OLD SOLDIERS NEVER DIE—AND THEY NEVER FADE AWAY

I can’t help it, I can’t explain it, I don’t even want to—but this morning, watching the latest firefight on MSNBC I felt tears welling up in my eyes.

What is strange is that they were tears of happiness—mostly—not sadness, brought on by the face of the soldier caught on tape for just an instant. The cameraman was taping just over the soldier’s shoulder so you could see the tracers heading out from the guy’s M-16. You could see the bullets hitting and ricocheting. It was real—so very, very real.

I let a few hours intervene after ending the last sentence and beginning this one. Because I realized that I had to explain what my emotion was about and where it came from. After all, I’m a writer and writers explain.

But the answer is simple. The emotion, which is very real comes from the pride of knowing. The intense feeling of pride comes from the depths of what it is to be a soldier. I consider myself a man of peace; I think, for the most part, I conduct my life in a peace-loving way. Having said that, I can also say without an ounce of hypocrisy (as I expect some might feel to be true) that being a soldier is the highest calling a man or a woman can have. For who else, beside a soldier, is willing to die for what they believe in? Not most peace protesters are willing to actually put their life on the line.

But that is exactly what the young soldier caught on tape this morning is doing. Whether or not we believe what he is doing is right, he is doing it completely selflessly. He deserves all our love, respect and admiration. From me, he gets my understanding and empathy as well.

I think many who, when this war started, were skeptical about the President’s goal (I was one, and still in part am) are now having our eyes opened by knowing the atrocities that Saddam Hussein has perpetrated on the people of Iraq. It seems he truly was, and still is, a ruthless dictator. The soldier I saw, as well as all the thousands of others that have traveled to Iraq to end Saddam’s reign of terror, believe in their hearts that they are doing the right thing. These Americans and British soldiers are good people. People doing good. They are on the right side of good and evil. We who traveled to Vietnam believed the same thing.

One of the most difficult things in the world to do is to give up your comfortable life at home, travel to a foreign land put yourself in harms way where you will see some of your closest comrades—the ones who truly support you—die.

This is why it takes all the patience and tolerance I can muster, not to be angry with some of the people protesting the war right now. I believe in peace. I still believe, even, that we might have gone to Iraq for the wrong reason, but seeing the face of truth and justice this morning on that soldier who is risking his life fighting for me…well, it brought tears to my eyes.

When I saw him, I knew that I had felt what he felt. A lot of old soldiers like me have felt what he felt. It is a very, very complicated and complex set of feelings—ones which never die…never fade from memory.