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Monday – Memorial Day
On Memorial Day I usually steer clear of politics, choosing instead to focus on those in the military who paid the ultimate sacrifice, whether directly on the battlefield or afterwards due to injury or trauma-caused suicide. Today, however, I can’t help but mention our commander in chief, who sees war’s victims as “suckers and losers” and who, on Saturday. gave a West Point commencement speech where he discoursed about trophy wives, golf, and “the late great Al Capone.” (He then left the ceremony midway through to go play golf, unlike his two predecessors, who after they spoke stayed to shake the hand of every cadet.) While Trump claims that a vast military parade he’s planning for June 14 is to honor Flag Day and the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army, his birthday is also that day and few are fooled about who he will really be celebrating.
World War I poet Siegfried Sassoon understood those people who wrap themselves in the flag while turning a blind eye to the actual plight of military personnel. In “Suicide in the Trenches” he directs his savage satire against the Donald Trumps of the world:
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
The simple couplet form captures the innocence that war destroys. The bouncy rhythm stands in ironic contrast to the tragic loss, and the final line hits with seismic force.
But at least these “smug-faced crowds” are cheering. Trump doesn’t even do that.
