Thursday, July 06, 2006

Where Were You Forty Years Ago Today?

Well, Candidate Larry called me up from his cell phone on the way home just now, and asked me if I knew where he was 40 years ago today. I thought a bit; I kinda got the impression it was important to him that I know this answer. As I was thinking, I kept up a bit of patter, but all the while, I was processing what I knew of his life before I met him. I realized he was 18, he had just graduated from Tascosa High School in Amarillo, and it was in 1966. Then I remembered - at the height of the Vietnamese War, he enlisted in the Marine Corps, and this day 40 years ago was his report date.

Larry is generally a cheerful, positive guy. He has a sunny disposition. No dark moods and depressions linger around that man. So I was surprised that his memory of a gloomy and fearful time would surface, and that he would mark such an anniversary. He still speaks of that time little, and can find nothing humorous to recount from those days. They ate every meal sitting at attention, there were no condiments like ketchup, not even salt and pepper. They had 2 uniforms (including underwear), that they were required to keep clean, so if they were doing night maneuvers in the mud, they came back to the barracks at 2 AM and hand-washed their clothes. He got less sleep in Marine Corps Boot Camp in 1966 than he did during the Gulf War, when he was up through the night a few times a week and was lucky to get 4 hours of sleep.

I remember when we were stationed at Army posts with basic training or AIT, and seeing those young kids marching in formation to the pay phones on Saturdays, if they were not marching off some infraction in the yard; and waiting in line with two hundred other young troops to make one 3 minute call to their loved ones. I remember seeing them break down in church, weeping from anxiety and exhaustion.

And I think of them today, gathering up the body parts of their friends, wondering why, really, they are in such a situation in Iraq. It would be understandable to me, I think, if these youngsters were fighting an entity that actually threatened the US. I would not feel the shame I feel at their predicament if I thought they were sacrificing their youth and innocence for America. But they are suffering, not on behalf of our country, but on behalf of a corrupt and careless government; on behalf of the whims of adventurers who would no more serve in the peacetime military than would Paris Hilton, let alone in actual battle. They are sacrificing for cowards playing Risk, but who are using real humans to make it more interesting, after which they go have a few martinis and a steak and plan their next golf junket.

I really wonder how they sleep at night. I know it will be a tough night for Larry, remembering how he was thrown into the Marine Corps maw forty years ago; and thinking of how corrupt chicken hawks are mis-using this generation of young men and women soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines.

I think I'm going to put on a bumper sticker I've been saving since Demfest last year. It says, "Draft The Twins".