War and Remembrance

I was lucky enough to have the day off for Veterans' Day. Went to the museum, saw an exhibit on Americans at War and another on polio. Then around sunset I went to see the war memorials. The WWII memorial was especially beautiful - just as dusk fell they turned on the lights around the fountain. The sky arched overhead melting from blue-violet in the east to lemon-yellow in the west, and there was a three-quarters moon. I stood on a rise overlooking the memorial and the people shuffling to and fro, and just felt overwhelmed by the consciousness of sacrifice that filled the air.

I thought a lot about my grandparents throughout the day, since all four of them served in WWII. (In fact, they all met in the service. I owe my existence to WWII.) As terrible as the war was, there was an element of pleasure in their recollections of the war days, the lifelong friends they made, the sense of shared purpose. All those crisp pilots' uniforms and brave, rosy-cheeked girls writing letters to their men at the front. Victory gardens. Slogans like "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without!" Posters encouraging housewives to "Scrimp and save, so he'll have enough" with a picture of a handsome, smiling soldier. When I was a kid, we had one of my grandfather's posters left over from the war hanging in the dining room: "Food is a weapon. Buy wisely, cook carefully, EAT IT ALL."

It seems like the war, at least on the home front, brought people together; it wasn't colored by protests and disillusionment like Vietnam and Iraq. I wonder why, when it cost so many lives, the population as a whole was behind it. Maybe there seemed to be no alternative. Maybe it was so much a part of everyday life, and so many families had people in the service, that protesting the war would have seemed naive at best, counter-productive and treasonous at worst. 1940's children on their bikes cheering for the soldiers seems "innocent", a show of support that ignores the more complex issues. But maybe to people then, our protests against the Iraq war would seem "innocent" and unrealistic, something only people uninvolved in war could afford to do.