You see the Marines looking at a computer screen in the humvee, this is a ‘Blue Force Tracker‘ or ‘BFT’ for short, (shows where all the friendly combat units are located). Ironically, I have worked on several projects that either built, upgraded, or integrated ‘Blue Force Tracker’ devices and databases.

There is a scene where one of the Marines is going to ‘Request Mast’, which is Request Mast includes both the right of the member to directly communicate grievances to their Commanding Officer and the requirement that the Commanding Officer considers the matter and personally responds to the member requesting mast. It is every Marine’s, right to be able to request mast.

The Marines in 1st Recon, talk about the reserve units and how they are reacting. The reserves are trained well, however, they are not in the thick of it so to speak until very recently, this means that they pretty much have their heads up their asses. I worked with some reserve units in my time in the Corps, however, I was never in combat, but in my time working with them, they are well trained, just not ever getting to use their training in real life, which makes them look like walking cluster fucks.

Seeing the scene where one of the Marines gets a Dear John letter, those are very real, and when I deployed to Japan, I know of several Marines who received such letters, several Marines who came home and their wife, and all their belongings were long gone. Both the Marines and the spouses cheat and some don’t even wait until the wheels are up on the plane, before they are screwing around.

The scene where the reporter is running in a zig-zag pattern was taught back in my day in the Corps, however, if you slip and fall, you could be majorly screwed. So run fast and get behind cover.

Though the SgtMaj is way over the top, I have been in a unit with an MSgt who was that way, but the thing to remember is if the Marines have idle minds, then they tend to do stupid shit, the four Marines on a recon mission to trash an office in a building for no other reason than to trash the shit out of it. You pretty much need to keep them busy or that type of shit will happen. You have young men who are 18-20 years old, being away from their parents for the first time (talking about being Marines in general) and allowed to act stupid. Think about college students, throwing parties, drinking, smoking, and having nothing but time on their hands.

Many scenes in the miniseries show racism in the Marine Corps, sadly, there is a racism problem in the Corps, not against any one single race, we find that all races in the Marine Corps are totally useless.