I wrote this in a comment to MKSinSA's amazing diary, My incredible journey to the marvelous land of Kos. I was asked to post it as a separate diary.
It's personal. It hurt to write. It may hurt to read. I'm sorry.
But it's the reality of war.
I was, for a year or so, a part-time talk radio host. I enjoyed the work, usually, and because the station managers realized I was a history buff, I was often assigned to host "retrospective" shows: the JFK assassination, the fall of Saigon, etc.
Anyway, in late 1989 we did a 45-year retrospective on the Battle of the Bulge (Dec-Jan 1944), and I had a couple of guests. Both had fought in the savage battle around St. Vith, Belgium ... one an American, the other a German who had moved to the U.S. after the war. This was the first time they had met.
So after the introductions, I asked them to talk about their experiences. They began to share and, after just three or four minutes, they both fell silent. They took off their headphones, stood up, hugged each other, and started to cry.
I was faced with that worst sin of radio: dead air.
I also knew there was absolutely not one word I could say that could matter in that moment. So I told my producer to go with the music we'd queued for the show, Tom Waits' Tom Traubert Blues. I let it run for a couple of minutes while they cried. Finally, I said "We'll be back after this break."
After the break, we faded back in with Waits' music, and by then the two veterans - one American, one German - still crying, could at least speak. I asked what they'd whispered to each other as they wept on each other's shoulders.
The German said: "We spoke of the real enemy."
"Oh," I said, stupidly. "Adolf Hitler?"
The German shook his head. "Nein. Der Krieg."
No. The war.
Here were two men, now in their 60s, who in 1944 were indoctrinated to hate and trained to a razor's edge in the deadly arts of war. Two men who, had either glimpsed the other in the forests outside St. Vith, would have killed each other without a moment's hesitation. Two men who had done exactly that, to the other's countrymen and buddies.
And in the distance of 45 years' reflection, about a war that has been celebrated as everything from rescuing the Jewish people to saving the world for freedom and democracy ... what had they decided was the real enemy?
Der Krieg.
The war.
I was a Marine myself, in the early 80s. And as a chaplain's assistant, I helped counsel the families of the men killed in the suicide bombing in Beirut, in 1983. Some were guys I'd known. For a week, at Dover Air Force Base, as the bodies were shipped in planeload by planeload, I talked to mothers, wives, fathers, and brothers. Where did they want their loved ones buried? Had anyone talked to them about their survivors' benefits? Did they need help with the forms? Administrative details of grief.
One young woman - a girl, really - had been a bride at 16 and was now a widow at 17. She asked to see her husband's remains. The coffin was tagged, so I knew what was inside. Sort of. I cautioned that she should remember him as he had been, rather than see him as he was now. But she insisted, and she was legally entitled.
So I opened the box.
Inside, wrapped in plastic, was a left hand. All they'd found, or all they could identify.
She almost broke. I almost broke, too, and still do as I type this.
Then she asked for his wedding ring.
I put on rubber surgical gloves, as we'd been trained to do, and carefully opened the plastic. I slid the ring off of his finger, and washed it with an alcohol wipe. Then I put it in her palm, eyes wet, my lip trembling. Don't, I thought. You have to be strong for her.
Her hand closed on the ring. She looked at her fist for a moment, then up at me. "Why?" she asked.
I knew a dozen stock reasons to give her. He gave his life for his country. He served bravely. All the standard lines. All the standard lies.
"I don't know," I said, the only honest answer I could give.
Only years later, after that radio interview with those two veterans of St. Vith, did I have a real answer. What was the real enemy?
Der Krieg.
The war.
I assisted in over 300 funerals in four years as a Marine chaplain's assistant. Training accidents. Car accidents. Aged men and women long retired. And my buddies in Beirut.
I learned what most veterans I know have learned, in time, with reflection. Our worst enemy ...
... is war itself.
John McCain hasn't learned that. I don't know why, but he hasn't. Until he does, unless he does, he's not fit to serve as Commander in Chief of our armed forces.
Because even one widow tearfully asking "Why?" ...
... is one too many.
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Update: Please visit and thank the IGTNT Guardians. I can't read those diaries, as they bring back too many painful memories, and I always end up in tears. But please remember and thank the Guardians for me.
Update #2: Thanks to Berliner2 for correcting my German grammar.