Facing the Loss of Innocence

     I got a little feisty the other day on Facebook with a younger person who didn't deserve my preaching on a subject dear to my heart. I apologize to that person. Ranting has become so rantingly rampant today and I vowed I wouldn't lower myself to the Rube level of the majority of what I see in blogs and on Facebook. You can only take so much of the  'F'  word until it's time to leave the scene. What's happened to civility in our society? What's happened to what the society of the 18th century called 'True Wit.?' What's happened to what our parents taught us as 'simple manners' in dealing with other people? I got testy upon a certain subject and overstepped my bounds. We veterans used to sit around and joke about such things;  how we would answer the age-old question of "what did you do in the war, daddy?" if it were ever posed to us when we reached the shores of home.
     It's an old question. One that I grew up with, because the majority of parents of my generation (including just about every male in my father's family) served during The Big One. Me and every other kid in my neighborhood traded important information about what our fathers did - or did not do - during The Big One. There was the inevitable progression of following in a father's footsteps. So it was no coincidence that most of  the men in my company of Marines came from families that had served heavily in World War II - and now it was a new war with a new generation, and as Senator James Webb has pointed out in a lot of his writing, it seems the same set of characters keeps feeding into the American military institution and the wars, conflicts, and police actions that ensue when the bell rings, and American military might is brought to the fore.
Caution: Some of the same set of characters. I like to think that the "question" had it's origin after the American Civil War when for a Hundred Dollars you could buy your way out of getting on a train that's headed for Vicksburg. There was no regret these future family men had to face unless little Sonny Jim asked him the inevitable question. Someone else can go, I'm not, and here's some money to grease the skids.
Mary Kearney set it all straight for me one day down at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Mary, originally from Scotland, is married to a Vietnam Veteran. We got into a discussion about one of the darker issues of the Vietnam War - Draft Dodging. If you're a Vietnam Veteran, especially one that got caught up in the net of the Draft during that era, a visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is enough to put you right back into a time and place you would rather forget. Mary continued on the straight edge: "For every name on that wall, for every 58,000-and-some, there is someone who made a choice not to go, and I would want them to come down here and try to identify who went in their place - I want them to ask themselves - Do you know the man who took your place?"
     We don't know why people are drawn to one of the most visited memorials in Washington, D.C. Most of the reasons are deeply private. If you're somebody who has no direct connections to any of the names I hope you'll pick one, honor it, and take it home with you and never forget it. That will give you a good reason for visiting the Memorial.