The Tunnel

12/16/10

 

When you are twenty one years old, the world seems complicated but it is really a simpler place.  Many things, that in later years become burdened by such things as wisdom and experience, seem cut and dried, easy to understand and comfortably manageable.  You simply do your duty and everything will be just fine.  Fight for your country’s freedoms and you will feel pride and know your self-worth.  But then there also are those who completely reject these ideals.  They see this dedication to duty and country as short-sighted and misappropriated.  As a youth, I found myself in the former category, but as I matured I have mellowed in my patriotic ardor.  For decades I have been pondering those conflicting views.  I still have not come to any firm conclusions.

 

Having served in that war we simply call Vietnam, I am still haunted by the experience.  Not in a PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) sort of way.  I was one of the lucky ones who managed to avoid permanent trauma, put in their 12 months, and rotated back to “the real world”.  I like to visit the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial in Washington, DC every few years.  I do it out of remembrance and respect for those who gave the ultimate sacrifice.  I gain new perspective and feel a kindred bond, as I imagine all veterans of that conflict do when they visit.

 

The Z had been fueled and she stood idling in my drive about 7AM on that December morning.  I wanted make a quick road trip to visit a business colleague in Maryland and while in the area to visit DC, take in the sights and visit the war memorials.  The forecast called for light snow, possible sleet or freezing rain in the NC Piedmont, but I figured that I could get to Virginia before the system moved in, and the roads would be OK further north.  Heading northbound up I85, the traffic was light and I made good time through Greensboro and around Durham. The Z cruised along comfortably until about 20 miles south of the VA state line, when I got into a line of traffic slowly passing a brine truck.  Within a matter of minutes my shiny red car was thoroughly caked white.  Arrrrgh.    I must say this was an affront I could not abide, so thirty miles into Virginia, I pulled in for fuel and luckily, their car wash was in operation.  It made short work of the salt mush, and the Z emerged shiny and sleek. She was roadworthy once more.  Back to the freeway and on toward DC, the weather cooperated and I cut off onto Highway 301, crossed the bridge into Maryland.  I was on the outskirts of Annapolis by mid-afternoon.  Just another inter-stellar passage executed with aplomb.  After a pleasant dinner with my associate dockside at the marina, I settled into one of his guestrooms and planned my commute into DC the following morning

 

The urban sprawl of Washington DC is one of the most pronounced in the nation.  It is really an extension of that corridor stretching all the way up through New Jersey,  New York and Connecticut.  I dreaded the horrific task of navigating the freeways, traffic, and crowds.  But despite the weather warnings, I felt a need to see the Wall one more time.  That storm system I had cleverly avoided the previous day had caught up with me now and was beginning to affect the Tidewater region.  Heading out about 9am westbound on Highway 50, toward the district, I got to the Metro station at New Carrolton as snow flurries were lightly dusting the parking lots.  I took the orange line and was rapidly and efficiently transported into the heart of DC.  Getting off at Macy’s, I emerged onto 13th street, and was confronted with a full-blown snow storm.    Now you might think that this was a trip snuffer, that I would be deterred by this force of nature.  On the contrary, I had come prepared.  I had worn my ZeroXPosur parka and double-layered my pants, socks, and gloves.  I had a scarf to breathe into.  I was ready.  While the other mostly government workers and a few under-dressed tourists were being punished by the elements, I boldly trudged out into the wind, went down 14th street to Constitution Avenue, and walked up the knoll to the Washington Monument, made even more majestic by the two inches of fresh snow.  Just down the hill from this obelisk to the west you come to a small side street with a pedestrian crosswalk and light, probably to assist the masses to cross when the weather is better.  There was no traffic, and no crowd for that matter.  Walking up the arching walkway I took in the utter grandeur of the World War II Veterans Memorial.  It looked peaceful in its new blanket of snow, and I was the first one there it appeared since no footprints were spaced out ahead of me.

 

The memorial is a large circle of marble pillars and commemorates the efforts and sacrifices of the entire nation during that “good war”.   It is divided into two halves, one representing the Atlantic war and the other the Pacific campaigns with each column defining one state in our union.  I proceeded around the perimeter to find the “Indiana” stone.   It was there that I would say a silent prayer for my parents and relatives who served overseas and on the home front during that horrific struggle.  As I trudged through the ever deepening snow I came around the southern side, and finally found the “Indiana” pillar.  There was a convenient bench just a few yards away, and I sat in my warm parka, and paid my tributes.  After a few minutes, I noticed two people approaching from the side that faces the Washington monument.  They were bundled up like I was, and I appreciated and admired their determination to see this site.  They could have been warm and dry in one of the museums, but no, here they were.  They stepped in front of “Indiana” and pulled out what I surmised was a camera, then started posing.    More pilgrims from the Heartland coming to pay respects, I thought.  Suddenly one of these fellow visitors drew back his hood.   He was Japanese!  His companion also de-hooded and they exchanged foreign words as they proceeded to take several more shots while working their way around the perimeter of the memorial.   I was stunned and I couldn’t figure it.   These Japanese tourists were paying respects to the very memorial that commemorates their defeat.   They weren’t old enough to be veterans themselves.  What were they doing here in these conditions?   I still don’t know exactly, of course, but I like to think that it was catharsis, Perhaps this process truly is a universal need of the human spirit.  Perhaps there is hope after all.

 

I started to move away from the WWII memorial and took the north side of the reflecting pool, which was perfectly filled with virgin snow, up toward the Lincoln memorial.  Of course, this building is very impressive with its many steps and massive Corinthian columns.  You gaze in wonder at the art work on the walls, but the thing that impresses most is the emptiness.  The statue of Lincoln is quite large, but despite the crowd of onlookers, it still feels as though he is alone in the surroundings.  Perhaps he felt that way as he tried to hold this nation together.    I proceeded down the steps and if you go to the right you come to the Korean War memorial, and then the DC memorial commemorating all of the other wars in our nation’s history.  I made a brief stop at these, then doubled back and went to the left and after walking down a beautiful barren, tree-lined lane about one hundred feet, you see the Wall, the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial.

 

When you approach it, there is an eerie impression of a tunnel.  The black marble starts only a few inches wide, then it gradually grows in height as more and more names are listed.  It absorbs you like some black hole, and suddenly you are intertwined with the fifty eight thousand imagined faces of these Americans whose spirits are linked here.  I walked slowly down to the juncture in the middle where the Wall is highest.  The walk was quite slippery as the snowfall had subsided and started to melt.  The salt crews had not shown up yet and I nearly went onto my backside three times.  But I somehow managed to keep my feet, catching myself in these falls each time, not injured.  I had managed to dodge the jeopardy once again.    I recovered, sitting on a snow-covered bench, and reflected.  Why is our nation always at war?  Is it in our very nature somehow, like some penance for our past sins?   And then I went drifting back.  I had asked these questions before…………

 

Ten Times

 

David didn’t know what to do.  He really didn’t want to go,  but he knew he had to.  NO, he wanted to go, to do his duty.  If it was to make him a man, then he would do it gladly.  He was a good son, an aspiring patriot, and the apple of his parents’ eyes.  Being an only child had been such a burden sometimes.  And now it was his duty to go.

 

He wondered how it would be over there.  What kind of hell hole was it really?  You saw on the news, all the dirt and hardship.  And soon he would experience it first hand.  Could he really kill a man if he had to?  Could he pull the trigger on another human being?  The prospects made him shudder.  But he couldn’t feel weak about it now.  He had to put on a strong face.  He would do his duty.

 

He worried about his mother.  After all, she had already been through this very thing before.  Her sorrowful eyes haunted him.  When Marjorie Rose was a teen, she had watched her Wendell go off to war.    When Wendell left, he was only 17 and the whole world was in jeopardy.  Marjorie had wanted to marry him before he shipped out, but Wendell said it was better to wait.  If he didn’t come back, then Marjorie could find some other boy to marry.  So she waited and waited till Wendell came home.  That war was finally over and he had come through it all right.  And now she was watching her beloved son David do the same thing.

 

How cruel is the course of our lives sometimes.  Marjorie was feeling the whole thing again, the despair and worry.  David, her only son, was shipping out to Vietnam.  That damned war.  What were we doing over there in the first place?  Why did he have to go when so many others didn’t?    And this time, the evening news would remind her constantly about the fighting, not like World War II when she only got an occasional letter.   Wasn’t it enough that her generation had done its duty?  Wasn’t that war supposed to win the peace?

 

So David felt really bad for his mother.  But then he realized that the scenario was really not new.  Both his grandmothers had felt the same thing.  He was simply following in the footsteps of all his male relatives during the twentieth century.  His grandfather, John Cahall, had served in the Phillipines just after the Spanish-American war in 1906.   His grandfather, Wylie Malicoat, had been a doughboy in France during World War I.    Then there was uncle Donald who became a fighter pilot in the South Pacific in 1942.   And uncle Warren, who was a marine on Iwo Jima.  His uncle Earl had been in the tank corps with Patton at the Battle of the Bulge.  His other uncle Donald had stormed ashore on D-Day in 1944.  Then, after that war was over, there was shortly another one that called his family to duty.   His uncles Gene and Howard had served in Korea at Inchon in 1951.   Somehow, by God’s grace, his father, grandfathers, and all but one of his uncles had returned home.    His uncle Gene did not come back.  Ten times, his family members had fought in our nation’s wars during the twentieth century.

 

And now it was David’s turn in 1968.   He knew that, in the end, he would just suck it up and do the honorable thing.  But then there was Diana.  He loved her so much.  They had been going together since high school.  They were meant to be together.  Should they get married now or wait until he got back?  His parents wanted him to wait, just as they had done.  But Diana wanted to get married now so badly.      What to do?   What to do?.................

 

The Light at the end

 

The roman emperor/philosopher Marcus Aurelius is credited with asking.  “If our civilization is built upon the utter destruction of our enemies, then are we not condemned to eventually suffer their fate?”   I worry about our nation’s fate.  Our wars are endless, new ones seeming to pop up even up before the last ones are over.  Somewhere in the scheme of the universe, our wartime successes and transgressions, whether we judge them as good or evil, will be recounted.    Let us hope that there will be a merciful light at the end of the tunnel.