Men Like Us

I wish I could talk to you, you could talk to me
'Cause there very few of us left my friend
From the days that used to be.
--Days That Used to Be, Neil Young

Caught in ambush lay a company of riflemen
Just grenades against machine guns in the gloom
Caught in ambush till this one of twenty riflemen
Volunteered volunteered to meet his doom
--The Ballad of Rodger Young,
Frank Loesser
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The previous piece concerned the detritus of war and the soiled, mangled bodies that have washed up on our beaches. Unlike pelicans, however, many of these soldiers will never be released back into their ecosystems once they reach the apex of their treatment.

This fact led me to reflect upon what separates soldiers from civilians, and what taxpayers and their leaders fail to understand about war. There is one common denominator for soldiers that makes us different. Civilians do not choose where they are going to die, and often carry a sort of magical thinking about staving off that inevitable day. They accept whatever cards fate deals them, though often grudgingly so.

However, soldiers choose every time they pick up their tired bodies and move down the road. When we step off an airplane in a war zone or jump into a hostile DZ or hit a beach or fly over a protected hostile terrain, we are saying that is where we are willing to die.

This is our distinctive designator and it goes beyond tabs, badges or medals. it is what we are and what we do. Some of us make and some of us don't; some of us are wounded and some mangled, but we always had a choice -- we always geared up and moved out. And that is what makes us different until the day that we die.

We didn't talk, we acted, and nothing can change that fact. This is why many people are uncomfortable being around us. We have a purity that is beyond their comprehension.