With another Veterans Day having come and gone, I find myself recalling a conversation I had years and years ago in a veteran’s hospital in a place called Martinez, California with an old, gray-bearded survivor of World War I, named Walter. At the time, he had really impressed me with his vivid memories of “the war that was going to end all wars.” He recalled with great nostalgia everything from the sickening smell of mustard gas to the muddy, rat-infested trenches he had hunkered down in for months at a time. He talked at length about all the horrifying battlefield deaths he had witnessed and how lucky he had been to make it back alive to his beloved home state of Tennessee. He also repeated, with great emotion and clarity, the following two stanzas from his favorite poem, “In Flanders Fields”:
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short time ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders Fields.
With his eyes growing wet, he added, “That was the most god-awful war that ever was!”
“It sounds like you had a pretty tough time,” I said.
“Sonny,” he finally replied, “the sad fact is that it was also the best time of my life.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “How can the worst time of your life also be the best time of your life?”
He sat up a little straighter in his wheelchair and took a deep drag off a cigarette he wasn’t supposed to be smoking.
“Do you know how many people on this here earth have died in wars, and just in this century alone?” I shook my head `no’. “Hell, it only took Hitler about four or five years to knock off 40 million all by himself. Add in my war, Korea, your war, and all the other little wars that are always going on someplace and I bet we’re talking over 100 million easy.”
The number seemed mind-boggling. He rolled his wheelchair closer to my bed.
“I bet you think everyone in their right mind hates wars, don’t you, Sonny?” I thought about it for a moment and nodded my head `yes’. “Well, Sonny, you’re wrong. If everyone hated it, we’d stop doing it, now wouldn’t we?” I smiled, and it seemed to upset him.
“I’m serious!” he said. “We make war awful appealing, and for a lot of guys like me, it was the biggest adventure of our life. Hell, I got to see all kinds of places I’d never have seen otherwise, met all kinds of interesting people, and everyone treated me like a king when I got back home. Plus the whole time I was overseas, I pretty much got to act as crazy and stupid as I wanted. I guess once people agree that killing each other is okay, then all the other rules get tossed into the crapper, too.”
His facial expression turned even more serious and he lowered his voice.
“I don’t mind telling war my stories, Sonny. Fact is, I love to tell `em since there ain’t much else to do in here anyway. But every generation also owes it to the next to tell some of the truth about war, too – how it ain’t all medals and glory – how damned scary the fighting is – how all the wrong people always end up getting themselves killed – how bloody and ugly the dying is – and how few times it settles a god-damned thing.”
He put out his cigarette with his arthritic fingers, placed the filter in his shirt pocket, and positioned his wheelchair to leave.
“It’s been good talking to you, Sonny.”
“I appreciate you stopping by,” I said.
“I always make it a point to welcome you Vietnam boys.”
“It was nice meeting you, Walter.”
“My pleasure. And don’t forget, somewhere along the line, try to remind a few people in the next generation just how god-awful war really is.”
I nodded my head that I would.