Like most Baby Boomers, I grew up in a world where pretty much everyone's father was a veteran. We wore our father's old Navy caps. We played with our father's Army canteens. We picnicked on scratchy Marine blankets.
My father was in the Navy for four years. He wasn't in combat, but when he was on the Atlantic on a ship bringing him to Trinidad, where he was stationed for a couple of years, he was in some danger from German U-Boats. But his war was "easy." Basic training in Norfolk, Virginia. A couple of years in Trinidad. The rest of the war in downtown Chicago, at Navy Pier.
Other vets had it a lot tougher. My friend Marie's father was a young Marine at Guadalcanal. A grammar school classmate once brought in a can of C-Rations her father had saved. He'd been on Omaha Beach on D-Day. My cousin Ellen's uncle helped liberate a concentration camp. (I think it was Dachau.) I have a close friend whose uncle was part of a bomber crew. Shot down, he spent a couple of years in a stalag. Shortly before the war ended, on the day the Germans fled the stalag, he picked up a gun that one of the guards had tossed aside and shot (and killed) a guard who had been especially vicious.
A terrible war, of course. All wars are terrible. But for a clear, just, and good cause. The men (and women) who served didn't have to liberate Dachau to know that.
A few of the younger fathers in the neighborhood served in Korea. Less clear, just, and good. One of these men had had his jaw shot off. My father remembered him as a good looking kid, which I'm sure he had been. His boys were handsome. But the lower part of his face was completely distorted.
Even when there was no war, everyone (i.e., all the young men) "went in." If you didn't go to college, you joined one of the service branches right out of high school. If you went to college, they got you after you graduated for a fulltime stint - or you got to serve for a shorter period but stay in the National Guard for many years after. You saw fellows in uniform everywhere.
And then there was Vietnam, which made the Korean War look sensible.
A few of my cousins ended up there, but most of the guys I know managed to avoid the draft, many by lucking out when the draft was winding down and they instituted the lottery. The lucky guys had the luck-of-the-draw birthdays and knew they would never have to go. I didn't really know anyone who fled to Canada, but I knew of a few who did.
I went to the funeral of a classmate who's brother was killed in Nam. Many years later, I went to the funeral of my cousin who died at the age of 50 as a result of exposure to Agent Orange.
My husband worked as a chemist for the CIA. (Don't ask.) Which managed to keep him out of harm's way (not to mention out of the Army).
When did the endless Mideast wars start? Was it thirty years ago with the Gulf War?
No draft, but enough folks in uniform to keep those endless wars going, especially if you could keep endlessly calling up the National Guard and deploying them.
I don't know very many people who served in any of the Mideast wars. It's not like it used to be, when everyone was in the service.
People join up for a wide range of reasons - family or town tradition, patriotism, adventure, college tuition, learn a trade, credential to fasttrack a police or firefighter job, lack of other opportunity, prove something to themselve. Whatever caused them to join, an awful lot of them got killed, and an awful lot more came home with grievous injuries. The kind that are often invisible. The kind that in past wars would have got them sent home in a body bag. But they survived.
And while I'm not a big "thank you for your service" person, we owe the veterans of all of our wars - good, bad, or indifferent - the care and support they deserve.
Wesley Black died the other day.
I had read about him last summer.
He was a Vermont firefighter who had served two tours with the National Guard. While at war, Wesley Black was exposed to military burn pits. Which caused the colon cancer that killed him at the age of 36, leaving his wife a widow and his young son fatherless.
Wesley Black went down swinging, suing the VA for misdiagnosing his cancer a "irritable bowel syndome" until, after years of dragging their heels, finally ordering the colonoscopy that found the cancer. Stage 4. Too late to do anything about. (A few months ago, Black's suit was settled, purportedly for $3M.)
Burn pits are just what you think they are: the spots where the soldiers burn all sorts of trash: fast food wrappers, styrofoam cups, assorted plastics. The toxic fumes permeate the encampments, and even if you weren't the guy doing the burning, you were exposed. Joe Biden believes that his son Beau's deadly glioblastoma was caused by exposure to burn pits in Iraq.
The government is finally doing something about it. Winding down the use of burn pits, and registering the names of military personnel who've been exposed.
Wesley Black won't be the last case, I'm quite sure of that.
Wesley Black may have worked and died in Vermont, but he was originally from Boston.
Last summer, when he was making the rounds to publicize his plight and the plights of so many of his fellow soldiers, Wesley Black had this to say.
"I'm just a dumb Irish kid from Boston. All I know how to do is fight, you know," Black said. "Cancer's gonna win, but it's gonna be one hell of a war of attrition." (Source: ABC 11)
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