Day After Veterans Day
I agreed to accompany my wife to the American Legion Post in Gurnee for the Veterans Day ceremony. She is a member of a local choral group that was to participate in the community event. As she is recovering from a knee injury I did the driving.
It’s never been easy for me to be conventionally patriotic. The Vietnam War has a lot to do with my difficulty. I barely missed being drafted at the height of the war. Only my poor eyesight prevented me from carrying a M-16. Several years later, a visit to the military hospital at Yokota Japan provided a conclusive argument that war is very bad for living things. There are many things that I love about my country. It’s proclivity for war fills me with inner trembling. Life is tough enough for all of us, without being told to go to some one else’s country and kill those who live there. We all die. Why hasten and intensify the tragedy of a finite lifespan by the abject terror of blood lust and the chaos of kill-or-be-killed? Words fail me.
I was moved by the ceremony, by what the Veterans of Post 771 had to say. Here is a photo of the view from my seat in the middle of the room. The veterans are generally speaking, old guys. Then again, so am I. The years have left lines on their faces. The young have no wear lines,–not yet. The men and women in the room were the survivors. By dint of good luck or the compassion of compatriots, etc they are the ones who survived the very worst aspect of human experience. I stood with them before the flag when the national anthem was sung, and then recited the pledge of allegiance to the flag and the country.
I was moved by the recitation of the poem In Flanders Field. The language juxtaposes the Dead with the red poppy field in bloom.
“We are the Dead. Short days ago we lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow. loved and were loved, and now we lie in Flanders fields.”
The following line is an appeal to the living to take up the quarrel of the dead with the foe. With that line I take issue. The work of peace is more productive than the work of war. It’s like having to choose between the red pill and the blue pill. Take the blue pill and march in lockstep with everyone else — killing whoever the politicians tell you to kill. Take the red pill and wake up to the true nature of our humanity, to our insecurity, our temptation to eliminate “our problem” by killing someone who has a different point of view. Work to avoid the holocaust of war. Our choice.
All of the words said at the ceremony were meaningful to me. I felt part of this community, and a part of this troubled nation, here and now in November of 2017. I remembered other Veterans that I have known and presently know. My father, who was an aircraft mechanic in the Air Force, Jonathan who is a coworker, Sam a friend who is recovering from combat in Afghanistan, and others.
There is a impressive WWII heavy battle tank displayed by Grand Avenue on the grounds of American Legion Post 771. The faces of veteran members of the post seemed more poignant, worth photographing as a memory of this place –than the old tank.
2 thoughts on “Day After Veterans Day”
Very well stated. Since I too was very close to being drafted, it took me years to even begin coming to grips with Vietnam. Finally someone gave me Tim O’Brien’s book, The Things They Carry which helped a great deal. Your post reminds me of Buffy Saint Marie’s song, Universal Soldier, the lyrics of which are below:
He’s five foot-two, and he’s six feet-four,
He fights with missiles and with spears.
He’s all of thirty-one, and he’s only seventeen,
Been a soldier for a thousand years.
He’a a Catholic, a Hindu, an Atheist, a Jain,
A Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew.
And he knows he shouldn’t kill,
And he knows he always will,
Kill you for me my friend and me for you.
And he’s fighting for Canada,
He’s fighting for France,
He’s fighting for the USA,
And he’s fighting for the Russians,
And he’s fighting for Japan,
And he thinks we’ll put an end to war this way.
And he’s fighting for Democracy,
He’s fighting for the Reds,
He says it’s for the peace of all.
He’s the one who must decide,
Who’s to live and who’s to die,
And he never sees the writing on the wall.
But without him,
How would Hitler have condemned him at Dachau?
Without him Caesar would have stood alone,
He’s the one who gives his body
As a weapon of the war,
And without him all this killing can’t go on.
He’s the Universal Soldier and he really is to blame,
His orders come from far away no more,
They come from here and there and you and me,
And brothers can’t you see,
This is not the way we put the end to war.
The lyric is a well stated truth. Perhaps the more we celebrate life, the less we will be seduced into honoring war.