Recall war, honor veterans

I got to know several homeless veterans during my days on the street. Some of them had chosen homelessness. Many of them tramped around the country via freight train, others worked temporary gigs to get some extra cash to get on a Greyhound bus to the next destination. The majority have been doing this since they came back from doing their duty in Vietnam, their bodies and souls changed in horrible ways, to be spat upon and called baby killers. All of them deserve better.

Recall War, Honor Veterans

I was raised in a town of 600 people, most of whom had seen at least one war in their lifetime. Many lost loved ones in WWII. A few remembered The War to End All Wars. Our town barber, Carl Jenkins, walked with a limp from a wound suffered in Korea. On V-A Day people wept and prayed. On V-J Day, people wept and prayed. Every Sunday for a good part of my adolescence, Pastor Harrison led the weeping and praying, and offered up pleas for the safe return of those fighting in the jungles of Vietnam. My uncle sent us the most amazing letters and pictures and gifts from there. I wept when Uncle Jack did not return; I did not pray.

I guess it was the luck of the draw that I never held an automatic rifle in my hand or never had to sleep in a trench full of mud and blood. I wouldn’t have lasted two seconds. Of course, many who were called to duty in those days probably felt the same way. All of them certainly felt lucky to come back alive at all, if not entirely in one piece. A lot of Doughboys were just farm kids from towns just like the one in which I lived my young years. They didn’t have fast food restaurants, free massages, body armor, or attack Humvees. They had their belief in their god, a determination to preserve that god’s democracy, and guts. That, in most cases, was enough to “win.” As these wars dragged on, more and more people volunteered, knowing full well they might never set foot on friendly soil again. Their bravery always amazed me.

Even with our naïveté blasted to bits by decades of constant war, revolution, and bloodshed, people still volunteer for the Armed Forces. Even with the Berlin Wall in ruins, the Cold War officially over, and the Soviet Union dissolved, we still manage to create, or recreate old enemies. Despotism, oppression, and genocide run rampant globally while we fight over deserts full of oil. Selective Service has been reinstated, although our military is one hundred percent volunteer. I wish the Peace Corps recruited as aggressively as the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines.

War is business, and like all things capitalist, it feeds upon itself. War’s appetite has grown over the years, rather than being sated. It is more greedy and gluttonous and obese and ugly than ever. It’s a bad risk, but people still bet on it and invest in it, when we should be investing in people who work and fight daily to build up America. It’s not these speculators who suffer. It is We the People. It was, and is today, our Veterans who battle daily with the effects of war.

That’s why all those years ago in our little village everyone closed up shop and the kids stayed home from school. That’s why every November 11th of my younger days I marched in the band, behind horses and floats and soldiers. That’s why the mayor gave a rousing speech on the steps of our armory. Everyone doffed their cap, put their hand over their hearts for the flag and sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” loudly, knowing all the words. Everyone stood, and saluted the uniformed men as they passed. We didn’t show up for the tank from the National Guard post, or for the bombers and jets that buzzed overhead. Sure, we kids thought that was all cool, and played at war, perhaps more fervently that day than any other of the year. But I don’t believe we celebrated the victories of war; we recalled its losses. Our losses, our widows’ and mothers’ and fathers’ and brothers’ and sisters’ losses were felt by everyone.

The War to End All Wars failed to live up to its name. Not one of the wars mankind has waged has created lasting peace. Military action continues to fracture families and shatter souls. Our leaders keep telling the same lies about it, and too many of us keep believing them. War equals death. War equals destruction. War is not glorious. War is not honorable. War accomplishes nothing but its own perpetuation. Its cost is too high, its return too low. We should be breeding soldiers of peace, rather than lambs for the slaughter. Veterans Day needs to be a time to remember selfless personal sacrifices weigh the consequences and effects, and vow to work towards a day when the guns have fallen silent for so long that there are no veterans left to honor.

I doubt I’ll ever see that day, but I have to believe it will come. I have to believe it and fight for it, for the soldiers who experienced, and are experiencing the up close and personal costs of battle, for the  orphaned or slaughtered children, for the parents who lost their pride and joy across the sea in a country of which they had never heard. For the people whose countries have been ravaged. I have to believe that, and fight for that, because the America they believed in has been warred to death. I have to be a soldier for peace. I have to cling desperately to pacifism for all these reasons, but most of all, for Uncle Jack, who sent me a Pachinko machine, the coolest gift I’ve ever received, all the way from Vietnam, and who never came home.