Coming back,,,,,,

On December 7th, 1941, the United States, despite it's desire to just hide it's head in the sand and mind it's own business, was forced to take up arms and defend itself against two of the most insidious evils the world had ever known, the original Axis of Evil, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. We were not out to police the world, and we were not after oil fields beneath someone else's land. We had our own problems to deal with, so much so we turned a blind eye to the atrocities being committed by Hitler and Tojo. But, push came to shove. We had no choice but to push back. Our very survival was at stake.

So, the idea of the citizen soldier was a no-brainer. Sacrifice was a given, which at that time was not a foreign concept to Americans, as we were getting good at it thanks to the great depression. Many waited there turn for the draft, many more just signed up and got on with the business of protecting their homes, their families, their country. There were no grey areas to wallow in, the lines were clear, it was us or them. We knew exactly who "them" was, and "them" never once gave us reason to question our need to kill every damn one we could.

America got the ultimate bitch-slap, starting with the attack on Pearl Harbor. We had built a grand navy, one we had proudly and arrogantly considered the equal of any. The Japanese showed us how easily a plywood and fabric mosquito with a bomb or torpedo could reduce those dreadnoughts to so much scrap metal. When our Sherman tanks, pride of General Motors, met the Tiger and Panther tanks of the German Weirmacht, it was like a kid with a bb gun taking on Godzilla. It was the ultimate wake-up call and alot of good men died for it.

With time, incredible luck, strategic brilliance, and a defense industry that had no choice but get it's shit together and start producing adequate, if not superior weapons of war, the sleeping giant that Admiral Yamamoto of the Japanese Imperial Navy feared so much finally awoke and turned the tide. Faced with a fanatic culture that could not understand the concept of surrender, President Harry Truman had to make the most difficult moral choice ever made by one human being in the history of the world, and ordered the use of the atomic bomb, and the American soldier was finally able to come home and get back to the business of living a "normal" life, getting a job, having a family, and trying to put the most horrible images a person could carry around inside them away in a safe place. And somehow, they did it.

Sure, there were no lack of documentaries, movies, and books covering every minute detail of the great war. We of the next generation sat on the floor in front of our black and white televisions and watched the likes of John Wayne and Clarke Gable win the war in a white hat, sanitized way that our fathers watched without much comment. What could they say? They helped win the war, the came back alive, it was over. We might have asked them once or twice, but were discouraged from asking a third time, for prosperity and better standards of living now had our attentions. It all faded into history.

Then imagine our delemna when Vietnam happened and the vets came trickling home, silent at first, then more and more vocal as things began to get surreal. No ticker tape parades welcomed the sons of the greatest generation, no, if they got any welcome at all it was by protesters taking their frustrations out on the hapless soldiers. Now what was one to say? That they had never really been sure who the enemy was? That maybe perhaps the Americans weren't wearing the white hats this time? That they might have committed murder, yet weren't even sure one way or another? And what of drugs, and agent orange, and post traumatic stress? Their fathers had not returned whining and complaining, and to speak out was to be looked at as perhaps not patriotic, or even cowardly, even by their own comrades. What, for Gods sake had gone wrong?

What we had assumed all along was that our grandfathers and fathers had right and might and Gods' good grace on their side, and there was nothing to talk about. Oh, my friends, there was plenty of horror pent up inside those aging men. They to had witnessed and participated in things that John Wayne wasn't about to portray in those old war movies. We had this nieve idea that a just war was a sterile, straightforward affair, with us playing by the rules and our enemy bayoneting babies and barbecuing them. Those men had no time for rules, they did what they had to do to survive and overcome an enemy that was in many ways superior in training and weapons. In the fog of war, the dog face gave precious little more quarter to the enemy than they had given to us. Yes, we honored the Geneva Conventions when it was convenient, and we could not be accused of wholesale massacres on a regular basis, but our hands were not as clean as we would like to believe. War is dirty, no matter why or how you fight it, and if you honestly think young men can be thrown into that grinder and not be fundamentally changed, then you need a clue.

So, when the next battle cry arises, and you proudly give your sons and daughters over to the dogs of war, please remember one thing. Grandpa had damn good reasons for keeping his experiences close to his vest. Your dad came out of Nam a changed man, human perhaps, but wounded in some way you may never understand. And when you call your son on the satellite phone from the middle east, tell him you love him, just come home in one piece, and you both can take it from there. The boy you sent away to war will come back a man, and he will tell you what he needs to tell you, and the best thing you can do is just listen. He'll tell his story in good time, when it's safe to do so.

Welcome home, Brother, I'm listening.