In there book Since You Went Away: World War II Letters from American Women on the Home Front Judy Barrett Litoff and David C. Smith show that during the trying times of World War Two those who wrote letters knew this charge very well one chapter is in tiled the price of victory in this chapter you have letters that start not being written to those that have go to war, but instead to those who are charged with leading the war. Most notable General Douglass Macarthur. 

“Liberation! So long our hearts have yearned for this moment when Old Glory again proudly ripples in the breeze over The Islands-we’ve preyed so earnestly for it – have pushed with you and with every fiber of our being”

These thoughts of can also be see in Rudyard Kipling’s poem The Choice.

The American Spirit speaks:

TO the Judge of Right and Wrong
    With Whom fulfilment lies
Our purpose and our power belong,
    Our faith and sacrifice,

Let Freedom’s Land rejoice!
    Our ancient bonds are riven;
Once more to us the eternal choice
    Of Good or Ill is given.

Not at a little cost,
    Hardly by prayer or tears,
Shall we recover the road we lost
    In the drugged and doubting years.

But, after the fires and the wrath,
    But, after searching and pain,
His Mercy opens us a path
    To live with ourselves again.

In the Gates of Death rejoice!
    We see and hold the good-
Bear witness, Earth, we have made our choice
    With Freedom’s brotherhood!

Then praise the Lord Most High
    Whose Strength hath saved us whole,
Who bade us choose that the Flesh should die
    And not the living Soul!

To the God in Man displayed-
    Wheree’er we see that Birth,
Be love and understanding paid
    As never yet on earth!

To the Spirit that moves in Man,
    On Whom all worlds depend,
Be Glory since our world began
    And service to the end!

These words touch on every aspect of the price of victory the sacrifice, the tears, the choice, and freedom. These words are very similar to some of the words that I have read and heard in the last few weeks of this semester. In his blog Life through the eyes of a Data Marine Psybain speaks of the price.

“You won’t see me cheering and clamoring for another 10 years of US forces in Iraq, nor will I demand we all pull out now. I think a timetable is stupid. If we said we’d leave in a year, the insurgents would wait us out for a year, knowing that we’d be gone soon and they could act a fool then.”

This is the sentiments of many of those who serve they do not wish to go on fighting for years, but it not up to them. As a marine said at a rally I went to

“The armed forces have two jobs one it to train and be prepared for combat. The seconded job is to achieve victory when in combat. Believe me we want to win NO we need to win it is what we train for. “ 

These words remind me of one of my favorite writers Thomas Paine for those who might not know or remember Mr. Paine is one of the forefathers of the United States he wrote an essay called Common Sense. He has two quotes if feel help define what those who both fight and those who want us not to continue the fight.

“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates his duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”

As this conflict continues there will be more deaths and there will be more anger and there will be more separation between those who want victory and those who want out.  

I experienced something new this week I was called a “PRO-WAR” conservative, because I want victory in the War. I not sure anyone is “PRO-WAR” war is a destructive form of diplomacy or perhaps it might be a failed form of diplomacy. Victory is that not the goal of any war! So if that makes me “PRO-WAR” then I guess I have to live with it since I feel we need to victory not for us, but for those who we have put in harms way and for those who have given all for victory!

“Faces of the Fallen” this is a link to those who died in service to their nation!

Washington Post

The Choice by Rudyard Kipling

Since You Went Away: World War II Letters from American Women on the Home Front Judy Barrett Litoff David C. Smith

Life through the eyes of a Data Marine by Psybain

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

“They marched us to the main courtyard and lined us by alphabet at tables. This the Germans did very good always they did everything very systematic and it was all done in one day”.

Elli Wiesel would see this system again in the book Night, this time it would be seen for a lifetime,

” In the afternoon, they made us line up. Three prisoners brought a table and some medical instrument. We were told to roll up our left sleeves and file past the table. The three “veteran” prisons, needles in hand, and tattooed numbers on our left arms I became A-7713. From then on I had no other name”.

Is this fact of the Nazi’s prolific recoded keeping that moves this from just Genocide to the Holocaust? Now don’t get me wrong the lost of life and the torment that they endured is still minded numbing. It is however Genocide the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural groups just as all the others in history. Like the very one that is in the news today. You would of course think that I am speaking of Darfur no I speak of the Armenian Genocide that happened in 1915 during World War I over a million died and still today it is only a Genocide not a Holocaust. What truly saddens me is the position some Israelis take on it.

“Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres visited Ankara and announced, “We reject attempts to create a similarity between the Holocaust and the Armenian allegations. Nothing similar to the Holocaust occurred. What the Armenians went through is a tragedy, but not genocide”.

Is mass death not all the same why would any take a position like this and one that appears to be a official governmental one. Then as you look on Darfur many demand this!

“U.S.-led military intervention to halt genocide in Darfur by the Sudan government and its militia proxies”.

Where is Israel it would seem that they should have the most compassion and eagerness to stop such atrocities. Why not a cry for an Israeli lead intervention! Now some say there is no genocide going on.

” Khartoum Karl said, “The United States is the only country saying that what is happening in Darfur is a genocide”.

What of the 400,000 dead no it is not the numbers that the Jews faced, but it does not stop these images from being true.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/artsandliving/magazine/features/2007/documenting-atrocity-061107/gallery.html

Now I am well a ware of movies such as Hotel Rwanda and other books that tell of Genocide and I feel great compassion for anyone who has to endure the memories of such horrific massacres of humans, but is not all Genocide a Holocaust, is that fact that so much was filmed, written and logged in by the Nazi that we turn a different eye to it. In war millions die some go unforgotten and the plight of the Jewish during WWII should never be forgotten, but should it be singled out by name and if yes why?  

Washington Post

Fox news

Maus by Art Spiegelman

Schindler’s List Universal Studios 1993

Hotel Rwanda Lions Gate Universal 2004

For Schindler’s List and Maus part of this was the black and white qualities how shadow and contrast played the role of Angel for bright and Devil for dark. The physicality of the worlds how the splendor was exposed with clarity to enhance the prosperity lost. In Maus this is done with a half page drawing of a large dinning room viewed through a just as large window with the of the captions saying

“When first I came home it looked exactly so as before I went…it was still so luxurious. The Germans couldn’t destroy everything at one time”

Since I am speaking on Maus I should talk about its other duplicities. It greatest asset is the fact that it is a graphic novel. This is a special type of duality just in the way you read it you need to read it with one eye on the words and the other on the drawings. They share the world in a symbiotic relationship much like the live theater I feel this form of comic is as close as you can get to that. You are pulled into the world by the pictures and then hammered home by the words.

The fact that the Jews are mice and the Germans cats, this is of course and allusion to the idea of the cat and mouse games the played for their very lives. There is the father son relationship with it moment of good like when his father draws on his sketchbook to show the elaborate hiding places.

“Show to me your pencil and I can explain you such things it’s good to know exactly how was it”

Then there is the bad the constant fighting or in the writers eye the nagging just to get the story. This is seen when his father calls him to help and he decides it better to not go and face that feeling.

“No way I’d rather feel guilty!

Then the biggest Duality that is shared by both Schindler’s List and Maus is the dual people that you become to survive for me this is best seen in Schindler’s List with Oscar Schindler he is a Nazi who sole purpose was to get rich. He used the Jewish investors the real man to run every thing was Itzhak Stern, but at the same time that he bribe his way to the top he made sure food, water and life was given. He gave away a fortune and as depicted in the movie wept saying

“I could have done more, this car Göth would have bought this car that 4 more I could have saved”

This brings me to, yet one more double-dealing, the market Schindler’s List, Maus and Washington Post in the first two it the black market where everything is sold for survival even to the last as for the Iraq it just the survival of the market. The article that stuck home for me was one telling of how a markets in Baghdad are prime targets.

“Sabah Abd’s fruit stand is a few feet from the concrete barrier dividing Baghdad’s Sadriya market from a bus depot that was bombed April 18 in one of the deadliest attacks since U.S. and Iraqi forces launched a major operation in February to secure the capital… But only three days after the attack, Abd was back at his stand, charred vehicles still littering the parking area a few yards away. “My wife said, ‘If you go there, I will divorce you,’ but what can I do? There is no work outside,” he said”.

Here the simple needs of living are again being tested. The biggest test is how to remain secure and profitable. To have a world that is split.

 “It’s a constant trade-off between security and convenience,” Dodd acknowledged. “We could wall this whole place in, and nothing would happen. But economically, that’s not viable.” Hussein said he might eventually go elsewhere to find another job. But for now, he is staying. “Maybe it will get better,” he said. “We’re waiting for security.”

How does this tie into the other well look at the fact both markets are place where for just that moment in time those that are oppressed have a bit of power a say in what then need and what they are willing to do for it. This human trait is seen best in theater we are moved, by something we know is not real, but the universality of it draws us in. Humanity has way of showing the best it has to offer in the worst places and in the briefest of moments. These are three stories have captured one of those moments for Schindler’s List and Maus it the will to go on, and live for the Iraqis it simple to go on with life.

Maus by Art Spiegelman

Schindler’s List Universal Studios 1993

Washington Post  

 And the strange thing is I think many of those who are serving fall into the political correctness camp, they not sure why they our there and why did diplomacy fail. I think we should remember many serve not just in the battlefield, but do they have “support” as well? There is however the feeling on the battlefield of do I support myself in her blog Everyday is Groundhog Day in Iraq Rachel The Great has to question her own beliefs.  

“If only we could all find that one thing. Why am I out here? I don’t believe in this cause enough to die for it. I guess I believe it my country though and support it and you can’t just say something like that. You can’t pick and choose when you will or won’t love your country. Either you do or you don’t and I guess those that do are willing to pay the price for living in such a blessed place. I really think America is the most beautiful country in the world and although it’s not perfect, it’s the fact that we keep trying that matters most. I wonder if those that have paid the price though would look back from where they are and say it was worth it”

 She plainly states she not ready to die for the cause, but still she volunteered. Is this the same fever that Vera Brittan talks about in Testament of Youth.                                     

“the bloodthirsty armchair patriotism”  

No, if it is just patriotism then there would be no focus on the troops it would be on the war as a whole. The such as it is point put by Brittan again                                      

“thousands of our men had been shot down” 

Not even a clear as to how many, but in the War on Terror look at some of the headlines!          

“Five U.S. Soldiers Are Killed When Convoy Is Hit in Mosul“        

“Blast Kills 6 as Troops Hunt Iraqi Insurgents“ 

“9 U.S. Soldiers Killed in Two Attacks North of Baghdad“       

“Six U.S. Troops Killed in Ambush in Afghanistan“  

The troops have become the main issue and that is why it is so important to “SUPPORT THEM”, both sides for and against need the troops to push their agendas to give power to their words. Many times the soldier has been call the pawn of the diplomatic machine, but looking at all the support they have I would say they have become the meeting point to those who do not wish to meet.

To put it another way, in most wars the enemy was clear-cut and the loss of thousands was accepted, even possibly understood. But in this war there is no sure enemy. The political cannon that has become part of the American idea of war makes every life seem the most brutal of loses for America, but in reality the death of a solider is nothing to support that death is the most telling sign that diplomacy has failed.

• Testament of Youth Vera Brittan
• Everyday is Groundhog Day in Iraq Rachel The Great
• FOXNews.com 
•  washingtonpost.com – Iraq – Washington Post Continuing Coverage

I now see wars in the same light. They are something that feels like a play wars have a time and place a theater on a much larger scale. As matter of fact I would say the military might see it that way as well since a modern combat zone is call a theater of operation. As I was reading my google posts I was think of these comparisons not of only words, but of feelings. In one of the Blogs that I am reading called of all things Everyday is Groundhog Day in Iraq a allusion to the movie Groundhogs Day in where the same day is lived over and over being stuck in a moment in time. She mentions many of the same things that I said you might do for that play.

             “Like I have my dad’s clothes and gear on and I am just playing at being a Marine”. 

The fact that in the time that she has been in the war she has had many people come and go and change the way her duties feel to her.

             “My units advanced party has left for home now and it make me realize how much I am going to miss everyone. Some of the people out here have become like family and seeing them go is so sad…. then there are other people who I just can’t wait to see go because every moment I was trapped here with them felt like a moment down the drain…. completely useless and I will never get it back. You either grow to love or hate someone when you are exposed to them over a 6 month period of time on an almost 24 hour basis. I will miss my roommate so much! We have become like best friends and it have been so refreshing after dealing with men all day and having to play the part of Marine and everything that being a Marine entails, that I could come back to my room and just girl talk and giggle with my roommate like I was back home. Just like we were normal everyday girl”            

These moments of normal life trap in the surroundings of the day after day of the reality of war. This caught my eye and made me wonder who is the actor in a war and who is the audience? We see a war everyday in are papers, tv’s and internet, but are we watching or are we not also living it, with those who have gone away to fight it. Vera Brittain makes a very strong argument that we do live in those moments with them.            

“Time- as in the tense intervals before a great push (knowing their soldiers where getting ready for an offensive into no mans land) – seemed to stop” 

Even when she wad thousands of miles from the front at the time even the poet Rupert Brooke saw time as part of the ideas of war in his poem The Treasure.  

“Still may Time hold some golden space”

Was he talking about the moments when things seem so normal from the everyday dangers of war? This moment when you are just a girl away from home missing life. What is a year? A common year is 365 days or 8,760 hours or 525,600 minutes or 31,536,000 seconds. All of these tick off and for the most part seem to fly by unnoticed. That is unless you or someone close to you are at war then you seem to be trapped in one moment. I know every day I read on the war even before this class because I am one of those stuck in a moment my cousin is in the Army and has been in combat from the 1st Gulf war and Bosnia to Iraq now, but I am fortunate that I am not one of the now almost 4000 whose loved ones are forever stuck on that moment when the act of war ended for them. My heart goes out for them the biggest difference between war and theaters is when you end the night at a play you temporal period is over, war last forever in the stone of the tombstone, the memories of those who carry on, and the ones who must live everyday stuck in a moment.

• The Treasure. Rupert Brooke
• Testament of Youth Vera Brittan
• Everyday is Groundhog Day in Iraq Rachel The Great