Posted by
William D. Dannenmaier on Thursday, November 11, 2010 8:55:14 AM
Debra J. Saunders’ essay, “Law School is Obamaland’s Boot Camp” (townhall.com, 10/22/2010) discusses the lack of military experience of Obama’s advisors at a time when we are engaged in two wars. Ms Saunders points out that she lacks “military experience” also. But even she doesn’t understand the reality of military experience. Few of our military experience the reality of combat. There are two types of veterans, the vast majority who have never experienced combat and the relative few who have. I’m one of the relative few. Ms Saunders’ concern is on persons with no experience in the military overseeing the military during wartime. I am more concerned with the trials, in the media and the courts, of combat men for killing “innocents” during combat by persons who have never experienced combat.
Immediately after Obama’s homeland security secretary, Napolitano, made the statement that combat veterans were more dangerous than illegal immigrants, I had a tee-shirt made for myself. On the back it says “Right Wing Extremist.” On the front, it says, “Combat Veteran, 15th Infantry Regiment.” I wore it to town, stopping at Cee Bee for groceries on the way home. Marty, who works at Cee Bee, carried them out for me. Usually we have a joking relationship, but not this time. As he finished putting my groceries in he looked at me and asked, “What war?” When I answered “Korea” he replied, “I was in Vietnam and Iraq.” Then he added, “We can talk to one another, but no one else can understand.”
He was right. No one else can understand. What we did to survive wasn’t nice: our sanitation wasn’t nice, our food wasn’t nice, and our humor wasn’t nice: nothing about us was nice. What we all had in common was the constant awareness, the constant tension. We laughed at things that would have made people who hadn’t been there shudder. We lost all touch with any world other than the one we lived in, one of constant danger, tension, and fatigue. Those things were normal to us in Korea, just as they were and are normal to all others who actually been in combat.
Combat creeps up on you. When you first enter you are normal, simply a person who has been trained in weapons and tactics, perhaps badly, often by people who have never used them against an enemy. It doesn’t take long to learn that the first rule of combat is to stay alive. Killing the enemy comes next. You must act first, think second if you wish to live. You may have time to regret it later. Getting drinking water is third. Trivial things such as food and sleep follow. Cleanliness is a forgotten element of civilian life along with such things as sidewalks and electric lights.
Combat changes you without your awareness. The change creeps up on you. You are never the same again. It is only slowly, over the years, that you recognize that you did things and reacted to things badly when you returned to civilian life as a result of those changes. And some of those changes last as long as you live.
“Goodbye, Darkness” by William Manchester (1982) is the most disturbingly accurate book on combat I have read. Manchester fought with the Marines as an enlisted man from Guadalcanal to Okinawa where a “million dollar wound” ended his combat time. He still likes to sit at “corner tables” to “keep my flanks secure.” I understand that. I also choose seats with my back to a wall. I sometimes wonder if my love of my concealed home overlooking the valley is related to the safety I experienced in my mountain top bunkers.
I do not resent the millions of veterans who have served in the military but never seen combat, persons like my friends Don, who spent his time in Europe and told of skiing in the Alps on weekends, and Charlie who never left the United States and Howie who, in over twenty years in the “infantry,” never saw a day of combat. That was their good luck. In fact, I believe that military experience would be good for all youth. They would learn the discipline and understanding of authority necessary to succeed in life in months instead of the several years it takes youth in our contemporary society.
But civilians and non-combat veterans don’t have the experience to judge me and others like me who have survived months of combat.
This is what bothers me about our current conflicts. We have journalists, politicians and military courts with no combat experience judging men who have been in combat. Currently, we have men in prison for killing “civilians.” This enemy does not wear uniforms. Shots are fired and must be answered. In a fire fight how can you tell the difference between a “civilian” and a combatant? If someone shoots at you from a house with women and children in it, who is the guilty one if a woman or child is killed? Are you simply to stand there and be killed? Or do you shoot back and accept the reward for staying alive by being sent to Leavenworth Penitentiary by persons who don’t, and can’t, understand?