Veterans Day is supposed to be a day of remembrance.
A day in which Americans remember the sacrifices made by our armed service members, both past and present, for the benefit of our country.
The glory…the immortality a man can be achieve on the battlefield is to be recalled and commended on this day.
War heroics are generally lauded.
The bravery and self-sacrifice of US servicemen are lionized.
But far too often, the scars that permanently alter a life are not considered.
The saying “war is hell” may seem to be cliche, but if you get to really know any man unfortunate enough to have lived through one (or more), you realize that the supposed glory and honor afforded them by things such as a National Holiday like today, declared in their honor, is nowhere near the compensation for the horrors they witnessed and participated in…many of them, often too young to even begin to comprehend what they became a part of, let alone contemplate the lifelong impact it would have on them.
As a man who never joined the military nor fought in a war, you may wonder how I would come to this. In short, I’ve known a few men who have been permanently scarred by their war experiences, and I’ve seen the personal devastation such hellish experiences create.
My Grandfather was an infantry machine gunner in World War II. He fought at Guadalcanal and in the Phillipines.
My entire life, I would beg my Grandfather to tell me WWII stories. He refused to. Over and over again.
Until 3 years ago.
He told me in macabre, horrific detail, the horrors he lived through. No sugar coating. No glorifying or self-edifying revisions. The brutal, ugly truth, that reflect the old maxim “war is hell” perfectly.
My Grandfather told me that he waited until I was old enough to understand the realities of his experience. I was 36 years old before he finally sat down and related the worst days of his life to me.
As a young boy, starstruck by the idea of the warrior ideal and the zeitgeist of war heroism as the ultimate manifestation of masculinity, I used to repeatedly request my Grandfather tell me his stories. The horrors of war to my juvenile mind, were nothing but an abstract idea. I was filled with romantic notions of glory and heroism, twisted by Hollywood portrayals of the glories of war.
I’m grateful my Grandfather waited until I was much older before he told me his anecdotes. When I was younger and filled with a sense of the irrational immortality of youth, I would not have appreciated the true gravity of his experience. I think he knew that, which is why he waited until I was a grown man before telling me.
He passed away two years ago, but his words still haunt me.
One particularly memorable story he told me, was of an event when he and his best friend had guard duty in a foxhole in the Phillipines. His best friend was also his ammunition caddy for his BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle – the forerunner to the M60 machine gun). One night, their camp was ambushed by a night attack in the middle of a conversation they were having while on night watch, by Japanese troops.
My Grandfather manned his machine gun until he came close to running out of his belt of ammo. He bellowed for his partner to load up another ammo box. When he got no answer, he looked down and realized his buddies brains were splattered all over his body. His friend had taken a Japanese round in the head.
My Grandfather had to crawl over 100 yards to the next foxhole to get more ammo to continue firing his machine gun at the Japanese ambushers.
He cried when he told me he had to eventually find his buddies young wife and infant son after the war was over to tell her about how her husband had died.
My Grandfather was in his late 80′s when he told me this story.
Yet the horror in his voice, and the tears he shed, indicated that the horrors of his experience were undiminished by the passage of time. While he was calm and matter of fact about it while describing it to me, I could sense that the experience still shook him to the very core of his being.
Despite the old saying, I don’t think time really does heal all wounds.
War scarred him for life.
Many times after he told me this story, I wondered how I could have managed to survive such an ordeal at 19 years of age like he was.
I couldn’t even handle my liquor at 19…let alone the bloodshed and trauma the likes of what my Grandfather experienced. When I was 19, the first war in Iraq, “Operation Desert Shield” was over and the next war the US was to get involved in (the War on Terrorism in the name of 9-11,) was still 10 years away.
Yet, I’ve also talked to the veterans of the wars of our generation. Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ve come to understand something: no matter the era, no matter the level of war technology employed, nor the locale…war is still hell.
War may be more technologically advanced, but it’s still hell for the men forced to fight in it.
So, on this day of remembrance, our national holiday of commemoration for our country’s warriors, what war stories of your families, loved ones, or yourselves do you have to share? What sacrifices of the men of your family have made that should be shared and told to future generations so as to ensure their sacrifices were not made in vein?
To all those who have served this country and paid the price in years of torturous nightmares caused by the hellish experiences of modern war, I salute you. I may disagree with the war mongering political decisions of our cowardly, craven politicians…but I certainly respect the sacrifices many individual military personnel have made in the name of the people of this country.
What stories of remembrance of war do you have to share?
