The Vet's Return
Not too long ago, I wrote here about the United States’ ongoing attempts at being the protector, the “big brother,” for all the world citizens who are victims of freedom suppressing governments.
I ended that column by saying, ‘We need a rest from war.” I don’t have an answer to our options but after serving three years myself, losing my youngest brother in Korea, seeing three of my children go to the service and now with a grandson in the Marines, I deeply believe our foreign policy needs a careful review, even if the only priority is the terrible expense to the national budget.
Related to this costly business of war is the endless battles over how to think of and take care of returning veterans. Following is a column from 25 years ago, April, 1991:
A Montana veteran of World War II vintage made state news last week after he was quoted in the syndicated newspaper column of Mike Royko. The topic had to do with the soldiers of that conflict serving months that dragged into years, in bitter fighting where there were too many days when more men died in an hour than were lost in the entire Persian Gulf War.
The aging Big Sky vet mentioned a proposed bonus for Desert Shield participants and suggested the federal government also pay him a bonus ... along with interest since 1945.
Obviously Royko is not the only journalist to write on comparisons of how different returning veterans have been treated. It is an item receiving national saturation coverage in magazines and in all media.
I have received phone calls and letters on the matter. Some people are resentful of media coverage telling of yellow ribbons tied all over town, of patriotic speeches, giant welcome home parties, television galas. They say, “Where the hell was all that love of America and soldiers when I came home?”
I tell those folks, “That was then. This is now.”
I feel none of us can logically make personal judgments on public reaction to any war, outside the context of it’s time.
If a World War II vet, or more understandably, vets of Korea and Vietnam, feel newly awakened bitterness about the way things have happened lately, I understand, but dwelling on the inequities of life only keeps the wounds from healing. I know about that.
I once cursed the heavens for killing my kid brother instead of me, cursed fate, and fought bitterness that depressed me. For several years during and after the Korea business, I became a man who felt the only catharsis for his anger and frustration would be to kill Chinese and North Koreans ... fantasized about it. I was the kind of person then, I now feel pity for.
Sound terrible? It was. Hate is always terrible because it feeds on the soul. Preachers tell us that. Clear thinkers, from professors to ditch diggers say it. Bitterness may be easier to live with, but it is still hate, watered down.
I feel badly that there are people who have not found a way to live with “their war.” I feel even worse, knowing that they feel anything but joy for the way the Persian Gulf War ended so quickly and our country gave such a tremendous welcome home to our troops.
Some people seem to be overlooking a truth that I know as an absolute, “Those young people we sent to the Persian Gulf would have fought that war just as valiantly, just as professionally, and just as doggedly, if it had lasted three years like Korea and cost us fifty thousand lives.”
The essential, “the key word is COMMITTAL.” Those kids, those service men and women, like the ones in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, Panama, Iraq, et cetera, committed their lives to do the most terrifying ask on earth.
In measuring veterans, the bottom line to me is not how long the war lasted or how many we lost.
The ultimate question is, “Did you go? Did you do what had to be done?”
They did that. I watched them come home, and thanked them from the bottom of my heart, because I understood.
* Note — Will try to be less serious next week.
George Ostrom is an award-winning columnist. He lives in Kalispell.