I miss my grandfather on days like today. He was clever, funny, articulate and, most of all, fearless. He spoke his mind clearly and boldly, and without an excess of words.
He fought in WWII, where he served as a radio operator, and he simply hated war and regarded it as the worst possible state of man. He was glad to have served because if there was a potential for a worse state, he felt strongly it would be life under Axis rule, but he hated war. It might be the best lesson he taught me. Well, that, and how to keep from slicing my tee shot.
Today is Memorial Day. It's not my holiday, in the larger sense, because it's an American holiday when one remembers the veterans who've died, whether in war or after. As I understand it, the day's near the end of May because the weather's decent and it gives one a chance to visit the graves of those veterans, to tend to their graves and leave flowers and such. Thus its original name: Decoration Day.
The rough Canadian equivalent would probably be Remembrance Day, placed on the Monday of the week in which November 11th falls. That day is known in some places as Armistice Day, commemorating the day that World War I officially ended. The Armistice had been under discussion for some time, of course, and was really just the formal recognition of the end of hostilities.
Right to the end, the generals and men in the back offices continued to give perilous and fatal orders the men in the field. They were, after all, just men in the field. Plenty more where they came from. The last formal casualty, on the British side, was 90 minutes before the signing, but unofficially, deaths continued until the 14th, as news spread.
Nasty bit of business, that war, but they all are. All of them. We like to talk about "good wars," but while there might be some wars that don't kill quite so many bystanders, where mostly only the bad guys die and most of the good guys live, we haven't had a "good" war yet. And then there's talk of "just wars." Don't get me started on "just wars."
"Just war theory" seems to mean, "Killing people by the shedload as usual, but it's okay because we feel bad about it this time."
And don't get me wrong, sometimes wars need to happen, the same way that sometimes cancer treatments need to happen. But celebrating war, lauding those who participated in them merely for participating in them, acting as through peace came about just through the violent conflict and not through the negotiation of peace, I can't do that.
No soldier has ever died to "defend our freedoms." They've died because someone, somewhere, screwed up and now they have to go out and die while everyone else figures out how to unscrew things again, until the next time. It's not nearly as romantic when phrased that way, though. Reducing their actions to "defending freedoms" sounds so very ennobling.
So, given all that, given my deep and abiding hatred for warfare, how do I "celebrate" Memorial Day? I remember. I remember the cost of human stupidity, of stubbornness, of brutish, reflexive nationalism, a cost measured out and paid for in blood. The blood of soldiers, but also the blood of civilians, of innocents and villains and everyone across the great, majestic stretch of humanity.
Don't take this as hostility toward soldiers, or those who've served in war as a civilian. I mean, my grandfather was right. As terrible as World War II was, it was the best of a bunch of bad options. I know, however, that some will say that because I don't want them to die in something as stupid as war means that I hate them. As though one must hate firefighters if one hopes for a day when housefires are a thing of the past.
To be specific, though, I think of nurses who died on their feet from exhaustion, trying so hard to keep death at bay that they didn't see the reaper sneaking up on them. I think of the young soldiers who died at the first moment of the charge, a bullet passing from the front of the skull and out the back, sending then to the dirt, forever. I think of the children who died in a stranger's basement, huddled in a corner when the roof came down and staved in their skull or crushed their chest as indifferent violence rains down overhead.
If I want to get really fuming angry, I wonder if that nurse had a beautiful sonnet in her head that she never got down on paper. Did the soldier have someone at home whose heart would break forever at the news of his death? And the children. God, the children.
I remember. I memorialize. I hope.
https://soundcloud.com/jim-roberts-223408216/the-war-prayer
Mark Twain's War Prayer was about a specific pair of wars, but it really doesn't matter. We found more of them later. We always do.
Once more into the breach.
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