Memorial Day 2012

["Mad" Miles]

I just wrote the following as a Note on my Facebook. Sorry for the bold text here. A copy/paste carry over from FB. That's where I live these days, even if I check in here regularly. I'm off to boogie to Zydeco at Rancho Nicasio and eat BBQ and drink beer. Cheers all!


It's Memorial Day, and it's my 55th Birthday. When I was a kid, before Memorial Day became a national Monday holiday, every Memorial Day was also my birthday. Then it wasn't, except for occasionally, like today.

I made up a stupid kid riff, that I would use on my three year younger brother whose birthday is April 1. I'd taunt him with, "I was born on Memorial Day! I'm a Memorial to Mankind!! You're an April Fool!!"

What can I say, older brother shit. One indication of a lifelong tendency towards arrogance. I thought it was funny. I wasn't being serious. I think I came up with it when I was seven or eight. Maybe it toughened him up. Maybe it damaged him for life. He is one cagey tough guy, also very loving in his inimitable ways, who has taken on far more responsibility in life than I have.

So, Memorial Day. Big set of issues.

I'm the fifth generation oldest male in my immediate family, in which the previous four generations of fathers attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY. Three of which graduated and had careers as U.S. Army Artillery officers. Mine was the first generation in which only one out of five male cousins followed that tradition.

My maternal grandfather was also West Point artillery, etc.. Mother's two sisters married West Point grads.

Great Great Grandfather Colonel John, came from a family of Quakers from South-Western Indiana. His father a gentleman farmer, got him the Congressional commission. He served with distinction and honor as a Union Artillery officer in the Civil War at Shiloh, Chattanooga, Kennesaw Mountain and elsewhere. Then he helped kill some Indians, the Modocs among others (which he'd done in Florida prior to the outbreak of the "War Of Northern Aggression", so called by some of my other relatives) and then was commander of Ft. Sitka, AL in 1876.

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer..._Register/1513*.html This link is not copying over correctly. Just google "Col. John Mendenhall Ft. Sitka" and it should show up at the top of the list.

I came of age in the late sixties and early seventies. The Vietnam War era. I graduated High School in '74, just after Watergate. I became a Leftist Radical in college, and have been a part of various anti-war, anti-intervention, anti-militarist, Peace and Justice movements. Essentially one movement, the Peace Movement.

At a family funeral in Texas, in the spring of '09, I commented that there are Veterans organizations, both non-political and anti-war or pro-war, but there are no organizations for non-military veterans of the anti-war movement. Veterans for Peace, I know, and I should probably start attending meetings.

My relatives, most of whom I hadn't seen in 34 years, pointed out there are organizations for Army Brats that I could join. Haven't pursued that yet, either.

I have very complex and conflicted emotions and views about the military, those who serve, those who died or were wounded, especially those disabled. I've had a few good friends who were Vietnam Vets, and others who served post '75.

I grew up, immersed in literature that steeped me in warrior culture. I am a tactical pacifist who reserves, when needed, the right to use violence for defensive reasons. Yet I advocate Non-Violent Direct Action as the most hopeful of social change strategies. If not the only hopeful one. I was a Boy Scout from the age of 10-18. (And no, the Boy Scouts are not a paramilitary organization! At least not if the bottom up democratic structure is honored in the troop. That's not always the case. As numerous struggles using passive resistance against overbearing Jr. Army officer Boy Scout leaders who thought they were commanding troops, demonstrate. These skirmishes occurred during my mid high school years. Mostly at Summer Camp. Guess who won?)

What I'm getting at is that nothing is simple. And nobody is going to agree about everything (what a boring world it would be if that were the case!)

My great uncle died in a plane crash in Papua New Guinea during the early stage of the Pacific part of WWII. I have no close relatives, that I know of, who died in any combat related ways since then.

I knew the significance of, "in the rear with the gear", by '71-'72. My father served for a year in Vietnam in '72 as a light bird in intelligence and civilian personnel. On Bien Hoa airbase, where he had an air conditioned trailer, there was steak and lobster night, movies, etc. For six months his job in intelligence was to decide, along with others of course, where to drop the shit. For the other six months he helicoptered into villages to attend banquets (he was responsible for the hiring of civilians to work for the U.S. Army) where he was treated to delicacies such as pickled pigs penis. Bien Hoa was rocketed a few times when he was there. But his combat experiences were nothing compared to stuff going down up country, in the delta and in earlier phases of the war. Oops! "Police Action."

When he returned, I was a hippy pacifist Christian, and tried to engage him in a discussion about the ethics and military tactics of using cluster bombs in a guerrilla war where the combatants are mixed in with civilians. He never could give an answer that would satisfy or alleviate my concerns. Snot nosed brat that I was.

His MOS was ballistic/anti-ballistic missiles. He was a training officer in Taiwan, Korea, and the U.S.. He was/is a nuclear Cold Warrior. He handled nuclear warheads, taught others how to. For many years he could not be stationed outside of the U.S. because of the secrets he knew. He was also an atmospheric bomb test human guinea pig in 1952 in the desert of New Mexico. Which I only learned about in the summer of 1982.

I was an active member of the Anti-Nuclear Power & Weapons Movement from 1978-1984 and have been an advocate against / opponent to, both ever since. When Carter reinstated Draft Registration in August of 1980, I organized leafleting of Orange County, CA, post offices, started a Draft Counseling Clinic in Laguna Beach, and did a little creative public art one night in the county. One evening, at my clinic / counseling center at St. Mary's Episcopal Church, I perused a large, glossy, two volume set of photographs, art, official accounts, survivor accounts of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, published by the Hibakusha. I was well informed prior to that evening. I was never the same afterwards.


So, I honor the veterans, I also honor their victims and non-violent opponents even more. I believe if recruits knew the true history, politics and economic system of this and any other country, the military would be starved for recruits. The Economic Draft is a reality. Veterans are treated like cast-off, used up, waste by our system of low-balling and least expensive contract estimates. I think there's an incredible amount of cant, pretension and lying that goes on in speeches on occasions like today. I'm sure much of that is unconscious since this is a day in which sincere honor, respect and mourning for the sacrifices of military veterans is expressed. So, perhaps lying is not the right word. Self-delusion?

I in no way resent or hate or fear veterans who have been in the shit, and have come out alive. I mourn for their friends, I mourn for their suffering and I mourn for the suffering they have perpetrated on others in the name of national security. And by veterans and their victims I am referring to combatants and "collaterals" on all sides, in all wars, declared or un.

Yet at the same time, I know there are people who must be stopped from harming others without just cause. Like I said, it's complicated.

I respect and in some ways admire the kind of self-repression and physical, emotional and spiritual pain that soldiers must go through to become and be soldiers. Partly because I know I'm not willing, interested or able to do it. (I cannot even tan, not built for a life in the rugged outdoors! That's an entirely different story of regret and mourning.)

And I'm very glad I had the chance to decline. (I was offered a Presidential Commission to West Point. As long as I passed the academic and athletic requirements. The former was not an issue, the latter was. Luckily I had other options. And I am completely, totally aware of how lucky that made me, and still does.)

I HATE WAR, with a passion like no other that I have. And I know that there's many a vet who far exceeds me in having similar, probably far deeper, feelings about it.

I also find it fascinating in the sense of The Abject. And I know that as long as humans fight them, I prefer to be on the "winning" side. As for the leaders who start and prosecute them? I'll save that rant for another day.

So, here's to The Horror and to those who have had to deal with it directly, on all sides and in all capacities.

On this lovely Memorial Day in the Sonoma County Wine Country of the North Bay of San Francisco. Yes, I know what "we've" fought for, even if I do not agree with most of the reasons and purposes for the fight.

Make peace as much as possible. Fight only if given no other choice. Live in the interstices of that dilemma.

[Shandi]

Although I don't think Mad Miles posts on WaccoBB anymore, but I enjoyed reading this post from the past, and thought it was appropriate in light of current conversation regarding Memorial Day.

It's Memorial Day, and it's my 55th Birthday. When I was a kid, ...

...So, here's to The Horror and to those who have had to deal with it directly, on all sides and in all capacities.