The Shifting Sands of War

By Guest Author: Tom J. Beesting

Originally published: Sunday, December 2, 1990 Vol. 2 No. 13

Military Glory – that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood, that serpent’s eye that charms to destroy.
– Abraham Lincoln
Speech January 12, 1848

My television and movie diet, while I was young, was one that glorified violence and war. I can still see John Wayne charging over the top of the sand dunes at Iwo Jima, his rifle held high above his head and the red, white and blue American flag standing proudly beside him. My mind’s eye still paints pictures of a cavalry regiment riding into the sunset to fight barbarous Indians, so that their loved ones could live without fear in the wild, wonderful American West. When I allow myself to daydream about WWI, I see small groups of doughboys sitting near fires singing songs and sipping steaming coffee. I can almost see an aura of comradeship engulfing them. The welcome home all these American soldiers got was nothing less than spectacular. John Wayne rode down New York’s Fifth Avenue to a hero’s welcome. “The Indian Fighter” was welcomed by his loving wife or girlfriend, who ran with open arms and tears of joy streaming down her face to greet her returning hero. The Doughboys were welcomed into New York’s harbor not only by the Statue of Liberty but by tons of ticker tape, and the elated shouts of a grateful nation. This was the way I found my way to glory. To War, I found to my utter amazement, is something that should never even be considered as a threat to another people.

There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell. You can bear this warning voice to generations yet to come. I look upon war with horror.
– William Tecumseh Sherman
Speech August 11, 1880

War is not waged the way John Wayne fights his battles on Saturday morning television. His sand dunes were my rice paddys. I did not ferry over them proudly and erect; rather I slithered through them, thinking not of God and country, caring not of glory and his just award, wanting to live long enough to leave this war. The flag did not seem to fly so proudly; its colors seemed to run together and form a pool of brown, not unlike the drying blood. During battle, I never had the same pride that John Wayne flew, instead of being proudly aloft by marines, my flag tore from a mangled heap of human flesh. It seemed to quiver and falter in the eyes of the world

The cavalry in my war traded-in it’s horses and sabers for armored tanks that carried eight inch guns. They no longer rode off into the sunset to fight the Indians on the open plains. The chivalry of that age replaced in the noise of war, my cavalry rolled silently into the night to set an ambush from which there could be no escape.

In my war the comradeship of the doughboys turned into a dreadful hate and fear for each other. We were not only fighting a common enemy, we were fighting each other too. The group of soldiers sipping hot coffee from their canteen cups became the clique of young boys huddled together smoking a joint. New words, like fragging, were coined so that the horrors we were doing to each other could be described.

When I came home from my war, I received no ticker tape parade, no screaming masses met me at the airport; no welcome from a grateful nation awaited me, parades of people told me my war was wrong, the screams from the masses called me a “baby killer,” and the thankless nation that sent me to war refused to even open its hospital doors to those who suffered physical and mental damage when they learned that war was not what they were led to believe it would be.

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked on as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
– Oscar Wilde
The Critic as Artist Pt-2

I can not pretend to know for sure, but if I and the hundreds of thousands like me knew how horrible war was, perhaps the last war would not have been. If I can now convey how vulgar war truly is, without glorifying it, perhaps that last war can truly be the last war.

Thomas J. Beesting (Was. Now retired.) is a Summerville resident and a member of the 251st Evacuation Hospital, South Carolina National Guard.