Mondays with Mike: The War Horse

My father and his three brothers served in the armed forces during WWII. I grew up with a simplistic reverie for them, and the armed forces, and had that simplistic, callow view that the good guys won. My dad and my uncles were good guys. The good guys did win.

My dad (left), uncle George (center), and Uncle Dave were in the Army. Uncle Steve was a Navy guy.

They were good guys, but it was and still isn’t simple. Their lives were completely interrupted and one of them came home physically, but he never was himself again. Once an avid hunter, he swore of firearms forever. He wasn’t right, he self-medicated, and he died way too soon. My dad and two other brothers lived on, but they didn’t talk about the war.

Today, when I go to a White Sox game, a serviceman—active or veteran—is honored. It happens in all MLB parks, and other sports do the same. I have mixed feelings about these ceremonies. For one, my father, I know this, would have had nothing to do with such a thing. For another, showing a service person on the jumbotron and cheering wildly seems to be as much about the crowd as it is the honoree.

It’s seems a little cheap, a little easy. A few weeks ago the honoree was a veteran who had served during the Battle of the Bulge. I mean, holy cow.

As a simple thank you, I guess it’s OK. I just think, there’s a lot more to know about what people who serve deal with. And it’s a lot.

Beth’s sister married an Army helicopter pilot. They raised a family and lived in Tennessee. And Alabama. And Georgia. And Hawaii and Germany (twice). Sounds kind of exotic but it couldn’t have been easy.

Give it a look.

Anyway, I say all this by way of recommending a web publication I came across a few years ago called The War Horse. It’s good journalism about– and mostly by–members of the armed forces, and it gets into what they face—individually and as families. It is not a rah-rah thing, and it looks at really difficult things. I’ve learned a lot about today’s volunteer Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and U.S Coast Guard.

And I’ve learned to check any preconceived notions at the door.

As a test run, I highly recommend this piece: Reflecting on the 20th Anniversary of the 9/11 Attacks

It’s by a former Army F-16 pilot who policed the no-fly zone in Iraq in the 1990s. His wife served in the Air Force. He eventually left, became a commercial airline pilot, and was laid off after 9/11. He ended up back in the Reserves, flying fighters, and was deployed to Iraq and eventually to Afghanistan.

It’s a remarkably nuanced and enlightening piece from someone with a relatively rare set of experiences. I hope you’ll give it a read and make The War Horse part of your regular reading. And I’ll leave you with a passage:

I thought I would get to rest once I retired. I spent my entire military life worrying about “foreign enemies.” The “domestic enemies” in my oath seemed like some boilerplate that they included as an afterthought. But here I am, eight years after leaving uniform and 20 years after 9/11, and I worry almost exclusively about what my country is doing to itself.