One Guy's Viewpoint

Memorial Day: Iraq, Joyce Kilmer and the Berlin Wall

Today is Memorial Day, a day now set aside to honor those who died serving during the country's wars. Hopefully, now year by year, there there will be fewer new honorees added to the list.

Also I hope all future wars we get into are necessary, really necessary to our security and survival. Is Iraq a necessary war? The majority of those maimed,those amputees struggling to recover, those brain damaged, veterans shown on 6o Minutes last night thought so. I think not. I don't believe fighting in Iraq improves our security at all. But that's just me.

I've never been in a combat situation, never in a hot war. Shortly after I turned nineteen, I entered the Army in October, 1953, for a two year hitch. There already was a cease-fire in effect in Korea.

I took basic training as part of Btry. D, 9th Training Bttn. AAA RTC, Ft. Bliss, Tex. (to use my official mailing address at the time), Dog Nine for short. Eight gruelling weeks and then it was over. We marched in the graduation parade, turned in our equipment, and left Dog Nine behind. Further training followed, then assignment to a regular unit at Ft. Bragg, NC.

Within a year I was in a tactical nuke Field Artillery battery with the Seventh U.S. Army in Germany which was then commanded by Lt. Gen. Tony McAuliffe of Bastogne fame. There, I did my job, had my fun, saw my sights, and came home. It was only many years later, during the collapse of the Soviet Union, that I thought a lot about the importance of our being there, of the tiny part I played and the major part the 7th Army played in making our strategy of containment work—and win.

I wrote this poem that follows a little over nine years ago. My notes show a date of 02/02/97. At the time I wrote it, my feelings were that the First World War was Europe’s war and we had no need to get into it. As I studied into our entry, I changed my mind. President Wilson had no choice but to ask for a Declaration of War; after all, the Germans had, true to their warning, started torpedoing our merchant ships headed to Britain. More study, though, caused me to change it back. Woodrow Wilson was reelected campaigning that he kept us out of war. My belief is: had he done what he could to enforce strict neutrality, as his Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan strongly recommended, and asked congress for any needed legislation to that end, we could have stayed out. It just wasn’t our fight.

Joyce Kilmer and the Wall
by Burt Moulden

Teenaged trooper,
Cold War soldier,
Processed Camp Kilmer,
From Brooklyn asea,
Sailing to fraulein land.

Camp Kilmer, embarkation post,
For Joyce Kilmer named.
Named for a poet.
“… Only God can make a tree.”
Only God can make a Joyce Kilmer.

Joyce Kilmer, youthful poet.
Joyce Kilmer, infantryman.
Joyce Kilmer, lying dead
In the mud of the Argonne.
Who killed him? Guess!

The Germans? That’s easy!
What about the politicians?
Who gave us a war,
A war we didn’t need.
And killed Joyce Kilmer.

Young men, children of God,
Slaughtered freely
In frontal assaults ordered
And other witless ways.
A million just at the Somme.

American men, idealistic,
Willingly in service
To this country’s call,
Ready to sacrifice all
To keep our nation free.

And how are they valued?
As a cherished resource
Or endless assets merely
To be used up
In political expediency?

Old Baldy and Heartbreak Ridge,
Khe Sahn, Hue, the Iron Triangle…
Bosnia… Somalia…
Sure, use ‘em up
When politically expedient.

War can be necessary.
Evil is, and advances
Where evil is able.
Our shores must be defended,
Our land worth dying for.

In Germany, the soldier stood strong,
Along with those countless others,
For forty-five years.
A bloodless victory.
The wall came down.

A Berlin Wall come down
Or a Joyce Kilmer killed.
Where is the difference?
In wisdom? Or it’s lack?
Please, God, grant us…



Note: I learned later that Sgt. Kilmer was killed in action a couple of months before the Meuse-Argonne campaign began. I chose not to change anything as “Argonne” is better known and sounds more poetic than the actual location. I guess this is what’s called “poetic license.”

posted by Burt @ 8:02 AM