Many war movies and TV shows feature a climactic scene when a soldier finally breaks. My crisis moment in the Afghanistan War came not from combat stress, but from a TV commercial.
I should probably explain. American service members serving overseas have access to Armed Forces Network television. This morale booster is a high priority for the military. Our remote outpost in Afghanistan had AFN running in our chow hall as soon as it was built and the TV arrived. AFN showed popular TV shows and live or nearly live sporting events.
The problem was the commercials. Younger readers who grew up downloading or streaming entertainment might not remember when all shows were regularly interrupted by advertisements encouraging people to buy products. I’ve enjoyed my favorite shows ad-free for a long time, but in 2005, it was the norm for broadcast/cable TV to run with commercials.
Except AFN did not air advertisements for products or services to avoid the appearance of any private company having the endorsement of the military. So it aired shows without breaks, the way they were on the DVDs of the era, right? Wrong.
For some reason, AFN didn’t know how to edit out commercial breaks, or it couldn’t manage a commercial-free schedule. The result was a network of entertainment TV, peppered with cheaply produced, cheesy military propaganda pieces.
Some segments, such as the backgrounds of military units, or this-day-in-military-history, were interesting. Some helpful information spots didn’t go far enough. The touching “So You Want to Marry a Foreign National” piece warned that a soldier would need extra planning to marry a foreigner. It might have been improved with the appearance of a bitter, divorced Gunnery Sergeant saying, “Private, you’ve known that woman for two weeks. Instead of asking about her immigration visa, ask yourself if she’s really just after your Visa credit card.”
Other AFN commercials were just stupid or treated insignificant matters as significant issues. One such ad warned soldiers to take showers instead of baths to conserve water. “For every bath you take, you could take at least two showers!” Who cares how the soldier cleans up unless he’s serving in a desert with a shallow well?
The fateful day came late in my tour. Over breakfast in the chow hall, the AFN commercial played. The distorted memory still haunts me. “Stairs are a useful way to move from one floor to another, but did you know stairways can be deadly dangerous? Always make sure stairs are well-lighted and free of clutter … ” Seriously? Stairs? The Taliban were dedicated to killing us. We had 19-year-old soldiers carrying machine guns. A soldier had recently accidentally fired a round dangerously close to our generator’s fuel reserve inside our compound. There was a minefield not far from our base. All this, and the Army was worried about stairs?
I lost it, shouting across the chow hall, “What kind of stupid bulls*** is that! Any inbred jack*** that doesn’t know how to operate a f***ing flight of stairs shouldn’t be in the f***ing military! Stop telling me how to think, AFN! Motherf***er, I need to get the f*** out of the Army!”
An overreaction? Possibly. But my enlistment was already several months involuntarily extended, and I couldn’t take it anymore. It was a situation where the senior leadership might have punished me for losing my military bearing. Push-ups? Extra work details? The first sergeant loved punishing infractions by placing soldiers on sewage burning detail in the middle of the night.
Instead, everyone shrugged and turned away. “So, anyways, like I was saying … ” The regular breakfast routine continued, and I grabbed one more coffee and went out for guard duty. Everyone must have understood.
I haven’t seen AFN for 20 years now. But I will never forget its endless stream of military propaganda, or the day it finally pushed me to the limit.
Trent Reedy, author of several books including Enduring Freedom, served as a combat engineer in the Iowa National Guard from 1999 to 2005, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
*Some names and call signs in this story may have been changed due to operational security or privacy concerns.
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