[GCFL-discuss] World War II

[Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies List]

Thanks for a valuable perspective Carla. I was born nine years AFTER the
war, and my father had relatively light duty -- the Navy decided he would
be more valuable training radio operators in Corpus Christi than sending
him to any of the battlefronts. But I remember that my parents' entire
generation seemed to have two frames of reference for almost everything,
including measuring their children, students, neighbors kids, scout troop
members, and that was, "what we went through in the Depression and World
War II." Having studied a lot of history in the years since, I know they
were right. Having grown up with this measuring stick all around my
childhood, I know that it just didn't compute. I did NOT experience the
Depression, I did NOT experience the war, and nothing the adults in my
life said could make it real for me, or any of my friends, who thanks to
many things done before we came into the world, didn't have to experience
it.

Which is part of my framework for looking at American responses to war
today. The sacrifices of those who went to the front lines, in WW II,
Korea, Vietnam, Persian Gulf I, Persian Gulf II, are undeniable, and
utterly impossible to compensate anyone for. As Andy Rooney once pointed
out, MOST of those in the first wave at D-Day died, not many of them,
MOST of them. Our army secured a beach-head in part because we had
another wave to send in after them, and another wave after them, and the
German forces were stretched too thin to stand up to it. All of this has
a profound effect on the families of survivors, and the families who lost
soldiers among the dead.

Still, most of us haven't experienced war first hand. It is no
coincidence that a powerful witness among recent anti-war movements have
been veterans -- not all of them, maybe not even most of them, but more
than a handful -- who know personally what war means. Nor is is it
coincidence that many of the loudest mouths for sending in the troops
have never served and have no intention of serving. I have read several
reports of Iraq veterans returning from their rotations expressing real
frustration at the way American civilian life just goes on its merry way,
while they KNOW the life and death realities they were immersed in for a
year or more.

Siarlys