Not Even a Peep

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.
--Grass, Carl Sandburg

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields
--In Flanders Fields, John McCrae

Put the story together. Understand the story.
Ask questions of the story; make it answer you.
Make it.
--Packing Inferno, Tyler Boudreau
_____________________

A couple of years ago while driving the back roads of Vermont we stumbled upon this roadside memorial to the U.S. war dead in the Iraq part of the war on terror.

Was it merely a committed and reverential gesture? Was there the subtext of protest? It is hard to know as it was merely a field of crosses, with a simple scoreboard tallying the number.

The field on that remote road makes us wonder why there are not more protests against these wars. Why does our society accept the deaths of so many good people in questionable efforts without so much as a peep?

Since there was no suggestion that this was protest, the field of fluttering small white sheets was certainly an effort, but it seems disconnected from the reality. They suggest that the sacrifice of the people whom the tidy white pennants represent was acceptable -- a necessary expedient for the good of man. But we cannot accept this proposition as the war dead did not achieve any greater good.

How can a society willing to sacrifice its young for dreamlike fantasies prosper? Of course, that is the ultimate significance of the cross, and as a society we have ingested the goodness of the sacrificial lamb.

It is Ranger's unchristian belief that death is not to be celebrated; it is much too final.

[For mike. We will be addressing sacrifice and myth-making next week.]

Ghost Busting

No event in American history
is more misunderstood
than the Vietnam War.
It was misreported then,
and it is misremembered now
--Richard M. Nixon

~~Are you a God?
~~No.
~~Then... DIE!
~~Ray, when someone asks you
if you're a god, you say "YES"!
--Ghostbusters (1984)

But give my daddy a job 'cause he needs one
He's got lots of mouths to feed
But if you've got one, I'll have a machine gun
So I can scare all the kids down the street
--Father Christmas, the Kinks
___________________

Our post Stone Gardens looked at the quantity of death which war commands.

This post looks at how we render those deaths. Myth-making has always been an important part of how a culture copes with its losses. While the purpose of myths is to bestow some meaning upon the killing, sometimes the mythic stories are just that -- myths.

At various online sites, including historynet.com is a moving memorial by Norman Brookman to comrade Henry Lee Bradshaw found at the Vietnam War Memorial, but something about the entry struck Ranger as amiss. It is an almost cliche (as one commenter notes) wonderful letter of courage, pathos and lost comrades, but it fails upon close analysis.

While the story and letter may be true, the empty cartridge case and the bullet so integral to the telling are not compatible. The cartridge case is clearly a 7.62 x 39 casing, which would have been fired by an AK/AKM/SKS or RPD machine gun; however, the projectile is NOT an AK projectile.

The round appears to have a greater sectional density than the 122/123 grain 7.62 bullet. It more closely seems to resemble a 6.5 Japanese WW II bolt action round. The diameter of the bullet is much smaller than the case mouth, which should nominally measure .311". The bullet in the photo lacks a clear cannelure (crimp groove).

It is extremely doubtful that this round was launched from this cartridge case. Further, if this was a fire fight, how can one cartridge case be determined to have been the case that killed a particular trooper?

At its worst, hyperbole and glurge is used to prop up meaningless slaughter. Mr. Brookman may have served with Mr. Bradshaw, but he should not have used props so obviously incompatible.

Hero's tales are not sacrosanct. This sort of abuse deserves to be busted.

Stone Garden

In the bungling and bellicosity that constitute
the back and forth of history,
worsened by natural disasters and unprovoked cruelty,
humble citizens pay the highest price.
--Paul Theroux

Blessed [are] the peacemakers:
for they shall be called the children of God
--Matthew 5:9

I've got a tombstone hand
and a graveyard mind,
I'm just twenty-two
and I don't mind dying
--Bo Diddley
_________________

Understanding that a peacekeeping is not the same thing as a peacemaking . . .

When traveling Ranger sticks to the routes that lead to the small towns; his destination, to find the heartland in each region. Much as in Europe, most small towns here have war memorials, and it is disquieting when passing through these towns, many of which so faithfully memorialize their war dead, to realize the number of men who were sacrificed for our country.

For the smallest towns it is almost outrageous the number of men who didn't come home -- men not easily replaced, men who were the solid core of a slice of America. The vacuum left behind must have been staggering to all involved, and the losses were not a one-time occurrence.

In one town, the Vietnam KIA's outnumbered the WW II losses; in another, Korea had claim on that honor over the Republic of Vietnam. One town among the many with such memorials is the tidy little enclave of Walpole, N. H., home to documentarian Ken Burns and located in the Monadnock region, childhood stomping grounds of Lisa's mother. The town is very much as it was 70+ years ago, and could serve as a Twilight Zone set of prototypical small town America.

The Walpole war memorial was one block off the downtown square, and was among a small walking area divided according to conflict. The names of the killed were chiseled in stone long after any heart remembered the actual faces -- young men forever lost.

The last chiseled panel was dedicated to "Peacekeepers". Not everyone realizes that peacekeeping can be a deadly pursuit, and many people died from this little town trying to keep the peace in far-flung zones. One wonders what peace they were trying to keep, and how long -- if at all -- it was kept. Whatever the answer, they ended up becoming a memory etched on a cold granite section of wall.

But the peacekeepers recede as one pans to the final panels, for the town of Walpole has had the foresight to place totally empty panels of granite at the end of the wall, to be filled in as needed, as new wars arise and new dead fall.

Iraq and Afghanistan will be ninth and tenth on Walpole's tally of wars that have gobbled up soldiers as if they were Girl Scout cookies. Now, we can anticipate new work for the chiselers on a wall called "Libya", or maybe they'll go under "Peace-Keepers", depending on how the Men Who Label Wars decide the matter.

But whatever the categorization, servicepeople keep dying and some tourists dutifully witness the names on the plaques. The continuity of such death in a society dedicated to the pursuit of happiness is a thought worthy of consideration.