MovieChat Forums > Jarhead (2005) Discussion > What was Kruger doing with that corpse?

What was Kruger doing with that corpse?

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

When the group are digging holes for the night by the burning oil fires, Kruger is over a a dune, where he isn't supposed to be. Swafford goes over there and Kruger shows him that he has the burnt up corpse of someone...

I don't understand what he was planning to do with it or if he had done something to it (other than dragging it over there with him) that made Swafford and the other men so appalled.

I get that it's gross and disrespectful, but I feel like there's something I'm missing when the Staff Sergeant checks in with Swafford and assures him Kruger will be discharged for whatever he did--to me it didn't seem like he had really done anything too horrible--he was just near this dead body and made jokes about/with it. Was something more implied than was shown?

[–] RustyShacklefurd 8 years ago

That wasn't Kruger. That was Fowler.

[–] JayHysterio 8 years ago

Roger that, it was Fowler.

I believe he was recreating the scene from Full Metal Jacket where Craze propped up a dead NVA soldier and the presented him as his new friend. The script was almost verbatim.

As this film takes place in 1989 and Full Metal Jacket came out in 1986 the grunts had likely seen the film.

[–] tyson6633 8 years ago

I seem to remember Fowler saying something like, "Do ya see what I put in his mouth?"

So I'm pretty sure he just desecrated a human corpse. What he *did* end up putting in his mouth, I can't answer for *sure*. If I had to guess, I think Fowler cut off the dead Iraqi's private parts then jammed 'em down the soldier's throat.

This, obviously (and rightly so) appalled Swoff, Troy and the others.

I mean, what else *could* it have been?

---
"I learned that in prison, you like? You white trash piece-a sh!t."

[–] alcockell (20) 4 years ago

Which, again, was a reference to an earlier scene in Platoon that referenced the Vietcong putting dead squaddies' penises into the dead squaddies' mouths.. (referred to in Nam - the Vietnam Experience)..