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War Casualties |
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Copyright © 2001 by Dave Badtke |
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The recent news that former Senator Bob Kerrey participated in the killing of women and children during the Vietnam War reminds us again that war is not a movie in which Tom Hanks lands on Omaha beach, no matter how realistic the action may seem. And war is not philosophy, though philosophy may guide our decisions when our lives are not threatened. Whether it’s necessary and just, like World War II, or undeclared and forgotten, like the Korean War, or confusing and demoralizing, like the war in Vietnam, war is ultimately about those individuals who make life and death decisions, who put themselves in harm’s way, who are tragically killed or wounded, who wound and kill others, serving a just, forgotten, or confused purpose. Those of us in our fifties, the sons of fathers who fought the just and forgotten wars, were in high school and college when day after relentless day Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on NBC and Walter Chronkite on CBS reported Vietcong body counts, the number of Americans killed and wounded, and the views of generals and politicians who supported or condemned the war effort or who tried to straddle the uncomfortable fence of indecision. What was the war about, we asked ourselves? Did we believe the domino theory of communist domination? Was Prime Minister Nguyen Van Thieu’s corruption-plagued South Vietnam more worthy than Ho Chi Minh’s communist North Vietnam? Were we willing to fight, kill and possibly die in a war we did not understand? We imagined that our fathers had not faced such questions, that their wars were so obviously necessary that they had served without hesitation. And we condemned our fate, unless we were lucky in the draft lottery, forcing us to decide whether to participate in, avoid, or oppose the war. We wanted the decision to be obvious, but it never was. Kerrey, who lost part of his leg in combat, was awarded Bronze and Silver Stars and the Medal of Honor. He was Governor of Nebraska, a US Senator, and is currently President of the New School University in New York. He recently admitted that the Navy Seals he commanded killed more than a dozen unarmed women and children in Thang Phong village. Reports of what happened vary. One member of his team and some Vietnamese witnesses claim that Kerrey gave the order to kill the civilians. Other members of his team claim that the killings occurred accidentally when enemy fire was returned. Kerrey has said that his memory of that night is clouded by time and trauma. Should we now condemn Kerrey because he killed civilians? And what of those who killed women and children when they bombed villages and forests, fired from ships, or shot into dense tropical brush? Should they too be condemned for fighting a war they were commanded to fight by national leaders who never adequately justified the killing. Secretary of Defense McNamara, a strong war advocate who served Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, wrote in his 1995 book “In Retrospect” that: “I believe we could and should have withdrawn from South Vietnam either in late 1963 amid the turmoil following Diem’s assassination or in late 1964 or early 1965 in the face of increasing political and military weakness in South Vietnam.” McNamara goes on to suggest three other dates when withdrawal would have been justified. Incredibly, he lists 11 reasons “for our disaster in Vietnam” that include: an ignorance of the history and people of the region; an unwillingness to engage the Congress and American people in a discussion of the merits of the war; and our inability to recognize that “…in international affairs, as in other aspects of life, there may be problems for which there are no immediate solutions.” If any should be blamed, blame such men, and President Johnson as well, who questioned the war’s purpose yet lacked the resolve to stop it. (See my article “The Unresolved War”, May 2, 2000, at www.CarquinezReview.com.) Because of the inaction of such leaders, because of their lack of courage, more than a million people died. Because of such leaders, a young Lieutenant Kerrey found himself in a situation where the killing of unarmed civilians, whether accidental or ordered, was an unfortunate but anticipated cost. As Kerrey said in Sunday’s NY Times Magazine, referring to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC: “There are people on the wall because they didn’t realize a woman or a child could be carrying a gun.” When wars are fought, terrible things happen irrespective of the reasons for the war. My father, who died a few years ago, served in the First Infantry during WWII and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He received the Purple Heart with cluster, two Bronze Stars, and a Silver Star. My mother and father were high school sweethearts who married as soon as he returned from Europe. But, according to my mother, my father changed completely from the person he had been before the war. Today we might attribute some of those changes to post-traumatic stress syndrome. At the time, when I was growing up, I only knew that my father was either angry or quiet. He never talked about the war with me. When my younger son corresponded with him for a school project, asking him about the war, my father wrote at length about his experiences as though he had been on a four-year vacation, as though nothing bad had happened. Yet his Silver Star citation from March 15, 1945 contains the following regarding his leadership of an assault unit: “Sergeant Badtke attempted to encircle the emplacements, but both groups were driven back by machine gun fire and hand grenades. Placing his automatic weapons in strategic positions on the second floor of a house, Sergeant Badtke instructed his men to fire on the emplacements on the right while he attempted to reach them on the left. At great risk to his life, Sergeant Badtke crossed 30 yards of flat, open terrain, firing a sub-machine gun from his hip, and upon reaching his objective he knelt beside the aperture of the fortification and sprayed the interior with machine gun fire, capturing the five enemy soldiers not killed or wounded by the fire. Sending the prisoners to the rear, Sergeant Badtke, while under heavy fire, moved across the street to the other enemy position and, after raking the inside with machine gun fire, captured all the occupants…one of whom was a field grade officer of Major rank.” This citation gives me a glimpse of what my father experienced during years of fighting, and helps me understand the horror he must have lived through. But I didn’t know him as he was before the war, as my mother did, and can only guess at events that made him frequently morose and pessimistic, a person who preferred unrelenting hard work to talk and reflection. Can any of us who have not served in war truly understand what changed my father or what Lieutenant Kerrey experienced when he was commanding his Navy Seals? We cannot. As Kerrey said: “I thought dying for your country was the worst thing that could happen to you, and I don’t think it is. I think killing for your country can be a lot worse. Because that’s the memory that haunts.” Which is why, when we ask young men and women to kill for a cause, we must be certain that the cause is just, so that if they live through the experience, they will be appreciated for their bravery and they will understand the necessity of the horror they experienced, because even then, even if they know their cause was just and necessary, even if we decorate them for their bravery, they may never find peace with what they were called on to do. |
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- Dave Badtke can be contacted at: www.CarquinezReview.com; Dave@Badtke.com; PO Box 763, Benicia, CA 94510; or by calling 707-745-5540.
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