Following Through

This is one of those topics I don’t really have the standing to write about, because I’m not one: a veteran.

But here’s a story. Last week I had a temporary job observing a trial in federal court. I was not the only one. There was another fellow, who happened to be retired from the Air Force on disability. It wasn’t a typical combat injury. His job was to load those big military cargo planes – the ones so big that getting them off the ground seems to defy the laws of physics. Eventually, he threw his back out.

He loaded the planes both at domestic AFBs and in Iraq. At one point, I was moved to ask him if he ever had to load the planes with the caskets of those who died in combat, and if it bothered him. He said he got used to it. But the caskets had labels on them, and on more than one occasion, he found himself loading the remains of people he knew. He didn’t get used to that.

As for his injury, he said the VA was taking care of him, and so far at least, he was pretty happy with the medical attention he was getting. Of course, this isn’t true of many veterans suffering mental and emotional as well as physical wounds.

The original name of this holiday was Armistice Day, marking the official end of World War I on the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month in 1918. So the day is about peace, not war. But the damage done in war remains, long after peace treaties are signed or troops are pulled out of a combat theater. General Colin Powell once said that our invasion of Iraq invoked the Pottery Barn rule: if you break it, you own it. This applies not only to countries, but to the veterans who come home in less than one physical or mental piece. This is what “supporting the troops” really means, and it doesn’t matter whether the war was a “good one” or not.  Hopefully, the proposed reform of the VA will see us following through on our responsibility to care for them.

Not all veterans, of course, see combat. These days, it’s mostly a voluntary duty. But often, I wish we had more veterans to honor on this day. There is actually a very good argument for mandatory military service. If more people were subject to it, I think we’d do a lot better job of picking our battles: going where we need to go and ignoring the places we don’t, because more of us would be paying attention. But that’s another subject entirely.