On the flight to London I watched "Stop-Loss" a harrowing film revolving around a group of soldiers lured from their checkpoint in Tikrit to be ambushed in a narrow alley. From one moment to the next, alive young men are dead, dying and horrifically wounded, as are a man and his son, in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's the back-cloth.
The substance of the film is about the complex mixture of duty and despair that overtakes the soldiers back home in Texas. If you have come through an American airport and seen soldiers welcomed home and others departing - whatever your politics, you know that this is not black-and-white nor election sound-bites.
Then at the weekend the violent death of 9 US soldiers in a prolonged firefight in a forward base in Northern Afghanistan.
And Stop-Loss? The right of the military to involuntarily extend the term of service for another tour of duty. In the film, Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe), having done tours in Afghanistan and Iraq is ordered back. It's a sobering film.
