Jeff Stein writes a blog called SpyTalk. I was deeply moved by his post today. You might be too.
As has become an annual habit, I began watching Band of Brothers yet again this Memorial Day weekend. I’ll probably tune in again on Veterans Day. It’s not exactly because I seek it out: HBO and Amazon Prime advertise it prominently on these heavily commercialized 3-day weekends.
My feelings about these federal holidays have evolved through the years. Like many veterans who came home from Vietnam thoroughly disillusioned with “American values,” I dismissed these days off as no more worthy of my attention than the F-15 flyovers, God Bless America singalongs, and stadium events singling out veterans for applause.
As the decades ground on, fewer and fewer people standing in solemn participation with these ritual events had any military service of their own to fully understand them. As Andrew Bacevitch, a retired Army colonel and esteemed military and diplomatic historian put it after one post-9/11 Fenway Park game, they are a “masterpiece of contrived spontaneity,” which “leaves spectators feeling good about their baseball team, about their military, and not least of all about themselves—precisely as it was meant to do.”
I still abhor these cheap, Pentagon p.r. exercises, along with the flag-waving mattress sales and “start of summer” alcohol-soaked barbecues. I also respectfully decline to stand up, with thousands of other baseball fans, hand over heart, for the socially coercive playing of the religio-nationalist “God Bless America,” during the 7th inning break.
But my feelings about Memorial Day have steadily changed since the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and so many soul draining counterterrorism missions gave lie to our proclaimed values. As with Vietnam, the veterans of these conflicts participated in expeditions that most quickly saw were doomed, or worse—meaningless. But they soldiered on, mostly out of their own self-respect and the respect of their battle buddies.
The butcher’s bill inevitably came due: A 2021 study showed that “four times as many active duty service members and veterans died by suicide as died in battle since 9/11.” This was a scourge that exploded in the wake of Vietnam and has never been solved, although the VA keeps trying. (You can reach its suicide hotline here.)
So I am very sorry for these veterans, as sorry as I am when I go down to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial here in Washington and touch the name of Ed Sonnichsen, an Army intelligence buddy who was assassinated in a Viet Cong setup in 1968. My surviving veteran friends still have lots of mixed feelings about serving in Vietnam.
Somewhat ironically, I’ve come to increasingly value the sacrifice of veterans by repeatedly watching Band of Brothers, which dramatizes the real life history of “Easy” Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, from their training in Georgia through their occupation of Hitler’s abandoned mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden in May 1945. Sure, the gun-battle heroics tend to dominate each episode, but the carnage and horror are very much there, too—along with their real life, retrospective confessions of some participants that they were forever haunted by their war experiences. Watching the series has helped me understand my own enduring rage at chickenhawks, the (mostly) men who cheer on war while choosing to sit it out themselves. You can find many of them on any given Sunday in the football stands.
So this Memorial Day, and on Veterans Day in November, God willing, I’ll raise a solemn glass to all the walking wounded who came before me, and of course those who gave the ultimate sacrifice—and their families. If you want to do a good deed, tell their surviving relatives you’re sorry for their loss. Reaching out by phone or, if you must, email, is a much better way to honor them than singing God Bless America.
Once bonded, most troops fight because of their buddies, not the flag, not the country, not …
Most combat troops are willing to die for their buddies, explaining why some jump on grenades to die.
This piece at emptywheel was a goodie too:
“Memorial Day has its roots in the US Civil War, and has expanded to include remembrance of all those who have served their country… Hugh Thompson, Jr., Glenn Andreotta, and Lawrence Colburn were three members of the US Army, who received the Soldiers Medal on March 6, 1998 for their actions 30 years earlier…for their actions in 1968, Thompson. Andreotta, and Colburn received the Soldier’s Medal, given to ‘any person of the Armed Forces of the United States or of a friendly foreign nation who, while serving in any capacity with the Army of the United States, including Reserve Component soldiers not serving in a duty status at the time of the heroic act, distinguished himself or herself by heroism not involving conflict with an enemy.’”
“Thompson’s medal was awarded with this description:
Soldier’s Medal, Hugh C. Thompson, Jr., then Warrant Officer One, United States Army:
‘For heroism above and beyond the call of duty on 16 March 1968, while saving the lives of at least 10 Vietnamese civilians during the unlawful massacre of noncombatants by American forces at My Lai, Quang Ngai Province, South Vietnam. Warrant Officer Thompson landed his helicopter in the line of fire between fleeing Vietnamese civilians and pursuing American ground troops to prevent their murder. He then personally confronted the leader of the American ground troops and was prepared to open fire on those American troops should they fire upon the civilians. Warrant Officer Thompson, at the risk of his own personal safety, went forward of the American lines and coaxed the Vietnamese civilians out of the bunker to enable their evacuation. Leaving the area after requesting and overseeing the civilians’ air evacuation, his crew spotted movement in a ditch filled with bodies south of My Lai Four. Warrant Officer Thompson again landed his helicopter and covered his crew as they retrieved a wounded child from the pile of bodies. He then flew the child to the safety of a hospital at Quang Ngai. Warrant Officer Thompson’s relayed radio reports of the massacre and subsequent report to his section leader and commander resulted in an order for the cease fire at My Lai and an end to the killing of innocent civilians. Warrant Officer Thompson’s Heroism exemplifies the highest standards of personal courage and ethical conduct, reflecting distinct credit on him, and the United States Army.'”
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/05/25/there-are-heroes-and-then-there-are-heroes/
I apologize for the rather morbid habit I used to have of keeping a list of people I knew who committed suicide. At least three were WWII vets who died by their own hand. People said “it was the war.”
I have nothing against the three days we use to commemorate the people who have given up their life for a cause. I worry, however, that it has become a thing we do instead of helping people. We don’t help veterans when they come home. We don’t help people who are stateside while their family is away. We don’t adjust for the economic implications of war that impact the entire economy and thus all the people, especially the ones at the bottom of the heap.
War is expensive. It costs money and lives, but it also costs society in other ways, making people divided politically and socially. It comes with compromising strategies that erode civil liberties. We ought to be sober in our recognition of those who rightly deserve our thanks, lest we use these commemorations to agitate for more war.
As a military father, Biden understands the sacrifice that our military people make to keep our country safe. He would only deploy them after careful consideration of the consequences. He respects them. Trump is worse than the fake patriots in the stands at NFL games. He called our actual patriots “suckers.” He sought and got multiple deferments for fake bone spurs to avoid going to Vietnam. Trump is a coward. He cannot be trusted to value the lives of our service members or anyone else’s for that matter. All of us are little more than perverse pawns in his own private monopoly game.
Trump told his Chief of Staff, John Kelly, at Arlington National Cemetery, near the grave of Kelly’s son. “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”
Christine: So very rich. CBK
I’ve never heard the truth about Vietnam (which I lived through as a pregnant wife of a veteran who luckily came back, but as wounded) . . . told with such clarity and honesty as in this essay.
I understand now why I was so shocked when John Kerry threw away his medals, and also why he did so. It took this naive optimist about all-things-American a very long time to realize how duplicitous American political and business “leaders” had become by that time. It was the realization of Eisenhower’s warning about the “military industrial complex” and the power brokers’ poisonous disregard for what I thought at that time was truly American.
We still have freedoms that, unfortunately, most that I know don’t understand, nor what it will be if we lose them ala authoritarianism.
I get really angry mostly at those who have no idea what losing freedom will mean, and who are so willing to trade their own and everyone else’s freedoms for keeping their own racism, classism, politician ambitions, religious ideologies, and thoughtlessness, in place. CBK
Our appetite for war spills over into civilian life. Robert Card, a veteran who never left the country, apparently contracted CTE as a result of blast injuries from training troops to throw grenades. He died by suicide, but not until he had killed 18 people in his hometown of Lewiston, Maine.
The response from this small city has been heartbreakingly resolute.
https://wapo.st/3Khslyf