When my sister was young and before I was born, my father - just back from a long, cold slog through Europe - used to jump every time there was a sonic boom or noise of any consequence. My mother recounted the time he instinctively dove for cover and pulled her with him to huddle beneath the piano. His baby in a high chair he didn't even consider, so instinctive and immediate was his reaction. In those days it was called "battle fatigue" and my father shrugged it off when we asked him what had happened. If pressed, he talked about the farmyard where he watched a fellow infantryman come unglued as snipers in the trees took aim and described the shell-shocked locals he met along the road. "I am the lucky one," he told us and it was true. And from his luck we benefited - we are here to tell the tale.
Today, as every year, I think of him, off to fight at an innocent eighteen and home again at a more jaded twenty-three; I contemplate the young Americans who've fought and died in all the conflicts since. I think, too, of their families - the spouses left behind, the kids who've lost a parent and the children never even conceived.
For the war of my generation, almost thirty-one percent of those who survived the Vietnam War suffered post traumatic stress disorder (PSTD) and some estimated put the number who died by suicide over the decades at triple that of those who were killed in battle. Now some twenty percent of veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer the same fate. The tolls of war on these lives and families must be counted, too, their suffering and sacrifices honored.
My personal deep regret and distaste for war's ravaging consequences is not limited by national boundaries or by government allegiance. Today I mourn for the soldiers conscripted into any army, any cause, and the families who anxiously wait for their return. I cry for the so-called 'collateral damage' from such violence, the civilians being wounded, killed, raped and physically displaced. On fronts too many to count or comprehend civilians today suffer emotional, economic and physical trauma from events they can neither escape nor control. And if they survive at all, like my father, their lives will have been changed forever.
If he was still here, I'd thank my dad again for faithfully charging into battle at such a tender age, as I thank all the young men and women who have followed suit in the decades since. But I wish with all my heart that as a nation and a species we could find a way to render the sacrifice unnecessary. My sons' country has been at war for more than half their lives, no end in sight, no obvious victory or relief. How humans turn so often and readily to violence as the dubious solution to problems tangled and complex I will never, ever understand. And so I remember and lament on this and every other day everyone who suffers - the individual human tragedies that travel in the wake of war.