WAR! to be in conflict with life?

With all the negativity that is part of war sometimes it hard to realize that conflicts have positives. I do not mean the battles won or lost, or the defeat of an enemy. I speak of friendship the bond that binds fighting men and woman together. This seen to only be on the victor’s side, but these bonds that last a lifetime and can cross boarders they are universal. In his fictional journal The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien shows just how these bonds are forged and some are lost in a physical since, but the emotions and memories are with you for the duration.

You see this in the books dedication one that maybe given to the real men or to the faded picture that these men where or since it a book of fiction it might be a dedication to O’Brien’s own imagination

“This book is lovingly dedicated to the men of Alpha Company, and in particular to Jimmy Cross, Norman Bowker, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Henry Dobbins and Kiowa”

The bond is real the world and memories have fade, but the feelings have not you get this by the fact that O’Brien repeating

“I am 43 now and a writer”

Why to remind himself perhaps that yes today he is a writer, but once he was part of something special he was a soldier with men he loved. Some of these men died, the strangest part is the fact that it not just them men in his unit that he shares this bond with it is the very enemy they fought. They too forge bonds and carry things. They also wonder did I kill that man, was it my mistake that got others killed the to carry the guilt of wartime bonds. These men on both sides can both feel and understand O’Brien when makes the statement

“I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.”

They have all been a part of the truth and must live with the story! But his tie can still been seen to day with those who fought together and those who fought against. This bond can be split and rekindle by chance. 

“ George Serkedakis and Ken Myers may have been in their last parade. They rode together on Memorial Day in a parade in the District, a couple of elderly vets of the Battle of the Bulge in a ceremonial Jeep. But Myers is closing in on 87, and Serkedakis, at 93, is finding it harder to muster the energy. They have nothing planned for the Fourth of July; neither is sure he will make it to the 99th Infantry Division Reunion in September. “I was really scared he was going to fall out of that Jeep,” says Serkedakis’s wife, Faye, 70, on recalling her husband’s last public excursion. “They are slowing down now, for sure.”But even as they bow, finally, to the inevitable struggles of age, the two still make a point of getting together. It has been more than 30 years since they rediscovered one another, but they still thrive on rehashing the remarkable fate that brought them together twice. Once on a blood- and snow-covered battlefield in Belgium, where one saved the life of the other, saved it against the direct orders of an Army doctor who had already consigned the wounded soldier to a Belgian grave. And again, three decades later, in a traffic jam in downtown Washington. “Hey buddy. Hey buddy.” Serkedakis looked over at a burly guy in a pickup. Does the name Ken Myers mean anything to you?” It didn’t. Serkedakis stared and said: “Pull over.” They stood on the curb and talked for four hours. Serkedakis had found the guy to thank. They had been living, all that time, less than five miles apart That’s what Myers and Serki have been ever since: buddies. Dinners together, parades and lots of long, repetitive talk about the same series of events. They don’t care if they’ve been through it a thousand times before. “The same stories, over and over,” said Faye Serkedakis, laughing. “They have a lot of pride about what they went through. They want to hang on to it a little longer.”

Or sometimes it can is done to remember those fallen on both sides.

“One by one, survivors from ships sunk 65 years ago Thursday in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor laid wreaths under life-preserver rings honoring their ships”

“The veterans, most in Hawaiian shirts, were honored with prolonged applause at the solemn ceremony near where some of the ships remain in the harbor, rusting and covered with algae”

“Japanese veterans who participated in the attack as navigators and pilots will also pay their respects, offering flowers at the Arizona memorial for the Americans and Japanese who died”

Those once enemy’s now share the story of war the pains, and the joys. War is not a pleasant thing, but the friendships that are formed go beyond those in a civilian world we talk about the war and here in are blog’s we try to analyze it, but we can never understand these friendships because they are not built on simple trust they are built in forge and fire of conflict and this is a truth that you must know to have this type of union.

The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien

Washington Post