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pecuniumThis one has been stewing for a while. A friend sent it to me, asking what I thought about this BBC piece:
"In his heart every man thinks meanly of himself that he was not a soldier"
Samuel Johnson was, in his acerbic, and somewhat patronising way, right.
There is some merit in it, but Sherman was partly right too, "War is hell, it's glory is all moonshine."
Somewhere between that, and "we few, we happy few, we band of brothers," lies the truth, but where that truth truly lies, God only knows.
"It was a million dollar experience, you wouldn't pay a nickel to do over again."
Which is what a US airman, who was flying in bombers (I think he was a pilot, but I might be wrong), in WW2.
Personal data point. I knew I was going. I knew it back in 2002, sometime in June, July at the latest. In August I was teaching people interogation; and it was a fib. Not the teaching but the explanation. The funding was from a pot to support OEF, in Afghanistan. We knew, straight up, that it was a lie. Everyone in that room was being trained in the expectation their units were going to Iraq.
Most of them did.
When we got the orders, and Maia was dropping me off at the Armory to go to some bullshit "training" (in a straight-up violation of the regulations for deployment), I told her I didn't want to go, I'd be happy as a clam to stay home, but there was no way I could live with myself if my unit went, and I didn't.
I was only fibbing to her a little bit. It's not that I wanted to go, because I didn't, not exactly. I thought Iraq was a stupid idea from the get go. It's not that I wanted to be shot at, or to shoot at people. No, it's something ineffable. A sense of test. I did 16 years in the Army; Eight before, "That Tuesday", eight after.
I was on a short list to Bosnia... five times. I think so, maybe six. I trained about 300 people how to be interrogators. Some of them went to Bosnia, or Kosovo,and used the skills. That's what I wanted to know.
Can I do it. And "it" was a big thing. Not just sitting across the table from some guy, and squeezing him like a lemon, until all the useful stuff is out of him, and someone else can pull the pulp and the pits out of it to get the good stuff to pass along so we could make lemonade.
No, the questions of deprivation, make-do, coping with shit, all those are in it too.
Don't get me wrong, I was more than willing; even eager, to have a Miltonian career, but that goes by the boards when there is a war on.
Once the balloon goes up, all bets are off. Nixon once said, "until you have been a part of something greater than yourself, you have not really lived." War is that, and more to the point, one knows it. I'd spent eight years prepping for it, prepping others for it.
To go, would be unbearable. To stay might be worse. To stay, and have someone die... when I was safe at home, unthinkable.
So yeah, I understand, completely, how those guys feel. If I go someplace where there are soldiers, be they US, British, Ukrainian, Greek, Russian, German, Korean, you name it... The Question comes up, "Been to Iraq?".
I get to say yes. That's all I need to say. At that point I am in a different category. I've "seen the elephant", and if they've seen it too, we can talk. I've heard stories about Afghanistan, in Russian; from a Ukrainian. I've just sat and had a quiet drink with Russians, guys who were old in uniform when Reagan was in office (five years makes a difference, ten can be a lifetime), nothing to say, but memories to not share together.
There are moments in one's life, times which mark before, and after. Time in combat zone is that, and all of us know it, and like flame to a moth, we circle it.
"In his heart every man thinks meanly of himself that he was not a soldier"
Samuel Johnson was, in his acerbic, and somewhat patronising way, right.
There is some merit in it, but Sherman was partly right too, "War is hell, it's glory is all moonshine."
Somewhere between that, and "we few, we happy few, we band of brothers," lies the truth, but where that truth truly lies, God only knows.
"It was a million dollar experience, you wouldn't pay a nickel to do over again."
Which is what a US airman, who was flying in bombers (I think he was a pilot, but I might be wrong), in WW2.
Personal data point. I knew I was going. I knew it back in 2002, sometime in June, July at the latest. In August I was teaching people interogation; and it was a fib. Not the teaching but the explanation. The funding was from a pot to support OEF, in Afghanistan. We knew, straight up, that it was a lie. Everyone in that room was being trained in the expectation their units were going to Iraq.
Most of them did.
When we got the orders, and Maia was dropping me off at the Armory to go to some bullshit "training" (in a straight-up violation of the regulations for deployment), I told her I didn't want to go, I'd be happy as a clam to stay home, but there was no way I could live with myself if my unit went, and I didn't.
I was only fibbing to her a little bit. It's not that I wanted to go, because I didn't, not exactly. I thought Iraq was a stupid idea from the get go. It's not that I wanted to be shot at, or to shoot at people. No, it's something ineffable. A sense of test. I did 16 years in the Army; Eight before, "That Tuesday", eight after.
I was on a short list to Bosnia... five times. I think so, maybe six. I trained about 300 people how to be interrogators. Some of them went to Bosnia, or Kosovo,and used the skills. That's what I wanted to know.
Can I do it. And "it" was a big thing. Not just sitting across the table from some guy, and squeezing him like a lemon, until all the useful stuff is out of him, and someone else can pull the pulp and the pits out of it to get the good stuff to pass along so we could make lemonade.
No, the questions of deprivation, make-do, coping with shit, all those are in it too.
Don't get me wrong, I was more than willing; even eager, to have a Miltonian career, but that goes by the boards when there is a war on.
Once the balloon goes up, all bets are off. Nixon once said, "until you have been a part of something greater than yourself, you have not really lived." War is that, and more to the point, one knows it. I'd spent eight years prepping for it, prepping others for it.
To go, would be unbearable. To stay might be worse. To stay, and have someone die... when I was safe at home, unthinkable.
So yeah, I understand, completely, how those guys feel. If I go someplace where there are soldiers, be they US, British, Ukrainian, Greek, Russian, German, Korean, you name it... The Question comes up, "Been to Iraq?".
I get to say yes. That's all I need to say. At that point I am in a different category. I've "seen the elephant", and if they've seen it too, we can talk. I've heard stories about Afghanistan, in Russian; from a Ukrainian. I've just sat and had a quiet drink with Russians, guys who were old in uniform when Reagan was in office (five years makes a difference, ten can be a lifetime), nothing to say, but memories to not share together.
There are moments in one's life, times which mark before, and after. Time in combat zone is that, and all of us know it, and like flame to a moth, we circle it.
