| Folks:
I am writing this from the Marines
Memorial Club and Hotel,
in San Francisco.
The Marines Memorial Club was founded after World War II.
Marine veterans
used “profits” from the Post Exchanges in the
Pacific Theater to buy an old
hotel. They thought it a better use of the money than duplicating
the Iwo
Jima Memorial that stands just outside Arlington National
Cemetery in
Virginia.
I am a Life Member of the club. I enlisted in the Marine
Reserves in the
summer of 1962, right after graduating from Harvard. I went
to Parris Island,
South Carolina, and learned a lot in just six months, although
I was just a
reservist and was never called up. I learned how to kill
people with a rifle,
a pistol, hand grenades, flamethrowers, mortars, a 106mm
recoilless rifle
mounted on a jeep, and with my bare hands if necessary. Perhaps
more
important, I learned (as much as one can in training) to
kill without regret,
without a second thought. When June of 1963 came around I
was a different
person.
I was, and still am, a proud member of the world’s
largest non-Greek letter
fraternity, the United States Marine
Corps. As others have
said, you go to
war for your country, and you fight for your buddies, the
ones on either side
of you. Several years ago I saw a woman in a MARINES! tee
shirt by a disabled
car along the Beltway and stopped. She said she and her kids
were okay,
someone was coming, and I left. I am still ashamed I didn’t
wait with her
until help arrived.
There has never been a time in the recorded history of our
species that
warriors have not been needed, and few times when they have
not been used.
Last year I visited Costa Rica, which years ago traded in
its army for some
of the world’s highest rates of literacy and health
care. I’d love to see
it, but I’m not holding my breath until the Costa Rican
plan spreads around
the planet.
Between the marching to war and the marching home, there
is a lot of pain and
sorrow. Then both come home. I have read a lot about wars,
both the “what
happens” and the “why.” I recommend “All
Quiet on the Western Front” and “
The
Road Back” for a look at World War One and its
effects on Germany. For
surrealist looks at later wars, you can’t beat “Catch
22” and its Viet Nam
counterpart, “Going
after Cacciato.”
What we are missing in “Operation
Iraqi Freedom” is
that pain and suffering.
With the partial exception of the story of Jessica Lynch,
God bless her, we
are seeing a “live” video game. Whether it’s
CNN or Al Jazeera, whether
it’s pro or con, you can’t feel the fear, you
can’t smell the powder, you
can’t see the blood.
Whether you’re on the winning side or the losing side,
whether the ratios of
killed and wounded are disproportionate as in Iraq or closer
to even as in
our Civil War, the lives of real people are changed forever.
This morning I
watched CNN’s five minutes covering the family’s
response to the death of
the first female Native American killed in Iraq. No one is
covering the Iraqi
deaths by name. There wouldn’t be time.
I am including in this “Note on the News” a
Letter
to the Editor of the San
Francisco Chronicle from a veteran of the Korean War. I read
it over
breakfast in the Skyroom atop the Marines Memorial Club.
The restaurant has
breathtaking views of one of America’s most beautiful
cities.
Please read it as an antidote to CNN and the others, and
as an antidote to
war as entertainment. Please remember that all that our military
and their
families, and their military and their “collaterals” want
is to live life,
work hard, and (to paraphrase Garrison Keillor) have a chance
to come out “
above average.”
Bob
Knisely
former Corporal, USMC
WebLink Citations:
1)Memory
of Korea 50 Years After Ralph Webb, Letters
to the Editor, San Francisco Chronicle
April 5th, 2003,
Page A-16
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