My personal ambivalence on Veterans Day

(GIs raising the flag during WWII.)

Yesterday we "celebrated" the day when the country recognizes our military veterans.  I am a veteran of the Vietnam era, although I was sent to Korea instead.  I abhorred the idea of having to go in the first place, I never wanted to be there after I got inducted, and I couldn't wait until it was over.  Because of my reticence about the entire experience, I never allow myself to feel proud for having served.  Although I am technically a veteran, I never feel like one. I am neither ashamed nor proud that I served, it was simply something I had to do.

In 1968, I was drafted into the Army, but then enlisted instead of accepting the draft.  In those days, you had 30 days to make this decision once you received your draft notice.  Enlisting meant that I had some choice over what I might do for an "occupation" in the Army, but it meant spending three years in the service instead of two.  That is, you paid for getting a little choice (no guarantee) by spending an extra year in the military.  I wanted to accept the draft and take my chances, but my wife insisted I enlist and get some choice.  She didn't want me to end up in the infantry serving in Vietnam, but I did not want to spend more time in the Army than I had to spend.  The biggest disagreement we have had in 50 years of marriage occurred over this issue only two months after getting married that year.  We argued, she won, and I enlisted for three years.  In hindsight, she was correct as usual.  I was one of the lucky ones.

I relate the disagreement between my wife and me as an admission that I did not want to be in the military, I considered it a waste of three years of my life, and I rebuked the idea that our country should have gone to Vietnam in the first place.  Therefore, I never feel as though Veterans Day relates to me in any meaningful way.  On that day, I mostly think about WWII vets, my father's generation, and the incredible sacrifice they had to endure to fight a global war that was unavoidable.

The Vietnam era presented a serious dilemma for hundreds of thousands of young men who did not want to serve and who did not want to go to Vietnam.  My friend and college roommate dropped out of university, was drafted, and six months later was killed in Vietnam.  He saw his 4-month old baby only once.  My mother and my wife's parents disagreed with our belief that the war was not justified; my wife and I praised the anti-war demonstrators while our parents cursed them, although with the passage of time they came to agree with us.

As a result of this internal conflict in draft-age males, some men simply checked out of American society and left the country for Canada.  Some of them figured out a way to fake the results of their physical exam so they could fail.  Some joined the National Guard so they could remain in the states.  Some had important relatives or friends who could influence local draft boards.  Some went AWOL after being inducted.  Others did as they were told, and were later killed or wounded in Vietnam.  Now, three decades later, we have a Vietnam War Memorial that stirs more emotions in me than any monument I've ever seen, and Americans can happily vacation in Vietnam.

Sometimes governments force individuals to make decisions about their lives that are almost impossible to satisfy.  Deciding whether to participate in a war is probably the most poignant, because the costs to individuals are huge and measurable, and the benefits are rarely clear.  But on Veterans Day we honor those who served, without being able to comprehend the complex set of emotions that is certainly still within them.  With the benefit of hindsight and age, the reasons for our earlier choices become clearer. If we had to make those same decisions today armed with a lifetime of observations of the world and the way it works, they might not be so difficult.  But when 20-year olds are encouraged or forced by national policy to make these same decisions, the responsibility for their choices should rest with us all.

Robert Penrod Gavin: Is benevolent behavior outdated?

(The same in any language?)

Robert Penrod Gavin only lived a month past his 41^st birthday.  My father never knew we went to the moon, never heard of Vietnam, never knew I graduated high school, never saw his sons’ wives, never knew his grandchildren, never used a computer or cell phone, never knew that Kennedy was assassinated, and probably never paid more than 25 cents for a loaf of bread.  He did not live long enough to bury his own father, and when he died he left a 40 year-old widow with three sons aged 9, 11, and 14. 

It has been nearly half a century since my father died, and yet his words and actions echo through my head as though he were sitting on my shoulder: work hard, be honest, wash up and brush your teeth regularly, serve your fellow man, treat your family with love and respect, never fight, and do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  He lived these words literally, but I also remember, when I occasionally caught him in a minor violation of one of his own rules, how he replied defensively: “Tommy, do as I say, not as I do.”  I had been enjoying his violation of his own rules a little too much.  He hated smart alecks, because he viewed smart aleck remarks as rude, and you were never allowed to be rude to anyone, ever.

But was my father right that we should all follow the honest, hard-working turn-the-other-cheek philosophy (I will refer to this from now on using the shorthand, HHWP)?  Should we follow what sounds like good advice, at least to those who follow some form of the Judeo-Christian tradition?  Certainly the advice about personal hygiene is still sound.  But, for example, is it better to work hard or work smart, or is it even better to just be really clever?  Is it better to always turn away from confrontation, or is assertiveness, maybe even aggression, often necessary and valuable?  Did his advice only apply to lower-middle class families who had little chance of being anything else?  Maybe it was good advice during the decades of the Great Depression and WWII, but has outlived its usefulness since then.  Does his advice make sense in the social environment of the new millennium? 

It may be that society wants everyone to behave according to the HHWP, but this then creates the possibility for clever individuals to behave more selfishly to take advantage of this naïve behavior of the masses.  Maybe my father was just a fool, even during the time he lived, by working hard and being brutally honest while many others were not. 

Perhaps the HHWP made sense centuries ago, because in those days we lived in relatively small communities where everyone knew everyone else, and your behavior was constantly being monitored.  This was the environment in which my father lived as a boy in Northwest Ohio.  If you did not conform, you were shunned, or even banished from that society, which in a much earlier time must have meant almost certain death in a hostile world full of predators and enemies.  Maybe our tendency to be somewhat “benevolent” toward those around us is one of these current burdens.  That is, HHWP worked when individuals were surrounded by genetic relatives, but it is an ancient behavior that is much less adaptive when you are surrounded by a community of non-kin, as most of us are in developed countries today.

I never questioned these precepts until the past decade of my own life, but my examination leaves me unsure whether my father’s advice should be followed explicitly.  I instructed my own three children according to the “Penrod Rules”, but have I done them a disservice?  Will they conclude, or have they already concluded, that I am foolish and out of touch with the social tools that are needed in the modern community of near anonymity?  I must ask them the next time we are together.