I was alone then. I hadn’t realized it was almost exactly thirty years ago until just now. I was alone now. Then in a motel room. Now in my living room, my wife and son away on a camping trip.
Then there was knock on the door. Two state troopers told me to call home. I asked why. They said that was all they knew. My grandfather answered the phone. My mother, his daughter, had been killed in a car accident on her way to the motel where we were to visit. Suddenly, irrevocably, a huge part of my life vanished.
Now, in my living room, I worried that a knock might come. I knew what my brain was telling me. It was about my son. How proud I was at how accomplished he was, and the life he had ahead of him. About the thirteen years I had with him, all the hopes and efforts and worries and guidance and long talks about morals and decisions. All gone.
I cried. I didn’t realize it at first. It was just a tear. I don’t cry often. I’m not sure I know when the last time I cried. I don’t remembering crying when my brother died two years ago. Or when my grandmother died a few years before that.
The last time I remember crying was when I read in the newspaper that General David M. Shoup had died. A man I never met. He was a former Commandant of the Marine Corps who had written "I do not believe that the whole of southeast Asia, with respect to the peace and security of the United States, is worth the life or limb of a single American."
I had copied that in black ink on a board that I nailed over my bunk in Phu Bai, Vietnam, not quite thirty years ago. It was a rude, in your face statement, there on the wall of a barracks in South Vietnam in the middle of a war. I was the senior sergeant in the barracks. We did our jobs.
I don’t remember crying in Vietnam, but then I was never injured. Not when we were mortared or rocketed. Not while on convoy in "Indian country." Not when we were attacked one night and I watched the war only thirty yards away. Not even when we were huddled in a sandbagged bunker as a string of several large ka-whumphing B-40 rockets exploded near us. One after another, each getting closer. A lieutenant in the bunker with us started to cry. But then, he had a wife and children.
But I knew what my brain was telling me. Josh Marshall, at Talking Points Memo, wrote about the death in Iraq of an Army officer who was the son of retired Army lieutenant colonel Andrew J. Bacevich, a critic of the war, and in particular a critic of the wanton conduct of it. He was a man I never met. Nor his son.
But I knew he had received a knock on his door. And, without being told, I knew he was proud at how accomplished his son was, and the life he had ahead of him. I thought about the life he must have lived with his son growing up. All the hopes and efforts and worries and guidance and long talks about morals and decisions. All gone. I cried.
My son’s school organized a visit to Washington, D.C., this year where forty budding eighth graders traveled to learn a bit more intimately the noble venture of what Jefferson and Washington and Adams had wrought out of words on pieces of parchment displayed in a darkened hall.
He walked among the fields of white crosses at the Arlington Cemetery. The eternal flame. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers. The World War Two Memorial. The Vietnam Wall. He learned the reverence for those who fought to protect our freedom in foreign wars. It’s something I believe. Something about the sacrifice of your life to prevent the suffering of others.
And I thought about the smirk. The complete indifference to the suffering of others. The complete indifference to the Iraqi’s that Colonel Bacevich wrote about. The complete indifference to the knocks on the doors of mothers and fathers across the United States. Is there really, in this war, with what we now know, with respect to the peace and security of the United States, anything worth the life or limb of a single American?
I support our troops. They are doing their jobs. Like I was. My brother-in-law has a son in Iraq. A Marine cobra pilot. We attended his wedding at the officers club in Pensacola. My son was there and we visited the marvelous naval air museum there. It is possible my son could go into the military. I would support him. I still believe the military is a noble calling.
But I suspect Colonel Bacevich feels as I do, that the nobility is an essential element to the calling. General Krulak once landed at our base. His plane, a C-130, looked like it had been spit-shined like our dress shoes. His son became Commandant of the Marine Corps. His son issued a statement this week that was essentially about the loss of nobility in Iraq.
A nobility that I don’t think many comprehend. A nobility like when military men with the highest expertise in warfare say to those in power that a war is not worth the life nor limb of a single American. Not worth the knock on the door that makes a life to be lived vanish, and a life that was lived with all the hopes and efforts and worries and guidance and long talks about morals and decisions but a brief shadow.