The Cost of War

We often talk about “survivors” of war.  I know about that in an intimate way.  My father and mother were survivors. 

As children, my parents learned about The Great War. It was, their school books promised  The War To End All Wars.  It was not numbered because there would be no more.  It seems naïve, now.  It was cruel to be so arrogant with young minds.  What were they thinking, I wonder now, to tell them that?

It was, of course, a Great Lie.  Just about the time they received good grades for passing a test on the last Great War, the war drums began to beat again.  How strange it must have seemed!  They began rewriting the adult promises that This Would Not Happen. I met a man from Belgium once.  He said as a young man he begged his parents to listen to Hitler.  He told them war was imminent.  They told him it could not be.  They had heard the promises of no more war.  Before long, he was parachuting into war torn areas. 

For my parents too, trust had eroded.  This Greatest Generation turned, breathed deeply, and took on World War II.  Now, it had a number.  Now, the unthinkable was fact. They grew up fast.  Boys lied to join up, growing up even faster.

My father was not prepared.  He had worked since he was thirteen.  His mother picked up his wages and used them to keep two older brothers in beer and cigarettes. He was just beginning adult life, free of his home life.  He moved away and got a job.  He met a girl.  The armed forces refused him because he only had sight in one eye.  He married the girl.

It isn’t often admitted, but we were losing the war. Nine days after my parent’s “I do’s,” Uncle Sam came knocking.

He left for Ft. Benning in Florida, where he passed his sharpshooter test. Only then did they tell him the truth—he couldn’t be drafted.  But he could “volunteer” and ship out with the unit he had trained with. Like his “choice” to work for his brothers, he made the only decision he could make.  He shipped out.

My mother now faced married life in a very unmarried way.  She stayed behind.  She was in a small town.  She knew every family who got bad news. She was traumatized as each death notice was delivered.  Every bite of food was a reminder that he might not be eating.  Every drink of water was knowledge that he drank from mud puddles.  And that only if he was alive.  Was she writing a husband or a corpse?

The war that was not going to happen dragged on and on.  And then, it was over!  They came home! Her husband lived! He held twenty-eight military funerals in their small Midwestern town.  One casket came off of the train with the sound of something heavy rolling from one end to the other, hitting the end with a thud. He wondered, sometimes, just what he was burying.

They breathed briefly.  Then, her brother was drafted for a police action in Korea.  No longer was this generation fooled.  It was another war.  And they knew war.

The trauma of the past would become only half of the horror.  The other half was they would never, ever trust peace again.  They would live and die with one eye open.

Boomers and their siblings were raised by people who expected to be lied to.  They trusted not one living soul. Those who went and  those who waited would suffer from PTSD in a way we, their children, could not fathom.  Sitting on a bench, green grass all around, a walnut tree for shade, lilac bushes for scent, and a pan of beans to snap on our laps was pure peace for us.  It was a momentary lull in the drums of war for our parents. Come nightfall, the drums would beat again.  My father slept with his hand on the trigger of his loaded pistol for two years after he came home.

When my father was fifty-seven, he was hit in the chest by a BB.  He heard the shot and fell flat on his stomach.  He was thirty-five years from the war.  And still there.

Speak softly to a veteran. They are here, but only just.  In a moment, it disappears and they are there.  Of course, they seem untrusting.  They are untrusting!  Those of us who have not been there, going or waiting on the one who went, will never know what they know. Even when we see the result, when we want so badly to tell them they are home, it is okay, they cannot believe it.  The times of war are blinding, complicated, gut wrenching, and lifelong.  Thank your veterans.  Remember them and the gift of freedom.  It costs them their lives.