Remembering War

After 60 years, Germans are revisiting their World War II history. For most of the post war era, Germans turned away from World War II, focusing on the future to show the world that the new Germany was far different from the nation that plunged Europe into a devastating war. Not surprisingly, Germans looking forward to freedom and prosperity preferred not to dwell on past defeats. A recent article in The Washington Post suggests that attitude is changing. New memoirs and reminisces by WWII veterans are being received with interest by a new generation that wants to know about their nation’s past, not to celebrate or glorify that past but rather to understand it.
German soldiers’ experiences are particularly interesting to me. They were 18 and 19 year old conscripts, thrown into a hellish world where the only real goal was survival. They fought and killed, often with determination and valor, for an unholy cause. Their reward was defeat and shame and for years they remained silent, fearing that they would be seen as Nazi killers. They had to ignore the traumatic events of their youth and the horrific emotions their war experiences generated. And they had to live with the guilt of serving the evil ambitions of the Nazis.
All this introspection leads me back to my questions about my own military service in Vietnam. I did not kill nor did I suffer the extreme trauma of WWII combat. But I was a grunt–an infantry rifleman–and was fully prepared to kill. And I experienced the fear and uncertainty of a combat environment. All for a war that I opposed. Yet there I was, doing exactly what I believed I should not do. How could I have done that?
Fear and patriotism. I was afraid to say "no" to my country. Part of it was fear of the consequences–prosecution, prison, ostracism–but it was also an unwillingness to refuse my country’s call to service. Family and tradition reinforced that call: my father and uncles served in WWII. I know that some of my contemporaries did refuse. Most, however, simply ducked the question either through luck (high draft numbers) or a variety of strategies (medical deferments) and never faced the issue head on. I faced that issue and I served my country, regardless of what I personally believed about policies it pursued in Vietnam. The German veterans now telling their stories probably went to war under similar societal and patriotic circumstances.
Like the Germans, I am reluctant to take any pride or satisfaction in my military service, even though I want to. It’s been difficult for me to claim any achievement because I will always question the cause I served, just as the German veterans have done for six decades. But just surviving combat was an achievement, especially for some one as ill-suited to the task as I was. I did not excel as a soldier but neither did I do anything to harm my unit or its operations. I was there, able to patrol, operate a radiotelephone and ready to shoot and kill. I had both the mental and physical stamina to survive one of life’s greatest dangers. Not bad for a book smart, inexperienced, inept college boy.
I want to take pride in that accomplishment just as my father and uncles did about their military service. I’m not saying I want glory and recognition for my military service. I want to lay to rest the questions that have haunted me for more than three decades.
Knowing that the Vietnam war was bad policy even as I served, will always cloud my understanding of my service. Like the German veterans, I have recently come to the realization that I can separate my service from the cause I served. This doesn’t exorcize my ghosts but it does put them at bay. I can see now that the choices I made and the actions I took were the best I could do at the time. I dealt with the circumstances as I found and understood them. And I survived the challenge, largely due to luck, but also in part because I summoned the strength and will to survive. Damn right. I should be proud of that.
Note that my accomplishment has little to do with my country’s objectives in Vietnam. Those were entirely irrelevant to me. What I did mattered little in the long run. The forces of Vietnamese history and nationalism were destined to outlast the American war there, just as they had outlasted invaders and would-be colonizers for centuries before Americans even knew Vietnam existed. My accomplishment meant simply staying alive and supporting my fellow grunts in their effort to do the same, one day at a time.
In the jungle, on the battlefield, foreign policy and the affairs of nations are a remote abstraction, far removed from the daily struggle for life that is reality in combat.