MovieChat Forums > Full Metal Jacket (1987) Discussion > Precedent?

Precedent?

posted 8 years ago by SnoozeAlarm
4 replies | jump to latest

The first half of the film culminates in a private killing his drill sergeant and then himself. Is there any record of this ever happening in the US military?

Scariest words in English: We’re from the federal government and we’re here to help. R. Reagan

[–] tieman64 8 years ago

http://www.historynet.com/the-hard-truth-about-fragging.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragging

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_veteran_suicide

http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jan/28/local/me-drown28

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/385167/MARINE-KILLS-SELF-IN-FRONT-OF-RECRUITS.html?pg=all

The above links are similar but not quite the same. What Pyle did typically happened in Vietnam, rather than in bootcamp.

[–] SnoozeAlarm 8 years ago

Thank you very much.

As you point out, in the cases that you reported, the incidents did not occur during training, but rather on the battle field. Obviously, the pressures of the battlefield are far greater.

Another distinction occurs to me:

In many (most? all?) of the incidents you cite, the officer killed was an exceptionally cruel and sadistic person, and the act of killing was a sane act of killing an evil person.

In this film, my understanding is that the drill sergeant was in no way exceptional, and in fact the actor was chosen for the role precisely because he knew how training was usually conducted.

The act of killing him was the insane act of a person whose mind snapped due to the pressures of basic training.

So I think this is what I'm really wondering: is there precedent for someone murdering their officer not on the battlefield but rather as a result of the pressures of basic training.

Scariest words in English: We’re from the federal government and we’re here to help. R. Reagan

[–] tieman64 8 years ago

So I think this is what I'm really wondering: is there precedent for someone murdering their officer not on the battlefield but rather as a result of the pressures of basic training.

I'm wondering too. I haven't come across anything yet.

http://www.msnbc.com/all/murder-suicide-and-the-dark-side-military-recruiting

Here's an example of a commanding officer killing a recruit and then suicidally killing himself (the opposite of FMJ).

And here's something else from Google: "John Ketwig's "A GI's True Story of the War in Vietnam" mentions an army recruit nicknamed "Fatso" by his drill sergeants being abused, finally cracking and committing suicide by standing behind a target on the rifle range when the rounds came down."

The murder-suicide in the film is taken from "The Short Timers", a book by Gustav Hasford. Hasford has said his book is "semi autobiographical", but I've never seen him metion whether or not the book's murder-suicide was something he directly witnessed, heard about or made up.

My gut tells me if this kind of thing happened, it happened in the 60s/early 70s and then got covered up. Nowadays soldiers who flip out seem to go on spree shootings, like the 2009 killings at Ford Hood and that Afghanistan vet this May and his shooting spree in Houston.

[–] SnoozeAlarm 8 years ago

You sure know your stuff. Thanks!

Scariest words in English: We’re from the federal government and we’re here to help. R. Reagan