Osama Bin Laden is Dead

This deserves much more reflection later, but for now, this picture pretty much sums it up.

Fire in our Youth

"But, nevertheless, the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing. While we are permitted to scorn nothing but indifference, and do not pretend to undervalue the worldly rewards of ambition, we have seen with our own eyes, beyond and above the gold fields, the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after us. But, above all, we have learned that whether a man accepts from Fortune her spade, and will look downward and dig, or from Aspiration her axe and cord, and will scale the ice, the one and only success which it is his to command is to bring to his work a mighty heart."  ~Oliver Wendell Holmes; An address delivered for Memorial Day, May 30, 1884

For the first time in seven years, I do not have any friends or family members deployed to a war zone.  I do not have any adopted soldiers or Marines playing in any of the various sandboxes that they often find themselves in.  Seven years of deployments.  Hundreds of guys and girls.  And for the first time, really, the relentless cycle of homecoming and goodbye, joy and sorrow, relief and danger has paused.  For the entirety of my adulthood, the war has been my ever-present companion.  

I knew the timing was going to work out for the first time awhile ago.  I wasn't sure what to expect.  Now that I have spent almost a month without sending a care package or writing a letter, without a phone call from an international number or a shopping list that including baking supplies, I am trying to wrap my head around the experience.

I don't give a lot of thought to my end of the experience.  It is easier to just keep moving forward, to see all that needs to be done and to keep doing.  But what does it mean in this generation to be a civilian that has worked so closely with the military in wartime?  Lately I have been looking to the past for answers.  To the women who ran local canteens, packed civil war era packages in sewing clubs, served in the volunteer ambulance corps, the donut and coffee girls of the USO and its precursors.  I'm not sure I've found any answers yet but it is clear that the wartime experience is lifelong.  It is an emotional, spiritual, physical, mental, epic kind of thing.   

Even when you are not in the middle of it, the memories and emotions creep in sometimes unexpected ways.  For example, there are songs I literally cannot listen to, tv shows I can't get through, and movies I can't watch.   And I'm never quite sure when I will stumble across one of those things.  Like that new show Coming Home.  I saw a commercial for an episode recently and found myself sobbing without really even knowing why.  I think mostly they were happy tears. Or take a documentary like Restrepo or a movie like The Dry Land or Taking Chance.  I can see them multiple times and really not have much of a reaction to them beyond what you have for any movie.  But then one day I'll watch it and something will hit me and bam- sobbing girl reaction.  Rather inconvenient really, if you happing to be viewing with friends. But I think it goes back to the intensity of experiences and the never taking the time to process the emotions that go with them.  I wonder if Elsie, Vera, or Florence had the equivalent experience and responses as well.

I guess without someone to focus on, I've had a little bit of time to think about myself in relation to the war and the last seven years.  Sift through them a little bit.  I came to the realization that there is a lot there to sift through. 

In the midst of all this reflection a new documentary on the Patriot Guard Riders is being released.  It features a few events that I have attended and some people that I am familiar with in passing.  I get this invitation to go see it.  I went back and forth decided if I should go or not.  In the end, I took a pass because I'm not sure it is one that I want view in public.  I'm not sure what reaction it will provoke from within me.  I think for now it is better to see that one in the privacy of my own home, despite the camaraderie that exists amongst those of us who do the military support thing.

So what's the point of this rambling, jumbled mess?  I don't know.   I do think that Oliver Wendell Holmes got it right though, that "the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience," and that to have your heart touched by fire in your youth is a pretty powerful thing.

I Was Here

 I Was Here by Lady Antebellum
You will notice me
I’ll be leaving my mark
Like initials carved in an old oak tree
You wait and see

Maybe I’ll write like Twain wrote
Maybe I’ll paint like Van Gogh
Cure the common cold… I don’t know
But I’m ready to start ‘cause I know in my heart

I wanna do something that matters
Say something different
Something that sets the whole world on its ear
Wanna do something better
With the time I’ve been given
I wanna try
To touch a few hearts in this life
And leave nothing less than something that says
I was here

I will prove you wrong
If you think I’m all talk
You’re in for a shock ‘cause this dreams too strong
Before too long

Maybe I’ll compose symphonies
Maybe I’ll fight for world peace
‘Cause I know it’s my destiny
to leave more than a trace of myself in this place

I know that I will do more than just pass through this life
I’ll leave nothing less than something that says
I was here

When they finished laughing

I would like to thank the Marine Corps for returning Bestie to me.  It is so good to talk to him and pull out the phone to text whenever I feel like it. 

When they finished laughing they were on their way to being not just friends, but the dearest of friends, the sort of friends whose lives are shaped by the friendship.

SPINDLE’S END, ROBIN MCKINLEY

Welcome Home

With a deep sigh of relief:
Welcome Home, Marine.

Welcome Home.

Oh, how we have missed you.

Remembering Pfc Gunnar Becker

One inescapable fact about war is that there will be casualties.  When nations wage war men and women will die.  They will be young.  They will be missed.  They will be gone, as Seeger says, forever lost to "some disputed barricade." 

There is an old, traditional song entitled Hard Times that reminds us that we must account for these things that are hard to acknowledge.   It begins, "Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears..."  Often, the hard times are the ones we want to forget.  The harsh reality of young men and women in uniform not coming home is certainly a reality we as a society wish to ignore.  

But we cannot ignore them.  We cannot hide from them.  We must pause our own lives for a moment to count life's tears.  There are many tears to be shed for our fallen, not just in the moment their names are released to stream on the scrolling news bar, but for the many moments after where their absence is felt.

One of the casualties of our current wars is Pfc. Gunnar D Becker, 19, Forestburg, South Dakota.  Gunnar was a tanker stationed out of Vilseck, Germany.  Today, January 12, 2005, he was living the last day of his life.  By the end of the next, January 13, 2005, his rendezvous with Death had come to pass.  The disputed barricade where he gave his life was came on a battlefield in Iraq.  

By all accounts, Gunnar was someone you'd be lucky to call a friend.   Despite his youth, he had a commitment to his chosen profession.  He knew the risks.  He believed in what he was doing.  He possessed the values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment that too many of his peers lack.  He understood service and undertook the greatest act of service there is, service to one's country.  He stood the watch for us, protecting us and the ideals of our nation.  He was willing to give his life for a cause that was greater than himself.   The phrase "the price of freedom" is thrown around a lot by the media, sometimes seriously, mostly around Memorial Day, but mostly facetiously.  But the true price of freedom ultimately is the life of Pfc Gunnar Becker and those like him who defend our nation.  That is what it has always been. 

Gunnar gave his life for his country.  He paid the ultimate price.  For this reason, many would call him a hero.  I would argue that it is not his death that makes him one.  He is a hero for the way he lived his life.  It reminds me of  FDNY Chief Ed Croker's words while speaking upon the deaths of a deputy chief and four firemen in a 1908 blaze.  He said of their bravery: 

"Firemen are going to get killed.  When they join the department they face that fact.  When a man becomes a fireman his greatest act of bravery has been accomplished.  What he does after that is all in the line of work.  They were not thinking of getting killed when they went where death lurked.  They went there to put the fire out, and got killed.  Firefighters do not regard themselves as heroes because they do what the business requires."

Indeed, Gunnar's greatest act of bravery was accomplished when he took the oath of enlistment and promised to protect and defend the United States of America.   He went where the job sent him and did what the job required.  This is what makes him hero.

But it does not lessen the pain of his loss for those who loved and knew him.  He is still gone from them.  There are no words we can offer to make this loss better.

Instead, we must offer what we can: acknowledgement.

Pfc. Gunnar D Becker lost his life in service to our country.  Today, and everyday, I remember him.  I remember him as an individual who is no longer here to leave his mark on the world.  I remember his family who must face his absence daily.

Laurence Binyon wrote of the fallen in World War I that "they will not grow old, as we that are left grow old:/ age will not weary them, nor the years condemn."  With each year that passes, I become more aware of the truth in these lines.

As another anniversary of his death nears Gunnar remains as he was.

And we must remember him.

Film: The Dry Land

I just finished the independent film, The Dry Land.  It blew me away.  I'm usually wary of films depicting military veterans or soldiers in general.  They usually do not strike the right tone, are two inaccurate, or are just plain insulting.  I left this one with the feeling that the actors and the film makers "got it."  There was a sincerity to the acting and to the storytelling that impressed me.

From actress America Ferrera "There is a disconnect in our society....  Everyone wants a hero but no one wants to see or think about what they had to go through to be that hero."

The journey home post war and post military is different for every person.  The experience is different for every family.  The film brings a reality to one way that it can go.  I'm not going to summarize the plot or try to delve into the reasons why the film resonated.

I am just going to say that it is powerful.  Watch it and take what you want away from it.