Yes, I know, we officially celebrated the Federal holiday for Veteran’s Day yesterday. My spouse, a government employee, had the day off.
But I cannot help but remember on this day, the 11th day of the 11th month, where at the 11th hour on the Western Front the guns fell silent, and the horror that was the Great War came to an end, at least the shooting part: obviously Europe had not completely learned, and in just less than 21 years was to engage in a war that would be even more horrific.
I have written about what this day means before. A few years ago I wrote this piece about my mixed feelings. I suggest that some of the comments on that diary are well worth considering, even more than the words I write in the main diary.
This will be something of a personal reflection. It will be somewhat based on the fact that I am among a diminishing percentage of Americans who have served in the military. It will include reflections on what is happening in our country, with our current and former military, and in our engagement around the world.
I do not contend that this will be a cohesive set of thoughts. I can only hope they are semi-coherent.
I will not be offended should you stop reading now.
I will be honored if you continue below, and even more honored with any response you give.
I was 19 when I enlisted in the Marines in 1965. After a nearly disastrous freshman year at Haverford College, I was completing a fairly successful sophomore year (try a GPA almost 20 points higher) when I had the first truly deep romantic experience of my life, with a woman from Wheaton College I met during a glee club trip between our two colleges during Spring break, that came to an abrupt end because of my immaturity and insecurity. Although I was opposed to our military endeavors in Vietnam, and had participated in the first major demonstration against it (in part because it was co-organized by a Haverfordian a year ahead of me), I realized that if I dropped out to grow up I was likely to be drafted and decided instead to choose my service. Technically, I took a leave of absence, which would guarantee my readmission.
I will not recount my actual service. What I will say is that serving in the Marines was an important experience in shaping me. It, along with my three times at Haverford and the 8 summers I had spent at what was then National Music Camp in Interlochen Michigan, were things more influential in whom I turned out to be that the entirety of my public school education, K-12 (while skipping 6th grade). I met and got to know people very different than myself. I found out that I was in some ways physically and psychology much stronger and more resilient than I could have imagined.
I met and got to know people who had seen serious combat in Vietnam, even though the huge American buildup had not yet occurred. The Marines had landed at Danang in March of 1965 and before my (fully honorable) discharge in October of 1966, there were already those who had been greatly affected by that service, including the man who was my immediate commander at the time of my discharge, whose office I cleaned each day as part of my duties around the barracks. My time in the Marines is also when I first became exposed to computers, a field which became my occupation for the better part of two decades before I became a teacher. In that experience with computers I was not unlike many who served who developed skills they had not had prior to military service, often leading to career opportunities they might not otherwise have imagined.
There are people with whom I served at various times whose names are engraved on the black marble wall that is the Vietnam War Memorial. They were not people I knew well, but I did know them. It is like the four Haverfordians who died on 9/11, of whom I only knew one (and him fairly well) — a major event with loss of life directly connected with mine. It made me far more conscious of the impact of our military endeavors upon those who serve, and upon their families, and made me far more demanding proper justification before such commitments were made.
Jumping ahead a bit, since then I have gotten to know many who have served in the conflicts long after my own service, from the first Gulf War through our conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as some being in elite units like Seals who have served elsewhere (for example, in Africa) in conflict situations of which most Americans are not aware. I have gotten to know some of these because of my prominence as a blogger, here and elsewhere. But some I knew before they served, because they were my students (I had one former student who did 5 tours in Iraq as a military policeman, and he was actually a reservist). In a few cases those I got to know were the parents of my students. A few more were those I met in other circumstances, including through alumni events at my college.
There were those I knew at Haverford who saw combat. Some were severely wounded. Others were traumatized.
My own relatively brief and non-combat service enabled me to finish college when I returned for the last time at age 25, and to buy and refinance multiple times the home in which my wife and I have lived since 1984. I thus benefited from my service, which along with what I saw of the damage to many, physically and psychologically, both of my generation and since, made me strongly committed to the idea of our obligation to care for those who serve, and especially those who see combat. Here I remember an interview Paul Rieckoff did some years ago with Bob Herbert, then with The New York Times, in which Paul, himself an Amherst College graduate, said the hardest order to give to his men was to tell them to open fire on an adversary they could see, and thus could see the impact of their firing: when one takes another human life, even if justifiably, it will have an impact upon one for the rest of one’s life (unless one were perhaps already sociopathic or psychopathic).
I have told my students that I would not today make the decision I made at 19, that of enlisting. I still accept the notion, even today, that my country can demand of me my life, but I have changed enough to assert that it cannot demand of me that I take another life: that decision is mine alone. And although I have now formally been in the Religious Society of Friends, to which I was first really exposed at Haverford more than half a century ago, since 2003, I am not a total pacifist. I have told my students that while I might choose not to use force to defend myself, I am prepared if necessary to use deadly force to ensure their safety.
I think back to the various wars I have studied in school and college, about which I have read during a lifetime of learning. I can think of some real horrors. In our own nation there was Marye’s Heights and Pickett’s Charge, the Fort Pillow Massacre and Antietam, Sand Creek Massacre and Little Big Horn. The number of cases were lives were wasted or deliberately destroyed in conflicts overseas of which this nation was a part are too many to list, although events like the Somme, My Lai, the siege of Leningrad, Stalingrad immediately come to mind. Scanning the range of casualties in major historical battles, as one can do at this Wikipedia article, should be sobering.
But even that is not necessary. I think back to the monument at which our Memorial Day parades would end in Larchmont NY where I grew up, with a list of names — I do not clearly remember now some 6 decades after I last participated, from which war, and whether dead or just those who served (I think it was dead, because I remember a reading of names, and firing of volleys for each name). All I have to do is what I have done with visitors to DC — to take them in the late evening to that black marble wall designed by Maya Lin, and stand in the presence of the names, to see the momentoes left -pictures, military decorations, teddy bears — and to watch people reach up to touch names, and/or to take rubbings of the engraving.
We are still engaged in conflicts around the world. There are others in which officially we do not participate, but in which we have involved. Unfortunately war is still too much a part of the human condition, and I do not expect that to cease during what years may be left in my time on this earth.
We cannot avoid the possibility that our men and women, boys and girls (because some are realistically not yet fully adults, even some who are officers: full judgment often does not develop until one’s mid 20s) do not have their lives wasted without strong reason. And remember, we waste lives not merely when our military personnel die in the (supposed) service in their country, and the waste is not merely expanded by those whose lives are physically damaged, but also those those psychologically and spiritually damage. It is also a waste to yank someone out of their civilian lives, away from kith and kin, away from friends and familiar surroundings, for less than a truly necessary purpose.
And we ABSOLUTELY have an obligation to help those returning, especially but not exclusively, from combat, to transition back to civilian, including if necessary life-long medical and psychological support, and certainly if required financial support to transition. Not to do so is morally reprehensible and a betrayal of our obligation to those who have served on our behalf.
I remember a conversation with someone who as a Colonel had commanded a guard unit overseas at one of the early blogger conventions now known as Netroots Nation. I do not remember whether it was Chicago in 2007 (probably) orAustin in 2008. He recounted the Hobson’s Choice with which he was presented. He wanted all of his men to get psychological screening before they were discharged from active service so those in need on ongoing support could be identified. He was told it was possible, but they would have to be kept on active duty, away from homes and families and jobs, for several months before such screening could be provided. That should not be necessary. If we are not prepared to care for those who served in combat situations, we should not be committing them to combat situations. Period. It is like setting aside resources for catastrophes like the recent hurricanes and fires. We know it is going to happen, even if we do not know the specifics.
On this day in 1918 the guns fell silent across the Western Front.
That had supposedly been the war to end all wars. The nations tried to negotiate agreements to prevent future wars, to set up organizations (League of Nations for example) that could serve that purpose.
The world failed.
The swords are not yet beaten into plowshares, and the lion is not yet lying down with the lamb.
In 1918 the world hoped for a more peaceful future.
Despite what is happening now, we cannot and should not give up on that hope.
Until then, since we as an internationally involved nation, are likely to be involved in conflicts around the world, we have an obligation to those who have already served and those who will serve in the future.
Thank you for putting up with my rambling thoughts.
Peace.