“It’s funny isn’t it. He’s dead, I’m crippled, you’re lost. Suppose it’s always like that. I mean war.” Flying Officer David Campbell played by Richard Burton in “The Longest Day”
I came back a different man from Iraq. It seems that for me with every passing year Memorial Day becomes more of a melancholy observance. It is a weekend and observance that I feel deeply having lost friends in war and served in Iraq as well as Operation Enduring Freedom. It is also a day in which I feel more and more disconnected from the vast majority of my fellow Americans. I don’t know, but just from my observation it seems that for most Americans the weekend serves as not much more than the end of the school year and the beginning of the summer holiday and vacation season.
I could be wrong, but it seems to me that for most Americans, the vast majority who have themselves never served a day in uniform and who have no more than a passing relationship with anyone who is either serving in our current wars or has served in any war that war is at best a spectator sport. It is an attitude that has been nurtured by our politicians of all parties, political pundits and preachers for decades. As a result there is a grave disconnect between the society at large and the men and women who serve in the military and in our wars.
To be fair I don’t think it is a matter of ordinary people not caring, not that at all, just that no one has really called the nation to war, as such we have been at war but only a small amount of the population is called on to serve. The real fact of the matter is that the wars that we have fought since World War II have not been national affairs. If they were we would not be continually fighting wars that most people neither understand and which in many if not most cases we would be better off staying out of completely. That being said I am appreciative of those who do things to care for and honor our veterans, honor our fallen and do practical things for the survivors. There are some really wonderful people, many who have never served who do what they can for those who fight and die in or come back forever changed from these misbegotten and unpopular wars.
What I do find offensive are the war mongers and profiteers who have never served. I feel this way about those who did all that they could to avoid serving in the military and those who did the very minimum to satisfy outward appearances of service while avoiding anything difficult, especially deployment to combat zones. Of the latter I can think of five to six currently serving and very outspoken conservative members of the House of Representatives and the Senate that fit the description. I shan’t mention the members of the previous Presidential administration who through their willing lies caused the deaths of nearly 4500 American military personnel in Iraq. I speak about men who in their writings, their appearances on news networks and their think tanks and corporations that do nothing but profit off of war. Some are current or former politicians, others supposedly “academics” and others men who smell a profit in war.
I find such people to be loathsome and wonder how on Memorial Day weekend they can show their faces. But then they are rather shameless. Sometimes their actions make me wonder if the sacrifices made by those who serve are in vain. However, I strive to resist that and pray that our sacrifices will not be in vain. While they profit from war others pay the bill and it has always been this way. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, a two time winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor wrote after World War One in his book War is a Racket:
“This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all of its attendant miseries. Back -breaking taxation for generations and generations. For a great many years as a soldier I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not only until I retired to civilian life did I fully realize it….”
Maybe I feel this way because I grew up in a military family where my dad was frequently deployed and served in Vietnam, a place where some of my friends fathers died, and because I have been in the military 32 years between the Army and the Navy. Maybe it is partly because I am a military historian, theologian, priest and chaplain who has seen the horrors of war and the wounds that remain for life in the bodies, minds and spirits of those that fight in them. I cannot speak of how my heart feels when I see young men and women, wounded in war, their lives forever changed bravely struggling to go on even as the war mongers, war profiteers and chicken-hawks profit off of their suffering.
So for me this is a rather melancholy time. A time where I struggle. I honor the fallen, my brothers and sisters who have given the last full measure of devotion in serving this country, those that I know personally or have served with and those who did so before I was every born.
Until tomorrow.
Peace
Padre Steve+
The Inglorius Padre Steve's World 
Once again, Padre, it isn’t just you. I railed against the exact same “BBQ and summer sales” mood of the country in my last post. (I also steered folks here, so hopefully you’ll collect a few more folks – far more normal than I! 😉 ) I grow weary of hearing about the car sales, the furniture sales, the vacation ads, and the endless parade of “get ready for that big backyard cookout!”. I may just be yelling into the void, but I try to nudge all those I come in contact with, virtually or physically, to remember that Memorial Day should be a day to remember, and that while Veteran’s Day in November is a day for all vets, that tomorrow is a day for those who gave their all. And though it shouldn’t be limited to JUST tomorrow, though each and every one of us civilians should get down on our knees and thank God for those who “gave their todays for our tomorrows”, I try to get everybody to at least pause for a few moments and turn their thoughts to those who we, having never raised a weapon nor walked a picket (or sailed an ocean or flew a patrol), owe so great a debt that we can never repay.
And one more thing, Padre. I hope I can say this correctly, so as not to cause offence. It’s alright for you to be a bit “blue” tomorrow. You’ve seen so much suffering, so much pain, so much death, you deserve … no, you have EARNED the right to have a day (and much more) to yourself, to remember those you’ve lost.
And as always, for what ever tiny bit it may be worth, I give you my thanks. Thank you, not only for taking up the mantle of service, but thank you for being there for those who also went off to fight, and never came back. I’ll leave you with a final thought – my wife and I have T-shirts with a design we both love. It depicts 3 GIs carrying a stretcher with their wounde comrade on it, with the simple words “All Gave Some, Some Gave All”.
God bless all those who gave, including you, Padre. And again, thank you.
In Vietnam from Korea, trained friends in hand to hand combat. I lost one only , my room mate ” We called him the “Squid” Ed” I will never forget… War should never descend on man again!
Reblogged this on Padresteve's World…Musings of a Passionate Moderate and commented:
Friends of Padre Steve’s World,
I have written much about Memorial Day the past few days. As you can tell it is a day that causes me to do a great deal of reflecting, on what is for some a subject that they do not know from personal experience. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. noted in his 1884 Decoration Day speech to fellow veterans of the Civil War:
“Comrades, some of the associations of this day are not only triumphant, but joyful. Not all of those with whom we once stood shoulder to shoulder–not all of those whom we once loved and revered–are gone. On this day we still meet our companions in the freezing winter bivouacs and in those dreadful summer marches where every faculty of the soul seemed to depart one after another, leaving only a dumb animal power to set the teeth and to persist– a blind belief that somewhere and at last there was bread and water. On this day, at least, we still meet and rejoice in the closest tie which is possible between men– a tie which suffering has made indissoluble for better, for worse.
When we meet thus, when we do honor to the dead in terms that must sometimes embrace the living, we do not deceive ourselves. We attribute no special merit to a man for having served when all were serving. We know that, if the armies of our war did anything worth remembering, the credit belongs not mainly to the individuals who did it, but to average human nature. We also know very well that we cannot live in associations with the past alone, and we admit that, if we would be worthy of the past, we must find new fields for action or thought, and make for ourselves new careers.
But, nevertheless, the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire.”
In a time where so few of us have served in war his words sound strange, and for me there is a melancholy that enfolds this day. I did not sleep well last night, lots of weird dreams, some associated with my time in Iraq, others dealing with surreal aspects of my other service, people events, some real, some drawn from the depths of my imagination, places that I must be too consciously afraid of to go.
So today I am going to take in a baseball game. Our local AAA minor league affiliate for the Baltimore Orioles, the Norfolk Tides, are playing at noon. After that Judy and I will go and meet a friend at our local watering hole. Baseball for me is a safe harbor from my fears and my melancholy, so I wish you a good Memorial Day, please do not forget in all the fun why we set this day aside.
Peace
Padre Steve+