dulce et decorum est

Right before summer vacation in junior high, I remember ordering a book off the Scholastic catalogue.  I believe it was in 7^th grade - when I consumed anything that reminded me of Anne of Green Gables.  I saw a book in that catalogue with a girl in a pretty white dress from the earlier part of the 20^th century and decided I must have it for my summer reading.  The book was After the Dancing Days.  Anne of Green Gables it was not.

It was my first real comprehension of the Great War.  I had some vague notion that my grandmother’s father was in France.  I remember taking a picture and something of his uniform into school for a project.  But I had no idea that coupled with that was mustard gas and barbed wire and a disassociation from society that was the reward for surviving.

That book had an impact on me.  It awakened within me a bizarre (for a girl) fascination with military history and literature.  I went on to explore the details of other great battles in our country’s history, but I always seem to come back to the Great War.  I am lingering there this weekend.  Not so much in the contemplation of No Man’s Land or the Somme, but the aftermath and all the soldiers who came home to victory but did not quite belong to the society that celebrated them.

I think of that as I go on Facebook and have my yearly annoyance with all the obligatory posts of gratitude to the soldiers.  I don’t begrudge the idea of it… and yet I keep thinking about that book I read when I was twelve.  About a soldier who had no interest in the parades or the medals that came with the victory of coming home… because it just didn’t make sense after all that was lost.

I suppose saying thank you is the easiest way for us to acknowledge a sacrifice we ourselves don’t make.  And saying it on Facebook is painless and reaps the reward of likes from sympathetic friends.  But is it… really gratitude?  Is it really a demonstration of appreciation of that sacrifice?  And are we really honoring those who pay the price for that sacrifice?

This is definitely a debatable opinion, but I, through the reflection of many others, have concluded that the ones who died are the lucky ones.  Not that those who are left to mourn them are in any way fortunate… but the soldiers who come back alive have lost the lives they knew before are the ones who make the ultimate sacrifice.  Because (and yes this is 100% conjecture from reading and not life experience I do not want to have) there will never again be a life without knowing the horrors of war.  

Horrors that lead to an even more terrible casualty.  Suicide.  One of the leading causes of death from the Middle East wars today is suicide.  It’s a really uncomfortable thing to think about.  It pops up in the news every once in a while… but we don’t talk about it.  We just have parades and speeches and posts on Facebook… and that’s how we cope.

But maybe that’s how those of us who don’t know the horrors of war do cope.  It’s been that way in every war.  It’s easier to just draw close the blinds of apprehension and say thank you so we don’t have to talk about it.

I know these few rambling paragraphs are no more an answer or a comfort to a soldier.  I’m sure my poetic postings aren’t any more meaningful than trite blurbs of gratitude on Facebook.  But I suppose the poems, like the thankyous, are more about the people who post them and how one copes with the feeling of helplessness of not being able to say exactly how glad I am I did not have to make that sacrifice myself and only have my understanding of the horrors of war, of surviving a war, through a book I read in seventh grade.