Last night during the meeting of my Vets support group, we started talking about the most violent and realistic movie scenes of all time. There is something we say at the beginning, and repeat at the end of each meeting, that goes like this:

"What you do here, what you say here,

When you leave here, it will stay here."

We say this to reaffirm to each other that we won't talk about each other's issues outside the group. Our Moderator stresses that we need to trust one another and that all of the men and women who attend can believe that their privacy will be kept. There's 5 people who write blogs in the group. There used to be another, but he wrote about some of the member's personal issues in the group discussion on his blog, and we kicked him out.
After we had our meeting last night, I asked if I could write about our list, but not our group, and the consensus was sure, as long as no one was named, and no issues put out there.

We had a good discussion last night, everybody left feeling better, and that is the objective. So we had this separate discussion, for more than an hour, about the most violent sequences in Movies, and we cut it down to a top three, no top ten like Mr White at the NewsPaper, but our top three most realistic, violent Movie Sequences are:

3. The First 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan. There was debate that the final 20 minute battle in the town was worse, when the squad get's wiped to the last man, but we agreed the D-day carnage was pretty much like what some of us have scene for real after a car bombing.

2, The Valkyrie Music Air Assault by Helicopter in Apocalypse Now. "I love the smell of Napalm in the Morning, and the overhead shot of civilians being shot, and the grenade being thrown into the chopper, with the commander screaming "Kill that bitch" is right out of real life in Iraq.

1. This is a tie. But both sequences are from the Sam Peckinpaugh classic "The Wild Bunch."
The opening scene in the town, where the band marching for the Woman's Temperance Union gets slaughtered in the Crossfire between the gang and the hired guns could easily be between Marines and Insurgents, with civilians caught in the middle.
The scene at the end, where Borgnine and Holden lead their group into the Mexican leader's HQ and start a close range fire fight involving a Gatling Gun is equally brutal, and we couldn't decide.

So which is worse, the movies, or real life in Allentown. I say the movies. How about you?

Don't think we didn't discuss Full Metal Jacket or Platoon, and Outlaw Josey Wales, but the women made a good point that "the Miniseries "Band of Brother's" on HBO was overall incredibly realistic, more than anything else, and thought the episode where the nurse was killed in shelling in Bastogne the most emotionally painful to them. That's all I got today. There's been violence in the City this week, and I'm not in the mood to joke as much. The garbage truck driver was a good guy.