My past posts on Memorial Day, 2007, 2008 and 2009, speak of the sensibilities of a child of a World War II veteran, a youth during the Viet Nam War, and a father with a son coming of registration age. Others have more valuable things to offer. With the gracious permission of David Giacalone, I offer his haiga.
We come to grips with our mixed feelings over time. When we were kids, we protested the war in Viet Nam. Each year since, we better appreciate the sacrifice of our brothers, neighbors, friends who died there.
The old veteran of the Bulge, a survivor when others didn’t, remembers them more clearly with each passing year. The years spent paying off the mortgage have given way to the feelings long suppressed. He hopes that we will continue to remember the war dead, all of them, even after he’s gone.
I wonder if all the young men and women today will think about others who cared enough to die for something. I wonder if they can even imagine anything mattering enough to die for. Soldiers gave no thought to work/life balance. Those who will never know any risk to their well-being greater than carpal tunnel syndrome should pay particular attention to Memorial Day. It’s the closest they will ever come to understanding what it means to sacrifice.
Addendum: Almost as if on cue, I came upon this post by Max Kennerly. The primary subject, the sale of a home out from under an active duty soldier, was one on my list of things to write about, but never made it to the top. Max handles the issues adeptly. But before he ends his post, he adds a little bit on the backend that disturbed me, especially today. After referencing the New York Times Magazine story about the Slackoisie, he writes:
I normally refrain from reading, much less commenting about, such drivel, but the “nation of wimps” comment deserves a response.
Drivel is how one describes unpleasant reality that one would prefer to ignore than address in the hope it goes away.
The same day that story was published, Army Pfc. Christopher R. Barton, 22, died in Khowst province, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when insurgents attacked his unit using small-arms fire.
“Nation of wimps?”
Private Barton died. How Max can extrapolate his sacrifice to bolster the bravery of every flip-flopped kid sipping a latte in Starbucks and brooding over work/life balance is outrageous. It’s self-aggrandizing connections like this that strike fear in my heart for the future.
“Nation of wimps?”
Yes, and shameless ones at that. Private Barton’s sacrifie does not make you brave, Max. And on Memorial Day?
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Scott, thanks for the honor of using my haiga in your Memorial Day post. And thanks, as usual, for cutting through the complications and getting to what is important.
I’m the first to admit that in my college days and my 20s (and probably 30s), I did not fully appreciate the sacrifice of others on our behalf. Nor did I realize how hard it must have been for our fathers to simultaneously scold us for opposing the Vietnam War (and our Government and President) and hope so fervently their sons would not have to deal with the hell of the battlefield.
You honor me by allowing me to use your haiga.
Like you, I’ve learned much since the 60s. Each year my understanding grows.
I’m not the one who named Barton and his peers a “nation of wimps.” You did.
I’m not even part of that “nation of wimps;” I’m too old, having been born before 1982, the cutoff of that NYT Magazine article.
Instead of apologizing to Barton and his peers for lecturing them from behind the safety of a keyboard, you attack a straw-man version of what I wrote.
Classy.
Zero for three today, Max. It was the New York Times Magazine that called Millenials a nation of wimps, not me (though I don’t disagree). Strike one. You’re not a millenial? No one said you were, but rather an apologist. Still, it’s hard to know for sure, since neither your website nor blog provides any dates or details about you. Born 1981? Hiding something, Max? Strike two. A straw-man version? That’s your quote, Max. Sorry if it looks ugly and embarrassing when it’s viewed through rational eyes, but it speaks for itself. Strike Three. The Slackoisie didn’t use Private Barton’s death to justify their entitlement; You did.
Three strikes and you’re out, classy or not.
You write a good blog post when you stick to your area of law, don’t get insufferably self-righteous and don’t let your dogmatic politics cloud your vision. Have a nice Memorial Day, Max, and think about whether Private Barton’s death honors those who worry today whether there will be a Memorial Day app for their iPad, or whether they should honor Private Barton for doing what they never would.
I like to reminisce about my parents on this day. Mother wanted to attend a state college and her parents wouldn’t go for it. So she attended the art institute in my home city for two years, a WPA project. She most enjoyed sculpture and mentioned that they thought it was just fine to have an artist in the family. She also worked at Curtiss-Wright with legions of other women, young and old.
Then she joined the WACs. Told them at supper the night before she was to catch the train, I think out to Fort Riley. It was 1943 and she was 21. Her father was very upset but had to get her to the station. Stepping on the train was the only time she could recollect getting a kiss from him and thought that was very sad.
So the Army made use of her background and aptitude, training her at what was called the Medical Department Special Schools, USA, Enlisted Technicians School, WAC. She made dentures and false eyes. You had to be an artist to make false eyes. For that she had to visit hospital wards to see the soldiers, maimed and typically bedridden. Sometimes they would say, “make it bloodshot because I’m staying drunk after this war is over.” She was in for 2 1/2 years just about, was usually among the youngest in her barracks among career enlisted women in their 30s or older, and they would look out for her. Very proud of her service experience and service record and attended school on the GI Bill later.
Dad was mustered out with a certificate of disability (asthma), honorably discharged after 54 days in July 1943. Six days short of having an official record after having spent some weeks flat on his back at Walter Reed.
He had something to say about the group of young men he was activated with from where he attended undergraduate school (his DD214 shows his enlistment date about a year prior). They were sent to Anzio. You can google Anzio. A slaughter. He would say, “you’d all be half of what you are today!” One of the few men of his generation without a record, but when the war was over he was alive.
And I have wished I could have known my husband’s dad, who died the year before we met. Army Air Corps, flew almost 40 missions over Germany. An acquaintance of mine, now in his 90s, still at home with his nice wife, was in the Air Corps too. He said “I was very young. And too stupid to be scared.”
We should pass on these stories, and the certificates and other documents, to the kids so they can pass them on to their kids, shouldn’t we?
Absolutely. It’s certainly important and worthwhile to keep your family’s personal history alive.
Interesting you should mention Anzio. I came across this reference to Anzio earlier today in this passage from the movie The Americanization of Emily, starring James Garner and Julie Andrews, where the character played by Garner says to the character played by Andrews:
I don’t trust people who make bitter reflections about war, Mrs. Barham. It’s always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a Hell it is. And it’s always the widows who lead the Memorial Day parades . . . we shall never end wars, Mrs. Barham, by blaming it on ministers and generals or warmongering imperialists or all the other banal bogies. It’s the rest of us who build statues to those generals and name boulevards after those ministers; the rest of us who make heroes of our dead and shrines of our battlefields. We wear our widows’ weeds like nuns and perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifices….
My brother died at Anzio – an everyday soldier’s death, no special heroism involved. They buried what pieces they found of him. But my mother insists he died a brave death and pretends to be very proud. . . . [N]ow my other brother can’t wait to reach enlistment age. That’ll be in September. May be ministers and generals who blunder us into wars, but the least the rest of us can do is to resist honoring the institution. What has my mother got for pretending bravery was admirable? She’s under constant sedation and terrified she may wake up one morning and find her last son has run off to be brave.
That is a good point about resistance. Anzio was like Gallipoli. What a waste. Wars are a waste and the 20th century is the best example. There was not that resistance after Pearl Harbor, and not enough now IMO.
Both of my brothers avoided the Vietnam draft, by legitimate means, and there was relief in the household. Mom supported lowering the voting age to 18 because young men whose representatives thought it right to send them over to the maw should be able to vote them out. But she also believed the domino theory which history has proven wrong. That was the line from our government. It’s always a line.
These wars still don’t stop, generation after generation. It seems as though the ability to vote is overrated because federal government including the legislatures is going to do what it’s going to do.
Young people should live for the benefit of their families and whomever they serve through their work. Not to get disabled or killed for the supposed benefit of this abstraction called the United States of America. That’s way way last in the pecking order of priority, after God, family and community. That is a good part of the lesson from family history, alongside the bravery, and fortuity.
I don’t mind letting that on to our young people. After all, they would not be here but for an ancestor surviving a war, somehow.