Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Ex-Marine: "I forfeited my honor, my self-respect, and my humanity"
As you might remember, an article of mine called “Re-Reading the Pentagon Papers” made the rounds this past June.
Read article here: http://tinyurl.com/77p2s.
In that piece, I quoted a wounded marine-turned-author, W.D. Ehrhart, who wrote in his memoir, Passing Time: Memoir of a Vietnam Veteran Against the War, about reading the Pentagon Papers: “Page after page endless page of it. Vile. Immoral. Despicable. Obscene...I’d been a fool, ignorant and naive. A sucker. For such men, I had become a murderer. For such men, I had forfeited my honor, my self-respect, and my humanity. For such men, I had been willing to lay down my life.”
Well, a few days ago, I got an e-mail from none other than Bill Ehrhart, in which he wrote: “I was surfing the net this morning, and I came upon your article ‘The Pentagon Papers: 34 Years Later.’ In that article, you quote my reaction to reading the Pentagon Papers as recorded in my book Passing Time. Your web address was listed at the end of the article, so I went there and checked it out. I totally love the imagine of the Marines raising the Golden Arches (MZ: See my post on Friday, November 25, 2005). I myself am an ex-Marine who came to despise the Vietnam War and the people who sent us to fight it. I am no happier with this present war.”
Another connection made possible thanks to the Web.
(To read Ehrhart’s poem, “Guns,” click on “more” at the end of this post.)
For now, here’s another look at the price of war:
(more photos here: http://tinyurl.com/8xz8)
In related news:
Iraqi hospitals under siege
http://tinyurl.com/dm2ks
Related...in an indirect way:
What does a multi-millionaire defense contractor do for his daughter’s bat mitzvah?
Hint: Fitty was in the house…
Story here: http://tinyurl.com/8dmrf
Get rich...while others are dying
+++
Unrelated...in any way:
Put down your pens...
Tonight marks the end of National Novel Writing Month. I did my damnedest to patch together 50,000 words so I could technically “win.” It’s silly of me, for sure, but this has been an insane year and I cherish the opportunity to see something through. Something over which I alone had control. As a result, I have myself an experimental novel (sic) that—after some edits—I just might shop around.
Thank you, Mudge, for suggesting this exercise. Now, get back on the comment board where you belong…
===
Guns
Again we pass that field
green artillery piece squatting
by the Legion Post on Chelten Avenue,
its ugly little pointed snout
ranged against my daughter’s school.
“Did you ever use a gun
like that?” my daughter asks,
and I say, “No, but others did.
I used a smaller gun. A rifle.”
She knows I’ve been to war.
“That’s dumb,” she says,
and I say, “Yes,” and nod
because it was, and nod again
because she doesn’t know.
How do you tell a four-year-old
what steel can do to flesh?
How vivid do you dare to get?
How explain a world where men
kill other men deliberately
and call it love of country?
Just eighteen, I killed
a ten-year-old. I didn’t know.
he spins across the marketplace
all shattered chest, all eyes and arms.
Do I tell her that? Not yet,
though one day I will have
no choice except to tell her
or to send her into the world
wide-eyed and ignorant.
The boy spins across the years
till he lands in a heap
in another war in another place
where yet another generation
is rudely about to discover
what their fathers never told them.
(From Beautiful Wreckage: New & Selected Poems by W. D. Ehrhart, Adastra Press, 1999.)
Copyright © 2005-2007 Mickey Z.
