War

Have you ever been to war? Most of us, myself excluded, have not been to war. Instead, it is a thing we watch in movies and root for the nation’s soldiers and sailors, Marines and want to see the enemy killed. The opposite shade is that once a war is finished a victor is proclaimed and the historians begin writing of it in intellectual terms.Some like the blood and guts while others like the mechanics and thought behind a battle here or there. Guadalcanal comes to mind as does the use of atomic bombs rather than troops to put an end to Japan’s war with America. Hell, I was brought up on World War Two as a near steady diet. Then, all those years later, I got sent to Vietnam or, as I phrase it, I grew the hell up and went from heroics to shreds of body parts and the smell that went with those body parts.

Once home, I had to “get over” that war. I tried women and college and partying to do so. It never happened but I had a lot to seek forgiveness for due to my attempts. Once all the debauchery was done I got married and had children. That was fifty years ago that I married. How the hell I managed to stay married is a miracle unto itself.

You see, the lady I married had not been to war but was a registered nurse so we had body parts and gore in common. Like stories but different theaters. Hers a hospital and mine with no discernible structure to house such misery. No professional staff to pick up a persons arm and stick in back on a shoulder. Just watch a young man bleed out is all I could do. Tourniquets are sometimes overrated. It is the “young man” part that never left me. Children in adult bodies who had no idea what they were getting into in boot camp.

It’s an odd thing, war. As I grew old I began wondering where we all would be had war never been invented. Of course, that would have required perfection in human beings and nothing short of perfection. Perfect people would make no mistakes, given what little we understand about perfection. War is always a mistake but it is part and parcel of humanity as we know it, There is no such thing as: “The last war.” At least, not yet.

All of this is why I ducked for cover into the bible. That book alone brought me back to the reality of what human kind actually is: imperfect. Recognizing this I had to switch horses and stop bad mouthing those who screwed up their own lives as mine was screwed up for decades due to war. I didn’t realize it when I was drunk and that was the escape for me. What that escape stopped was my going through the pain of recognition that I had been responsible for killing others and that is a burden I wish on no one. Talk about you bad day! Try reconciling being alive when so many you served with are dead. Dead at an age where all their lives were in front of them. War is a nasty business and should be stopped before it starts. Then again, there is that bugger called imperfection and minds easily corrupted to believe that killing is a good thing when the opposite is true. The opposite is not “love,” the opposite is “do no harm.” Do no harm, the Hippocratic oath that doctors supposedly swear to should be relegated to politicians also. War sucks and you can hear that noise from around the world. That sucking sound from imperfect and easily fooled men and women who rule for so brief a time as to think that they govern is laughable. God and Christ will govern soon and that is what I look forward to. Even if I am dead when that happens I hope to see all of you over on the other side. That means we did something right and that means the world to all of us, don’t you think?

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