A VETERAN REFLECTS
I am a veteran but I do not believe that wars are good or even necessary. I am, however, proud of every human being on the face of this planet who died in the service of family, neighbours, community, cause and nation. Honoring those who gave the ultimate sacrifice should not, and never has, respected demographics. It is said that history is written by the victor. I suggest that it is remembered by all.
I am glad we no longer blame warriors for wars. I came back to a nation which had apparently forgotten that. I saw what it did to those who fought the hardest and the best. According to one Veterans Administration study I read, 50,000 veterans of my generation’s war killed themselves after they got back. That’s almost as many as who died in battle or from battle-related causes. That seems so incredibly unfair to me, even some 35 years later.
It’s taken me a long time to live down the guilt I feel for the death I helped bring to civilians as well as "enemy" military. It took a Vietnamese University of Washington student whose father was in the North Vietnamese Army and who visited here and welcomed me like a comrade in arms, to let go of a measure of what has haunted me down almost four decades now.
"Rusty, soldiers do not make wars. They only fight them."
I leave you with a poem I wrote 37 years ago and updated at the end after two of the young people in my life served in Operation Desert Storm. I leave you, as well, with a final heartfelt plea, because as Americans, you can do this.
ATONEMENT
It was Christmas Eve and even the Buddhists were turning out.
While their former European masters gathered in basement pubs
to dance and wassail, while from their towers beyond,
Red Chinese border guards smiled knowingly.
We're just come off the gunline and I was tired of killing.
I'd known even then that a single death buries a thousand dreams.
My ship alone snuffed out Paradise several times over.
I watched it all again on a Hong King ferry plying the harbour to Kowloon.
White mingled with yellow' Confucius with Commodore Perry;
the Mings with MacBeth and the Mandarins with Richard the Nix.
Back and forth I rode, sometimes forward, other times aft,
but mostly amidships, like Gulliver in an artillery barrage.
Each trip, a few more of my own dreams died.
It was an act of penance which continued until another gulf
and another war gave both Jesus and God
something else to regret.
Hong Kong
Christmas 1970
Please, put an end to this madness.
2 comments:
This is so beautifully worded, and is exactly how I feel. I just wrote about the recent criticism of a local Mennonite college for not playing the national anthem during sporting events. A conservative talk radio host criticized the college as being unpatriotic.
Madness, indeed.
Best,
Beth
As an indirect-direct relative of a hero to the survivors of the Bataan Death March during WWII I watch in awe and have such pride toward those who served this country, especially to those who were treated with such indignant manner upon their return. A war is a declaration. A solider its mercenary --- and its unfortunate some are still "paid" with indifference.
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