Viewpoints: The poems that veterans carry

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Although Veterans Day is a national holiday, often filled with parades and celebrations, it brings with it ambiguity.

Howard Zinn, a World War II veteran, once wrote, “I do not want the recognition of my service to be used as a glorification of war.”

Sometimes the cost of the service and sacrifice can temper any desire to celebrate. Just consider the fact that even on the original Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 1918, almost 2,700 Allied and German soldiers died in combat.

Ambiguity is also the result of the growing gulf between those who have served and those who haven’t. At any given time, only .04 percent of the U.S. population is serving on active duty. In The Economist, a columnist recently explained, “The gulf between America’s armed forces and its civilians has never been greater. In 1990, 40 percent of young Americans had a military veteran for a parent; in 2016, only 16 percent did.”

Sometimes the ambiguity lies within the veteran community, and sometimes within individual veterans. Veterans’ experiences are not uniform. Some have seen combat; many have not. The story of each veteran’s service is unique.

As WWII vet Frank Brookhauser once said, “There was nothing right in one story. There is no such thing as one story if there are two people.”

Today, there are approximately 20.17 million veterans, 7 percent of the U.S. population. That’s more than 20 million stories, along with the stories of their loved ones. Sometimes poetry is the most effective way to capture both the ambiguity and the story.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/viewpoints-the-poems-that-veterans-carry/?utm_source=DAILY+HERALD&utm_campaign=a11cc2382b-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d81d073bb4-a11cc2382b-228635337

[Xipe Totec]

1. For me, it is Pui Avanti. I was not called and did not serve.

Do not surrender even when defeated,
and do not be a slave even in bondage,
trembling with fear advance bravely,
and attack with fury, though badly wounded.

Be as stubborn as a rusting nail,
that refuses to yield though old and ruined,
and do not envy the peacock's plumage,
that hides in fear at the first noise.

Be as a god that never cries,
or as a devil that never prays,
or as the oak whose mighty canopy,
needs of water but does not beg it.

Even when it rolls to the dust,
let your head scowl and bite,
and scream for vengeance.

- Pedro Palacios Almafuerte
Argentinian poet 1854-1917

[Glorfindel]

2. "La Colombe" was a song we used to listen to a lot in Vietnam. I think it qualifies as a poem.

Sung by Judy Collins

Songwriters: Alasdair Clayre / Jacques Brel

Why all these bugles crying for squads of young men drilled
To kill and to be killed and waiting by this train?
Why the orders loud and hoarse, why the engine's groaning cough
As it strains to drag us off into the holocaust?
Why crowds who sing and cry, and shout and fling us flowers
And trade their right for ours to murder and to die?

The dove has torn her wings so no more songs of love
We are not here to sing, we're here to kill the dove

Why has this moment come when childhood has to die
When hope shrinks to a sigh and speech into a drum?
Why are they pale and still, young boys trained overnight
Conscripts forced to fight and dressed in gray to kill?
These rain clouds massing tight, this train load battle bound
This moving burial ground sent thundering toward the night
Why statues towering brave above the last defeat
Old word and lies repeat across the new made grave?
Why the same still birth that victory always brought
These hoards of glory bought by men with mouths of earth?
Dead ash without a spark where cities glittered bright
For guns probe every light and crush it in the dark
And why your face undone with jagged lines of tears
That gave in those first years all peace I ever won?
Your body in the gloom, the platform fading back
Your shadow on the track, a flower on a tomb
And why these days ahead when I must let you cry
And live prepared to die as if our love were dead?

[Aristus]

3. This story brings up an interesting point: Veteran status without combat experience.

I'm one of them.

I got my orders to deploy from Germany to the Gulf in January, 1991. My unit arrived in Saudi Arabia not long before the ground war started. We took hostile fire (a Scud missile that missed us), but did not serve in combat, because the ground war ended so quickly (we were out in the field on a training exercise when the surrender was signed).

So I have had veteran status bestowed on me. I got to wear a 'combat patch' on the right shoulder of my uniform, the symbol of the unit I served with in the war zone. And I get to call myself a veteran, even though I suffered none of the things many veterans deal with: physical wounds, PTSD, survivor guilt, etc.

Whenever the subject of my veteran status comes up in cnversation, I'm quick to mention that I didn't serve in combat. I don't want anyone thinking I'm trying to steal valor.