-By Vince Johnson
As many of you may realize, My Commentary is more than a hobby to me. It is my soapbox. In a way, it is therapeutic. Recent circumstances have made this monthly exercise more therapeutic than ever. It was a minor cardiac event. The fifth one since a quad by-pass in 1990. I had to lie around in bed for nearly two days. No radio. Not in the mood for magazines. Did a crossword and a lot of thinking.
Much of the thinking was devoted to the royal mess this country is coping with. I did a mental exercise to pass the time. I wondered what I would do if the President asked me for some advice. Within a few minutes, I had the entire thought clear in my mind. When I got home, I wrote it down and tweaked it a bit.
I read it repeatedly. It is exactly how I feel about Iraq and what we should do. So, what do I do with it? Turn it into a commentary and mail it out? Maybe it will offend somebody. Well, maybe not. So what? I am 79 now. I’ve been around. I can handle it.
Some background might clarify my dilemma. I was in the Navy during WW II and Korea. I never got within a thousand miles of a combat zone, but I saw a part of war you rarely hear about. Movies are about the bombing and bleeding. I didn’t see any of that. I saw the total and horrific agony of grief.
In 1944 at the age of 16, I was with a mother for the first hour or so after she learned Rowland, her 19-year-old son, was killed in the South Pacific. That hour was horrible. She screamed. She choked and sobbed and trembled. She beat the wall with her hands. Two or three times she hugged me so hard it was difficult to breath. I had always reminded her of Rowland. Rowland and I were both redheads. We were both built about the same. There were many times when we had peanut butter sandwiches together. He was fun. Always grinning and laughing.
On my 17th birthday, I joined the Navy. That was June 1, 1945. Sometime in 1946, I was an up patient at the U.S. Naval Hospital in San Diego. That’s when I saw another side of war that you seldom hear about.
My bed was next to a ward with twenty beds. All the patients had lost one or more limbs during battle. A huge part of the recovery from an amputation is in the mind. This ward was used as a sort of transition period. As an up patient, I was able to do things for these guys. I learned that they got along better with young kids than they did with those who were more mature. Maybe it was the “big brother” thing. There were times when I saw tears in their eyes. When I did, I looked the other way. As I said, this was a transition ward. They were preparing to go home and live in the real world. Facing life after losing a limb takes a lot of courage.
They liked me. They would kid me about my red curly hair. They sent me to the canteen to get “gedunk” and things like cigarettes and funny books. I played gin and cribbage with some of them. I played chess with one guy. We were too slow. I can’t remember if we ever finished a game. That was 61 years ago.
Now you know why I hesitate to tell the President to bring our guys back home. They have made sacrifices beyond our ability to comprehend. How can I face these guys after recommending that they give up the fight their buddies suffered horribly for? And died for?
Well I will tell you why right now. I’m finding it very difficult to look at teenagers these days when I realize that if we don’t quit trying to save the world, some of these kids will get killed somewhere far away from home. Others will lose limbs and try to hide their tears as they go along the long road to recovery. And many more mothers will collapse in grief when they get the same news thousands and thousands of others have since December 7, 1941.
We did not get the message when 36,516 Americans were killed in the Korean War. For what?
We did not get the message when 58,209 Americans were killed in the Vietnam War. For what?
As of July 13, 2007 3,898 coalition soldiers have been killed in Iraq. Of this total, 3,611 (92%) were Americans. If we are not alone in this conflict, we might as well be. It is time to bring our troops home.
(Next up, my advice for President Bush)
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Vince Johnson welcomes comments. Please send them to,Vince Johnson(vjadtrak@wvi.com)
See Vince in the new book Americans on Politics. Policy, and Pop-Culture.