Michael Swickard
“They were American boys who by mere chance of fate had wound up with guns in their hands, sneaking up a death-laden street in a strange and shattered city in a faraway country in a driving rain. They were afraid but it was beyond their power to quit. They had no choice. They were good boys… And even though they weren’t warriors born to kill, they won their battles. That’s the point.” – Ernie Pyle, 1944
The above could have described our forces in Iraq, though it was written in 1944 by Ernie Pyle. Were soldiers in France different than our forces today? I think not. The technology of war changed, but not the tactics. The difference is all at home.
My friend Charlie sent me this: “America is not at war, the military is at war. America is at the mall and Congress is out to lunch.” Nailed it. In 1944, one person in eight served in the military. From a nation of 132 million, 16 million served directly while millions more worked in the defense industries.
In all but the first months of America’s involvement in Iraq, our country has not paid the slightest attention – except, when Bush was president, there were protesters who lost their voices when Obama was elected. The Civil War song, When Johnny Comes Marching Home, celebrated the men coming home. There will be no anthem from Iraq. America will still be at the mall and Congress will still be out to lunch.
Spending time at the front
We always knew that America’s involvement would end. There was no strategy to “win in Iraq.” In WWII the strategy was to subdue the military and dislodge the leadership of the three Axis countries. In Iraq we engaged until finally a politician called the troops home.
Ernie Pyle never made it home in WWII; he was killed by an enemy machine gun while covering the last battle of the war. His memory is confined to those who still read his writing, an Albuquerque Elementary School and some historians.
To his generation he was very important, since he brought the voice of the men overseas home to America. Pyle’s front-line columns often had the names and addresses of men Pyle met at the front. Several hundred newspapers took his columns. It was no surprise that he won the Pulitzer Prize. When the men he mentioned came home, there were many in their hometowns who had saved those columns.
New Mexico-born Bill Mauldin also spent most of his time at the front. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for his cartoons, which were originally just in the G.I. run Stars and Stripes but were later carried in several hundred newspapers in America. Up Front was the title of his 1944 book of war cartoons.
Mauldin wrote Back Home in 1947, in which he told of the problems that warriors had coming home to America. Since we talk so much about the “Greatest Generation,” it is important to read Mauldin to understand that coming home was bittersweet for many who successfully won the war and survived. There were shortages of jobs and a general distain for the military by an ungrateful society. Without Mauldin, we would not know.
Thank you
What shall be of the troops who fought in Iraq? They will be almost as anonymous back home as they were in the war zone. The greatest loss to the American public is that there were no Mauldins and Pyles covering the war this time. The closest was Evan Wright’s “Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain American and the new face of American War.” But Wright was only there a couple of months in the very beginning and was on to new challenges that did not include a military fighting a war while America was at the mall and Congress was out to lunch.
For many years I have stopped those in uniform to say thank you for their service to our country. To those military men and women who have come home from Iraq to an indifferent population, I say thank you for your service. I am sorry your fellow Americans are at the mall and Congress is still out to lunch.
Swickard is co-host of the radio talk show News New Mexico, which airs from 6 to 9 a.m. Monday through Friday on a number of New Mexico radio stations and through streaming. His e-mail address is michael@swickard.com.