civilians who ceaselessly died, not from politicians who decide their history. Nate Fick returned home from Iraq 2 days before I was born, on June 3rd, 2003. American troops didn’t fully withdraw from Iraq until December 2011, when I was 8 years old. The U.S. suffered close to 37,000 total casualties, with more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed. This is the American warfare I grew up with; it is the warfare that I will continue to know, and it is even more essential for us to learn and understand the impact of this kind of war. It is essential to understand the war of old to understand the war of new, but we must acknowledge its stark differences. Generation Kill is the prime manifestation of this lesson.