My friend Dick sent this John Stuart Mill quotation in honor of Veterans Day:
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
I, like Dick and the men and women we served with, am proud to have served our country. There have been times in our recent past when our countrymen have turned their backs to veterans. As a country and as a people, we didn’t honor those who served in Vietnam, nor did we do much for them. We wanted to put that unpleasant experience behind us, and the vets were constant reminders of that which we wanted to ignore.
My father signed me up for the American Legion when I joined the US Air Force in the mid-1970s. At the time the Legion was a World War II veterans’ club; returning Vietnam vets were largely unwelcome. The boys of the American Legion won WWII; those scruffy long-hairs lost Vietnam to the commies.
I didn’t want to have anything to do with the Legion and put the membership card in a dresser drawer. What I didn’t know then was that my father was campaigning for the Legion to welcome Vietnam vets. He won over his local post, then took the campaign to other posts in Missouri. Other honorable men were doing the same thing in other states. They prevailed, and in the 1980s the American Legion became a welcoming place for Vietnam vets.
When I learned all that, I pulled my membership card out of the drawer and put it in my wallet. I was, and am, proud of my dad for supporting veterans of an unpopular war. When he was dying at his home in Cape Girardeau, in just the few days I was there, Vietnam vet after Vietnam vet dropped by to visit with, and honor, their old friend. Shit, I’m tearing up just writing this, because it’s true, and because it was important . . . not just to my father and to the Vietnam vets, but to me as well.
The current war is deeply unpopular and will likely become more so, yet we as a nation have so far pulled together to honor veterans of that war. Long may it stay that way.
Not to be outdone by my buddy Dick, I’ll end with Rudyard Kipling’s Tommy, lest we forget how veterans are too often taken for granted:
I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but ‘adn’t none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-’alls,
But when it comes to fightin’, Lord! they’ll shove me in the stalls!
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, wait outside”;
But it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide,
The troopship’s on the tide, my boys, the troopship’s on the tide,
O it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide.
Yes, makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap;
An’ hustlin’ drunken soldiers when they’re goin’ large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.
Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, ‘ow’s yer soul?”
But it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll.
We aren’t no thin red ‘eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints;
While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, fall be’ind”,
But it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind,
There’s trouble in the wind, my boys, there’s trouble in the wind,
O it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind.
You talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires, an’ all:
We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don’t mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow’s Uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace.
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Saviour of ‘is country” when the guns begin to shoot;
An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
An’ Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool — you bet that Tommy sees!
