Young People Fighting Old People’s Wars

Memorial Day

Today we honor our soldiers killed in the line of duty.  Many of them were idealistic, most of them were young.  I offer up today an enigmatic poem by A.E. Housman that captures, in an understated way, the tragedy of their deaths. 

The poem is unusual in that it talks about soldiers having a choice.  Technically, this is true.  Instead of going to World War I, Housman’s soldiers could have chosen otherwise.  As he puts it, they could have chosen instead to live.  To be sure, there were external and internal penalties for refusal.  For resisting the draft, they would have gone to prison, thereby (in society’s eyes and in their own) “sham[ing] the land from which we sprung.”  So instead they chose to fight.

Looking at it this way reminds me of the short story “On the Rainy River” by Vietnam vet Tim O’Brien (in The Things They Carried).  A young man chooses at the last moment not to run away to Canada but allows himself instead to be drafted.  “I was a coward,” he says in the story’s finale.  “I went to the war.”

Here is the poem:

Here Dead We Lie

Here dead we lie
Because we did not choose
To live and shame the land
From which we sprung. 

Life, to be sure,
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young.

Housman’s poem captures the youthful vulnerability and trust of those who died. Tragically, these young men got the idea that their lives weren’t worth much. They were told that they were fighting and dying for a higher cause and that their lives were therefore expendable.  They believed what their elders told them.

The poem ends on an almost apologetic note, as if they are saying, “Being young, we know we don’t have any standing to disagree with you.  Being young, we are under the mistaken impression that having lost our lives is a big deal.”

How can we assure them that their lives are a big deal?  How can we truly honor their memories?  By doing everything we can to make sure that those who come after don’t have to lose their lives.  By not sending them into senseless wars like Vietnam and Iraq.  (It is their elders who have been shaming the land from which they sprung.)  By assuring them that, if they must fight, it will be for a necessary cause with clear objectives.  If the Afghanistan War ceases to be an effective counter to terrorism—its only rationale—then we get out.

This will mean rising above jingoism and fear-based politics.  Can we do that for our soldiers?  Doing anything less is betraying young men and women who have put their trust in us.