Memorial Day

I've never really thought much about what Memorial Day is about. Maybe you have to feel your own mortality, and that comes with age. Maybe I just didn't have a direct connection with men and women who made me feel it. Maybe it was Viet Nam.

I grew up assuming that I would be drafted. That's what happened in the fifties in Utah. You turn 19; you serve a mission for 2 years, then you get drafted for 2 more years. It all changed in the sixties. As U.S. military involvement in Viet Nam became controversial, the media image of the military itself became uglier. By the time I was old enough to go,soldiers were the dregs of society, drug addicts, baby-killers. Think of Apocalypse Now or Platoon. All the talk about honor and fighting for freedom was seen to have been cynical hype. So, when I came home from my mission, I didn't sign up, but I didn't try very hard to avoid service, either. My birthday came up out of the running (deoending on how you looked at it) when the draft lottery was held, so I didn't get drafted. When I finished law school, I applied to the Navy JAG, but they didn't want me. I was pretty scrawny, underweight with bad eyesight, so I guess it was a good thing, but I've always felt that I didn't do my duty. Being excused didn't feel like much of an excuse.

In all the years since then, I've carried the old image of the military depicted in M*A*S*H and Catch 22. I had an image of a pathetic bureaucracy that tied its own shoelaces together and then tripped on them. I'd had friends who had been in the Marines, and I knew they were tough and took on the tough assignments, but I still kind of envision their officers as idiots like Dilbert's boss.

Now I know I was wrong all along. Our military was getting better and better. When it went to all volunteer, it had to. It had to amplify the power of fewer soldiers who were of higher quality, through better training and high tech weaponry. I don't think I really understood it though until Operation Iraqi Freedom. These weren't the doped up defectives I'd seen depicted during Viet Nam. These were men and women with good training, good discipline and awesome firepower. (unfinished)