The True Warrior Doesn't Say

What we’ve always heard and experienced, guys come back from war and they don’t want to talk about it. You have an uncle, or three or four like me, and they’re tight as clams about the war.

Maybe that’s why I don’t say much about my lack of war experience. I will say this much, I could’ve gone to war. Uncle Sam judged me a prime 18-year-old specimen, good enough to be called at any second. But it didn't happen; I was glad. But after years had gone by, I actually wished I had gone. You get to retire after a measly 20 years. And of course the parades where everyone’s singing your praises, that's a great perk. I could’ve stood there in a crowd of people at one of these ceremonies, solemnly waving, then kept my lip zipped, because the warriors I've known rarely spoke.

As it is, we all have our experiences — happy, fun, sad, traumatic — and we don’t always talk about them. One, no one really wants to hear. I’m with people all the time, and you’d think the conversation would be, “Hey, you, you’re clammed up good and tight, not contributing even a peep to the conversation, stoved up tighter than a drum.” “Oh, I don’t know about that,” I might protest, hoping they don’t delve any deeper than they already have. You need to find a way to distract them, “Hey, look! is that an exploding Hindenburg?!” As everyone checks out the ball of fire, they’ve forgotten us warriors.

I still haven’t heard what the war was like. Which is another reason I should have gone. Then I could be the one sitting there inscrutable, savoring the terrible memories that must be the source of why I’m so clammed up. Any old war would do. The big one was WWII. I used to know some guys, and true to the whole thing, they clammed up. They were likely thinking, “This guy’s not saying a thing about the war because he knows I wouldn’t answer him anyway.” So we kept very quiet about it. Same reason we don't ask a brother about his honeymoon; there's surely details he wouldn't want me to know.

That’s the best way, just be cagey about it. And if you are unconsciously cagey, 100% resolved to the fact that warriors don’t speak, you never can tell, he might break down and spill his guts. Of course you can’t be too interested or he’s back to silence. I had a guy one time tell me about being on a ship going to Europe that was jam packed with guys, they were on top of tables, under tables, under chairs, maybe stacked on top of each other at times, such as when the ship made a sharp turn. The way I pictured it, it was wall to wall men, bumped, jostled, and crowded for a month (or whatever it took to make that terrible trip.) Hearing even that much was a rarity.

And I didn’t wheedle him for information, just let the details come in, giving me an appreciation for that aspect of his life. And I was glad I didn’t experience that fiasco myself. Two’s company, three’s a crowd. A whole ship full of guys packed in there, rolling over and crunching one another for a long time -- since I’m an introvert and part-time germaphobe -- would be a living hell. The biggest thing I never heard from that guy, or anyone else, was what the war was actually like, whether you killed anyone, etc.

A couple of my uncles were in Vietnam, early on and as an extended career thing. In planes, at least one of them in the refueling business. We always looked at their formal fuzzy color portraits on the wall and imagined what they might be up to. Then they’d be home, one at a time once in a blue moon, and we kept right on imagining what they might’ve been doing, because they certainly didn’t say. It was either too terrible to mention, or so innocent and benign it’d ruin the mystery.

I do some of that myself. There’s plenty I don’t talk about. Wherever I am, I just sit there in stony silence, offering nods to whatever (Are you OK?) and maintaining my man of mystery status. “Why don’t you say anything?” “Ain’t got nothing to say?” “Nothing?” “Nope, I mean, Yep.” “Yes, I have no nothing, I have no nothing to say.” Or plenty of nothing, however you choose to quantify a plenty that still comes out zero.

Memorial Day -- Death's Day to Shine

Happy Memorial Day! I always think about that "happy" and whether it's appropriate, but I've heard it enough, it must be right.

I'm not doing much for Memorial Day, as usual. They fought and died for my right to sit on my lazy buttootie, so I'll honor that. No trips to the cemetery -- I hate crowds. I'll miss the parade -- looks cloudy, hate to get wet. I'd put the flag out, if I had one. I'm just in a terrible way.

The parade, you've seen one truck of waving vets, you've seen 'em all.* Although it is quite cool how they have the trucks festooned with little flags. I can just see the folks doing that, taking hours sticking those flags on. I honestly can't remember how they even do it, tell the truth. Surely there aren't little flag holders everywhere on an Army truck. What would that be, some kind of retrofitting? Or are we spending so much extra time and money in military procurements to make sure our trucks have 800 flag holders?

That'd be worth looking into. That might be why a lot of guys died. They're trying to scurry off a truck that's been hit and they're caught on a flag holder. So many of them, it's like a mine field. Like all that barbed wire they had in World War I, between our trenches and theirs.

World War I. This is a big year for World War I, because it's been 100 years since it started. I was talking to a guy the other day, a geezer, really, except I've known him since high school. He reportedly spends a lot of time and money on war literature and other mementos. Civil War through whatever; probably has an empty room ready for the next war.

In our discussion, I quickly blew through my limited knowledge of the First World War. Which consists of everything I know of Eddie Rickenbacher, since I've been reading his book for the past six months and I'm still not done. It's interesting in places, a total boring bastard in others. I felt gratified that my old friend agreed with me on the WW I flying aces, that they wasted a huge amount of time after a hit, driving around the countryside looking for witnesses to sign for them, to vouch that it was indeed their hit. Isn't that dumb? Do you suppose every infantry man jumped out of the trenches and ran ahead to get verification that he shot a guy? Anyway, it was my theory -- and this guy, a self-taught expert agreed -- that it was only the novelty of an air corps in those early days that prompted such a stupid idea.

Grandpa was in WW I. I don't know what he did exactly. He never said a word about it. Don't remember him being in any parades. Exercising his right, too, I guess. I honestly don't remember him even going to many parades, for anything. Just sitting around the house here, going out on the half acre, moving the outhouse every couple years, and hunting and fishing. My uncles were all military guys, like in the heat of WW II, the three boys this side of the family. The other side of the family, I had a couple uncles in Vietnam.

Funny thing about that. You know how the government's always screwing the veterans in one way or another? One of my uncles who was in Vietnam, after the war, died, not war-related. Somehow the government didn't get his headstone right. They always put which war you were in, and they put "WORLD WAR II," which meant he would've been around 5 or 6 when he enlisted. They must have a big assembly line of headstones and a guy daydreaming and forgetting to change the matrix.

The way it worked out, my mom went through all the bureaucratic gyrations you have to go through, and for the length of time it takes the government to solve anything, including a relatively easy problem like this. It may or may not have involved a contact with a senator or congressman. In the end, though -- she would've made a great bull rider -- she stuck with it and they got the correct "VIETNAM" tombstone to her.

What happened to the old one? There was someone in the cemetery without a tombstone. So she took it to a stone-etcher, someone who does that for tombstones, and had a different one etched on the back, then flipped it over. So out there somewhere in "The Silent Centuries" cemetery  .... Someday, when archaeologists are excavating it, they'll go, "What the hell happened here? This tombstone has a flip side!

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*My true feelings on a truckload of 90-year-old vets, is I'd love to hug and lip-kiss them and rub their head and celebrate them without end. But you can't do that. They'd look at you like a madman, which you'd be. Inside they'd be thinking, "I'm the same guy now as I was when I was 40 or 50, an average guy on the street -- or maybe even your mean boss -- and you didn't want to razz me. Why razz with me now that I'm old? You're looking down on me! You're demeaning my humanity, manhood, and sacrifice?" Which wouldn't be true, but you can't disagree with one of these beautiful old goats.

Memorial Day -- Honor Your Deceased Loves

Our condolences to the Burns family.
We know the summer of 1893 was a very tough time for you.

Memorial Day has to be one of the greatest holidays. It speaks to us of the weird rhythm of life: One minute you're here, the next you're gone. I know I've thought of this rhythm even since I was a kid, playing dead under my sheets. Our deceased loves seemed fine the last time we saw them, then the news came they were gone. We shook a vain fist at Heaven, but it was all so inscrutable, not a single word of response.

Of course, nothing has changed. So what can we do? There's not much we can do, but give them a Memorial Day they'd be proud of. And if we do, maybe there will be that much more chance somebody someday will do the same for us.

It's grim, death being no respecter of persons. I personally know my relatives were saints, every one of them, and yet this had to go and happen. There ought to be some benefit for doing so much good ... not that they'd ever expect it, that's how good they were. Whole cloth.

But no, Death is a reality for everyone -- the conqueror worm and all that -- the one great fact of life. We're here, we're gone, just like that. It's enough sorrow to drive us crazy. So thank goodness for Memorial Day, standing as it does as a little island of remembrance, a place between life and death ... even though it does cause me to get a little misty in the eyes. And morbid. I think curious thoughts, about how they look now, after all these years. Clothes rotting away, by now fingernails a mile long.

I've got quite a few deceased loves, so I generally make the long, tiring trek, traipsing out to the various cemeteries. Years ago, somebody in the family should've organized things so everyone would've been buried in one mass grave. It'd be a lot more convenient for me, but they did what they did. The worst thing about it is fighting the crowds on those narrow little cemetery roads, which weren't made for two way traffic. Horse and buggy days.

The biggest thing I hate about the crowds, besides the traffic, is seeing their disgusting plastic flower arrangements and other crap. Dime store windmills, styrofoam crosses. You think you're honoring someone with that stuff? Yeah, the stockholders of Tacky Industries, probably churning it out in Asian sweatshops with people paid a dime a year and no benefits, and locked in the factories besides. Give me good old fashioned real flowers, and crosses of genuine wood, and decent durable windmills that a ghost kid can play with for eternity.

I know I'm on my soapbox, don't get me started. But while I have the floor, let me rail against one other thing: The terrible "gravestones" (not even that) these cheapskate families have for their deceased loves. Now I'm started, I may as well finish! It's scandalous the number of temporary markers originally put up by the funeral home 30 years ago that are still there. I don't know what happened exactly. Maybe they went to Vegas and blew all the insurance money. Or maybe ... and I hate to judge ... their love for the deceased wasn't all it should be. That's not undying devotion, that's slovenliness, which I think is one of the Seven Fatal Sins, Seven Major Sins, or Seven Unforgivable Sins, whatever it's called. But ... anything! If you saved only $100 a year for 30 years, you'd still have $3,000 for a halfway small monument, which would be better than nothing. Those are the people I can't stand.

I'm proud to say, all my deceased loves have memorials erected. And I personally really didn't do much to make it happen. When they first gave up the ghost, those who were on the scene did what was necessary to make it happen, skipped meals, whatever. Then they died, and others died, and there's still a few left besides me. Hopefully, when I finally kick off, there'll be someone left to put up a modest 10 foot stone. I prefer they be bold. Tell the funeral director right to his face, we're going to be ordering a stone, so be in your office Monday morning bright and early. Go down to the quarry and get something good!

On a serious note, this Memorial Day, we as a nation have a lot of extra dead to be grieving over, of course. Just like every year, there's always some tragedy that hits the news, and strikes a cord with us, be it a mass murder, a natural disaster, or a plane wreck. It's especially bad if it happens all at once. We might have 300,000 people die one at a time, and no one cares, but you get 40 or 50 at once and it really hits home.