[The Montana Professor 18.1, Fall 2007 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]

A Mother's Reflections on War

Linda Gillison
Classics
UM-Missoula

For the past couple of years, on Veterans' Day, Memorial Day, and Armed Forces Day, I've found myself a member of a community to which I had never expected, much less hoped, to belong. Members of this community may or may not identify themselves as such, and we are a very diverse group. We are united by two facts: we are mothers and our sons and daughters are members of a volunteer military which is serving our country in a time of war. Probably our opinions of the war itself and the administration which launched it range across a broad spectrum. Probably our sons and daughters have volunteered for military service for reasons almost too numerous to count.

I myself am strongly opposed to the war in Iraq, where my son, of whom I am intensely, unspeakably proud, will be deployed later this year. Perhaps because of my own political alignment--but I don't think so--I constantly ask myself a question. "What is it that we tell this generation of young people to motivate them to volunteer to go off and fight in a distant and chaotic field of battle?" Käthe Kollwitz, the German Expressionist painter who lost a son and a grandson to two World Wars, asked it even more pointedly: "What does a society tell a generation of its young people to persuade them to go out and kill a generation of another society's young people?"

These days, our sons and daughters are not compelled to military service: the draft would give society that power of compulsion, but, failing that, we must simply convince the youth by some means--by something that we say to them--to enlist in a project which, they are assured, is critical to the security of our nation and the continuation of civilization. There is something that we as a society (not necessarily we as mothers) tell our youth which persuades them to "do their duty" and to prepare to make the ultimate sacrifice for all of us. What is that thing that we say? To what set of societal urgings and promises do our young men and women give authority in this matter--a matter which may easily expose them to strong, emotional, determined opposition from some of the people whom they love most deeply and result in their finding themselves "in," as we are so often reminded, "harm's way"?

Here's a list which I have constructed of what our young people hear from us--"us" as a country, not as individuals. It's only my list.

1. Our country is facing a threat to its continuation and security, and "we" need to fight it to protect ourselves. Corollary are the ideas that:
   1. we meet threats best through military might and that
   2. the youth can best serve by fighting while the old will make the decisions.
2. Military discipline gives focus and makes a mature person of you. (We used to say "makes a man of you," but those days are over.)
3. The way to be part of the real, home-owning American dream is to enter the military. We will train you, give you experience for employment, support your education.
4. "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." We don't usually say this in its original Latin, but we say it all the time: "It is a sweet and fine thing to die for the homeland." (Actually, we usually say this after a death, but our young people hear it often.)
5. We are good; they are evil.
6. War may be ugly, but there's no way around it. It's human nature.
7. Your military service, if things go badly for you and you come back home mutilated physically and mentally, will be not only honored but also financially and socially supported by those of us back home. We will make certain that you receive the best medical care and that your families who have sacrificed so very much by sending you into harm's way will be supported.
8. You are a hero. Although we may never have paid much attention to you before or been concerned about what options you had for your life, you are now a hero and we are all grateful to you.
9. If society has seemed, often, not to be very concerned about you or your life, that will change drastically when you enter the military. We may have short-changed your educational opportunities. We may not have been concerned about your safe housing or employment or health care. We may have told you that everyone needs to take care of himself or herself in this regard, and we may have given ourselves tax-breaks in order to take care of ourselves rather than you and many others like you. Now things will be different: everything that is the American dream you can get by serving in the military, though we possibly were never very focused on how you could get those important and good things before you joined the service.
10. It is a sweet and fine thing to die for your country, as long as you and your comrades are doing the dying for all of us. Don't ask us to.

No doubt, every mother of a military son or daughter would come up with a different list from mine. We might be in very strong disagreement about these things. I believe, though, that, in face of what we as a society say to our young people to encourage them to military service, we all have a duty to them. It's what we must do in the face of what they have done for us: every one of us must work to be certain that those things which we tell them when they enlist are TRUE. We know that they are heroes, whose bravery puts most of us to shame. We need to make certain that the promises which we as a society made to them upon their enlistment are kept. If a previously effective soldier becomes suddenly unable to fulfill military duties after a traumatic incident, we must not allow officials who work for us to find excuses--e.g., "personality disorder"--for avoiding provision of the hugely costly benefits which that soldier has deserved of us. If terrible things are done by young people in situations which most of us have successfully avoided for our entire lives, our awareness that we put them there and demanded that they function there on our behalf must in some measure mitigate our horror. (That it is a sweet and fitting thing to die for the country is broadly asserted by people who have not done so; it may be. I don't know, though, how we can assure the truth of that statement.) That is our most pressing duty. I sadly fear that we are failing them and that we will continue to do so.

I don't belong to the community of mothers whose children have been killed or mutilated physically or mentally in these awful wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I pray never to be, and I pray every day for the women who do. I honor more than I can ever say the sacrifices that they and their sons and daughters and families have made. Käthe Kollwitz belonged to that community in her generation and asked a pertinent question, in 1914, just before her eldest son died in the military: "Where do all the women who have watched so carefully over the lives of their beloved ones get the heroism to send them to face the cannon?" No doubt all of us mothers would have different answers. Here's mine: we don't often have a choice; this "heroism," if such it be, is foisted upon us--as heroism always is--and we bear it as best we can. We search for normal life, love our families, and go on in a confusion of pride and fear and worry and, in the worst of cases, unspeakable grief.

[The Montana Professor 18.1, Fall 2007 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]