Memorial Day Redux
It’s difficult to “move on” from the drama of Memorial Day. Though a day of remembrance, certainly the fact of war is impossible to dismiss as the fighting, the random death of the battle for Dombas furiously unfolds in Ukraine. I shudder, my imagination cannot trace the paralyzing terror which the Ukrainian soldiers and CITIZENS encounter day by day, facing the overwhelming Russian assault. Will they ultimately be enveloped, survivors taken prisoner,…
You are having a nightmare, the reader could reasonably think. Is not war, a particularly intense form of the friction that is endemic to just being alive? An indication that one is alive, is some degree of discomfort, and too often mere irritation becomes pain… Everything that lives must stretch itself, leave the zone of comfort to acquire needed resources to sustain life. After a full day of labor, even on a “good” day, it is natural to feel weariness of mind, as well as muscle ache…
If I consider the life of a soldier, the man or woman who fulfills an obligation to the leader of their nation, each will do what is necessary to kill, …or be killed. Of late, I doubt that “free will”, the ability to exercise agency plays any part at all in this scenario, this snapshot of our predicament as human beings.
I watched most of the 1949 movie, Twelve O’clock High last night. The story is that of a airman who recalls his service in the 8th Army Air Force, in WWII. He flashbacks to 1942 when the 918th Bomb Group at Archbury flew the B-17s deep into Germany to destroy German factories which supplied the Wehrmacht at the height of the war. Actual footage of the Luftwaffe fighters flashing by the B-17 formations, machine guns blazing, and the devastating concussion of the bomb loads striking targets were featured in the telling of the story. This movie is no propaganda piece, a ginned-up parody of war. Thinking of the movie, the depiction of the raw terror, the courage displayed — causes me to tear-up as I write this.
One thought on “Memorial Day Redux”
Well said.