Wars are the fault of failed diplomacy and old men who sit as our elected leaders, not the fault of the young people who are asked to fight and die in them. And every time a young person signs their entry papers into one of our service branches, they are stating that they will fight in case of war. Young people. People who’ve not yet even begun to live a life are willing, naive or otherwise, to lay their life on the line for their country. That must be honored.
When I was a stupid young man, I didn’t understand that and I held the same sentiments as ragingloli.
My family war history is long and multigenerational, although I myself never pulled a duty station in a service other than the Swedish Merchant Marines. My training in the 1980s involved a six-week boot camp involving light weaponry and then we were trained to spot and report antennae on Russian trawlers and read water for signs of mini subs in the Baltic. There was a lot intrigue and activity out there in the 80’s, but never confrontation. This I know, pales in significance to the service performed by @Patty_Melt, @josie and others here.
I had an Aunt who was a member of the DAR, so I imagine that I have an ancestor who partook in the American Revolution. I have in my family people who fought on both sides of the Civil War. On the maternal side, there were Kentuckians who were burned out of their properties by Sherman in 1861, the sons of whom readily joined up with the South hunting for vengeance. Kentucky never declared allegiance to either side during that war. Those sons moved their families to Texas after the war to start all over again as cattlemen and cotton growers.
On my father’s side, were Yankees who fought and died in that war from the very start in 1861..
My great uncle Vince was with the 1st Infantry Division, the Big Red One, and gassed at Soissons in 1918. He came home, but was never the same again.
My father was with the USMC in the Marshall Islands during WWII. He caught a shell fragment to the forehead on the beach at Eniwetok. It was his ticket home. After recuperation in a hospital in Santa Barbara, California, orders were changed and he was sent to Boca Raton, Florida by troop train for “Tropicalization” in preparation for the invasion of Japan. On the troop train back to the West Coast for embarkment back into the war in the Pacific, we dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the war ended. He was mustered out soon after arrival at San Diego.
His brothers all fought in WWII, one in North Africa and Italy, another took part in the D-Day Invasion. They all lived to raise families back home in the States.
My older brother did two tours in Vietnam with the US Army as a combat medic. He arrived in Vietnam exactly one year after the Tet Offensive and American troops were out after blood. He didn’t talk much about that tour. He didn’t like what he saw.
He came home from combat and couldn’t adjust to a divided America, couldn’t adjust to people and old friends who had no understanding of what was actually taking place on the ground in Vietnam. So, he went back to where he felt more comfortable, among his brothers in arms. His second tour was on a “rubber boat” with a combined Army/Navy Task Force in the Mekong Delta. Wounded were dusted off, placed on choppers and sent to hospital ships just off the coast. I imagine one of those hospital ships were manned by Strauss.
Mike lived through it We worked on the Burlington Northern Railroad together and shared an apartment in Chicago soon after he mustered out. He was earning money to supplement his GI Bill go to medical school. About three months after his last tour he was killed working on the repair track. I escorted his body home to our mother.
