Thank You For Your Service

“We have only outdone the Romans in turning metaphors like the war on terrorism, or poverty, or AIDS into actual wars on targets we appear, often, to pick at random in order to maintain turbulence in foreign lands.” Gore Vidal, Dreaming War

Cal never liked Veteran’s Day. Too overhyped. What were we celebrating, after all, but death and destruction? He avoided the parade down State Street, white-haired WWII and Vietnam era vets riding in vintage Army jeeps, waving little flags at the people lining the sidewalk. Everybody clapping. Every year a foursome of old bombers flew over the city, low and lugubrious. Cal thought WWII was righteous, necessary, but every American war since had been dubious, and the so-called War on Terror was a cruel joke, an endless joke, with too many boys coming back maimed or mental. The government had little use for them then, and Cal saw many veterans camping on the steps of the art museum or under the overpass. If I had a son, Cal thought, I’d never let him enlist in the military. 

Cal served eight years in the Air Force. He spent three years in South Korea, one year in Japan, the rest in Texas. He enlisted a few years after Saigon fell, got discharged before the first Gulf War. He remembered the first briefing at the base outside of Wichita Falls, given by a burly Master Sergeant with a flat-top. “I advise you to steer clear of downtown in general, and in particular don’t go down there in uniform. The good ol’ boys around here don’t have much tolerance for military personnel. A couple of airmen got their asses kicked a few weeks back.” 

Times change. Now it was “thank you for your service” everywhere you went, even if, like Cal, you never served in war time. People just assumed he’d been in combat when he told him he was a vet. Since the draft was long gone, most people were clueless. Wars were remote now, out of sight, forgotten. It was hard to believe that young people once flooded the streets to protest the war in Vietnam. The government doesn’t even bother to declare war any more. It’s usually the president who decides that some country or terrorist group is an imminent threat. Once the shooting starts the media loses its mind, oohing and aahing and interviewing retired generals who can’t say enough about America’s ordnance, which is so sophisticated and precise that only enemy forces are targeted. If civilians die it’s never on purpose. You’d think they were talking about Tom Brady’s throwing arm. Dissenting voices are blacked out, so it feels as if the entire country is of one mind. Cal marveled at the effectiveness of the brainwashing; it didn’t take much to convince people that the latest shooting war was justified. It wasn’t like Vietnam when every night on the evening news there were images and casualty figures. Vietnam felt close and real.  

Cal drew the curtains in the living room. Across the street his neighbor Roger had put his American flag out. Roger never served in the military, but he loved the technology of war, especially fighter jets and drones. Roger thought the US had every right to bomb what he called evil nations like North Korea and Iran. Roger got pissed off one time when Cal told him that the US was the biggest threat to peace in the world. Cal had just shrugged and told Roger to check the history, it was all there. A fact is a fact, even if it contradicts what you believe. 

Don’t thank me for my service. Ask me what I did while I served. The closest I ever came to being injured was one day in a dreary little strip mall outside the base in Wichita Falls when a redneck in a Chevy pickup tossed a half-full can of Coors at my head.