In our youth our hearts were touched with fire

On Veterans Day

On November 11th occurred the armistice that ended World War I. It is now hailed in the US as Veterans Day and, while distinct from Memorial Day, the two always bleed together in my mind and I suspect in the minds of others. I have wondered why this is the case. Veterans Day could be an uncomplicated celebration—uncomplicated by the remembrance of loss and of death that distinguishes Memorial Day. It could be a chest-thumping secular “all saints day” as opposed to the secular “all souls day” of Memorial Day with its cemetery visits and requiem masses.

But there is something somber in all remembrance of veterans, an inevitable memento mori that accompanies the lives of those whose work has involved close trading in the currency of human life. The Marine Corps birthday ball, for example, occurs on November 10th, today, and is Marines’ biggest annual celebration. (Happy Birthday and Semper Fi Marines!) And while the Marines are the most mission-focused of the services and least prone to political or sentimental distractions, loss and remembrance mark every single birthday ball even including a table and place setting that remains empty and apart. It is a table for the fallen.

Photo by The Cleveland Museum of Art on Unsplash

The prevalence in the military of tattoos and patches featuring skulls, especially among those in the combat arms, seems right to me. It is an honest emblem for the guild of warriors. Bankers are rightly represented by the dollar sign. Warriors by the skull. For me, I think it is this aspect of being a veteran that diminishes the difference between Veterans Day and Memorial Day. What we celebrate this weekend is the walking, talking, memento mori of our veterans. But “memento” means “remember,” and I wonder if we do?

A few years ago I was celebrating the Marine Corps Birthday with a couple Marine friends in my home. One of them was a Navy Corpsman who, as the evening wore on, told a story he had held inside for a long time. It involved a great deal of futile effort to patch together dying people and subsequently filling many body bags. He said that he had done a lot of it and that it did not really bother him. But then he described having to place a child in a body bag. He ended with tears in his eyes stating simply that no one should have to bag a little kid.

This year Veterans Day comes in the midst of war and the clamor for more. I wonder if those urging it would still be doing so if they had my friend’s experience with the body bags? It is hard to judge how serious things are given how frivolously the political classes play with wars and the lives of those who sustain them. But as many have noticed, the US Army has changed its recruiting cartoons focused on inclusivity to adds that feature what Virgil might call “arms and the man.” It’s looking serious.

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But if there is something to celebrate today, let it not be war. War is perhaps inevitable, but is always evil. The pride and pleasure I take in having served a decade in the Marine Corps arises not because I think war is good. But nevertheless, I do feel pride and pleasure. It is difficult to articulate why, but this excerpt from a Memorial Day speech by the civil war veteran and jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. gives it a good start.

But, nevertheless, the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.
. . . [W]e have seen with our own eyes beyond and above the gold fields the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after us. But above all, we have learned that whether a man accepts from Fortune her spade, and will look downward and dig, or from Aspiration her axe and cord, and will scale the ice, the one and only success which it is his to command is to bring to his work a mighty heart.

Such hearts—ah me, how many!—were stilled twenty years ago; and to us who remain behind is left this day of memories. Every year—in the full tide of spring—at the height of the symphony of flowers and love and life—there comes a pause, and through the silence we hear the lonely pipe of death.

The risk, the terror, the friendship, the loss, the adventure…. To encounter those in your youth in such an intense manner is strong medicine. So strong that for many it threatens to cast the rest of life in a kind of shadow. It is, as Holmes writes, a kind of fire, and outside the light of that fire other goods in life can seem dim. But against this is my prayer that those I served with and many others can take that fire with them and not simply live in the shadow it once cast. Take that energy and enthusiasm, the strength and willingness to suffer, the friendship and camaraderie and allow it to illuminate and warm the rest of their lives. It’s getting dark and we’ll need it.

Peace.