Some (Late) Veterans' Day Thoughts
It's difficult to say much useful about our military's sacrifices and values in this day and age. Not because superlatives are so difficult to come by, but because they are so easy. So many people have said such true and moving things that it is difficult to add to them. Me, I've spent much of the day reading ruminations* on Armistice Day from Britain - the language and the loss seemed to have met there in a particularly fitting way. In the United States, we are apt to think of the Great War as the debut of our nation in the role of superpower and world-shaper, which is in many ways accurate.
For Britain and France (and Germany and Italy and Austria-Hungary and Russia, actually), the conflict was an end much more than a beginning though - the end of an era, and of an entire generation. For both Britain and France, the scale of bloodshed makes even World War II pale in significance. That, somehow, seems to capture the role of the soldier particularly well - he (or, in modern times at least, she) doesn't know, or really care, what direction the geopolitical situation is shifting. He is defending her homeland and countrymen - and the sacrifice is awe-inspiring, regardless of whether or not the politicians or generals have their heads' screwed on right. Even more amazing when they don't, frankly. It could be the beginning of an empire or the end, the private doesn't know or really care. He cares about home, and the guys next to him.
I don't know what I would have done had I been sent to the trenches, though I've thought about it many times since I first read Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" in 11th grade English - a poem which I've reread every year, and never ceases to amaze me in its sympathy for the soldier and hatred for war. Reality is, no one would know what they'd do in the trenches until they're there, I guess.
Anyway, it hasn't been my fate to find out, yet, thankfully; I'd be singularly unsuited to military life. I realized this fact with clarity when, in 12th grade, it was pointed out to me by my parents how early soldiers get up and how much they run and how much they have to listen to orders. An early riser I am not, still less a runner. And no one has ever accused me of being too eager to follow orders when I think them stupid, which is often. Maybe always.
But over the years I've come to be good friends with a good many of our sailors, soldiers, and airmen. Other good friends from the past have themselves become servicemen whom I respect and admire and secretly envy for their courage, and for the weighty impact their lives have on those around them.
And today I can at least unabashedly say how much I admire them their courage and their commitment. And say, in a way that I hope none of them will rag on me for the next time we drink together, thanks.
*By Alex Massie, at Culture11. He's too good a writer not to cite by name, but it didn't fit in the flow of the post, hence the unusual footnote.
