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.

Does God watch the Rose Bowl?

(When you see military jets doing a fly-over during a football game, it should cause you to ask some questions.)

I watched the Rose Bowl yesterday, or as much of it as I could, because Ohio State University was in the game. I was an undergrad at OSU in the 60s, so I thought I had some sort of obligation to participate in the festivities. I watch almost no sports on tv whatsoever, but I made an exception for this one. I actually lettered for three years in tennis at OSU, so when they won the game, I guess my status ticked up a notch. I still have the scarlet and gray jacket to prove that I'm not just anti-sports.

But I was thinking about what I saw before and during the game. It is all very curious to me. We typically play the National Anthem before most high school, college, and professional sports. How did this custom ever come to be? What does this nationalistic/quasi-militaristic song have to do with sports? At about that same time yesterday in Pasadena, four military jets did a fly-over past the stadium, adding to the battlefield aura of the entire spectacle. (By the way, do the taxpayers pay for this flight time?)

And then, military veterans were prominent during the ceremonies, with the Wounded Warrior representatives in attendance. It reminded me of stories you hear about the early days of the Civil War, only in reverse. Apparently, citizens from the nearby town would come out with their picnic lunches to watch a real battle between the North and South from a hill overlooking the battlefield. Pass me a watercress sandwich, please.  But now, real soldiers come out to watch civilians battle it out on the gridiron.  (In fact, they kept referring to the game between Oregon State and University of Oregon to decide which team went to the Rose Bowl as a "civil war".)  Can it be that combat with an opposing force is so ingrained in our genetic code that we have to reenact a facsimile of it over and over again?

Religion is even incorporated into the pageantry of these sporting events. Each team, or many members of each team, usually pray to their god just before the game starts. I assume they are praying for victory over the other team. In the case of OSU and University of Oregon, I have to assume that they are each praying to the same god. Now, I don’t believe in an all-knowing, all-powerful god for one minute, but apparently these players do. Therefore, I find this pre-game prayer the most pretentious and selfish behavior I have ever seen. There are tens of millions of people on this planet struggling for survival every day of their lives, millions of babies starving to death each year, and millions more suffering from malaria, dysentery, tuberculosis, and water-borne parasitic diseases. If this god had the power to grant you the winning of a football game while he/she/it allows all this human suffering on earth, I would have to conclude that this deity was pretty sadistic.

I don’t really want to begin the new year by bashing an activity as American as a college football game. But the behaviors that humans display are not just some random actions that have no meaning or history. They all come from some place and they had, or still have, significance for us. We may have forgotten from whence they came, so this essay is simply a reminder to ponder what we see and hear. As I’ve said many times, human behavior is about as interesting as it gets. It ranks right up there with bobolinks.

The 60s, and other memories of the way it used to be

(They were radicals, but they were correct.)

Another year, another birthday.  What the heck?  I'm now 63 years old, but I don't feel a day over 62 1/2.  I attribute this amazing youthfulness to eating properly and exercise.  And, of course, a scotch and a cigar a day probably contribute as well.  I will go so far as to say that if you smoked one cigar a day and drank one scotch per day, you would also not feel a day over 62 1/2, even if you are 30 years old.  That combination of alcohol and nicotine has amazing restorative properties, and I am living proof of that.

Having lived this long, I have witnessed some interesting changes in practices and attitudes in many aspects of American life.  For example, I started school at age 5 in the first grade.  We lived in a somewhat rural area about a mile from the school.  To get to school, we walked.  But to do so, we walked along a country road, crossed a busy highway, and a set of railroad tracks.  Years later, the fathers of two of my friends were killed driving across those same tracks, so it was no joke.  After a couple of weeks of my mother walking with me, I was free to make the walk alone both to and from school.  There were some other kids making the same walk, but can you imagine parents letting any kid even twice that age do this today? 

I loved baseball when I was 9-12 years old, so I wanted to play on the local Little League team.  I tried out for 3 years and was cut from the team each year.  It was done like this.  The day finally came to announce who made the team.  The coach read the list and those of us who did not make the team, turned our backs and walked home while the coach started passing out the team shirts and caps to those who made it.  I distinctly remember the cheers of joy from those guys who had made the team, as they tried on their new gear.  I was devastated each time.  Our parents were not there.  We always faced these events on our own.  However, after the third turn down, one man started an additional team with those of us who did not make the Apaches team.  Our Sioux team then actually beat the Apaches during the regular season, which was one of the sweetest days of my life.  In those days, we always knew that success was not guaranteed, and that you had to prepare extremely well in a competitive world.

When I was in junior high school, I got paddled by the teacher in front of the class at least once each year for some infraction of some rule.  Usually this involved talking in class when we were not supposed to be doing that.  I was not alone.  Today, that kind of corporal punishment would be definite grounds for a law suit.

Then, there was the decade of the 60s, which was amazing in so many ways.  When we were first married, my wife worked full-time as a nurse and I was a student.  She could not get a credit card issued in her name in those days; it had to be issued in the husband's name.  Crazy, since she was making the money and I wasn't. Of course, now, we don't open the mailbox without there being an offer for her to accept a new card.

I mostly remember worrying about the military draft during the 60s.  It was all any male thought about.  Would I be called?  Could I escape it somehow?  If we stayed in university, we were safe until we graduated.  Maybe the Vietnam War would be over by then.  I remember a couple of guys when I was attending Ohio State whose grade point average (gpa) was right on the cusp of flunking out of school.  (In those days, universities actually flunked students out and they went home.  Seems much less common today.)  I distinctly remember these particular guys taking an exam in a course we had together.  If they got a D on the exam, their gpa would dip below the minimum needed and they would flunk out.  In the mid to late 1960s, that would almost certainly mean you would be drafted into the army within months, probably sent to Vietnam, and possibly killed or injured.  Talk about pressure when taking a math or biology final exam.

I was lucky.  I graduated Ohio State, got drafted, and ended up in Korea.  All in all, that was a valuable and interesting experience, and not dangerous.  In Korea, I was in military intelligence and lived undercover as a civilian, but I mostly spent my time playing ping pong, bridge, and third base on the softball team.  I had been sent to language school for a solid year before deploying to Korea, so I was nearly fluent in the language at that time.  My wife and young daughter joined me there, we lived with a Korean family in the village, and we learned a lot.  The army did not want my wife to come, but there was no law against a U.S. citizen going to Korea, and my wife would not take "no" for an answer.  This was pretty much SOP for my wife during our military years.

So times have changed for the better in some ways, and probably not for the better in other ways.  I often wonder, and even predict, if the last half of the 20th century may have been as good as it ever was in human history and perhaps as good as it will ever be, all things considered.  In time, I will build this argument and present it for your critical analysis.  But several centuries will have to pass before this idea can be tested fully, so you will have to let me know how it comes out.  Just send me a text message.