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| Headstone, Civil War Veteran, Fredericksburg, VA |
One story comes from Fredericksburg, VA, which we visited last week, and the other from near Franklin, TN. (I'll be visiting Franklin this week and will tell that story in a second post).
Fredericksburg, VA: A perfect little college town, walkable and so packed with Revolutionary and Civil War history and livable charm that I was pricing housing...again. We made some beautiful shots of the charm, but Fredericksburg is a town with a job and that's what I want to convey: it works to preserve America's stories so that we may be informed by them, so that we may not repeat them. The story of The Battle of The Sunken Road haunts me.
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| The Sunken Road And The Stone Wall |
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| From the movie "Gods and Generals" |
It was Pickett's Charge, in reverse. Lt. Col. Edward Porter Alexander promised General Longstreet, "General, we cover that ground now so well that we will comb it as with a fine-tooth comb. A chicken could not live on that field when we open [fire] on it." And so it was.
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| Restored home next to the Sunken Road, nearly cut to timber by bullets. Some inner walls are original and bear the damage today. |
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| The Angel of Marye's Heights by Felix de Weldon |
I found Fredericksburg so dear and, at the same time, so sad. It's residents live in an idyllic American town and they tend their stories as tenderly as Kirkland tended the Union wounded and dying. We love our history in this country. We honor and cherish it. But we thereby live in danger of romanticizing its battles and its armies--an error that contributes to the ease with which those who call themselves patriots tossed off threats of "second amendment solutions" to our troubles during the recent mid-term campaigns.
I am nervous to hear hawkish rhetoric from the newly elected congressmen like Rand Paul and from old hawks whose numbers are reinforced. On the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, Paul stated, "I think we need to have more discussion on it, but it doesn't sound like I'm probably going to be in favor of that." And Lindsay Graham of SC, who needs to read up on Kirkland's story, told Time Magazine,“the likelihood of a precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq has gone down.” Mr. Graham will be hearing from me.
Some of my friends are so distressed, so disgusted by the changes in The House of Representatives and the rhetoric of some voices on the right, they are moving to emigrate. Some are so angry, they sound like the tea party gone progressive. Certainly, I can imagine conditions under which I would consider leaving my country, but I do not think those conditions prevail today. I believe there are no answers for America in those responses. The harder thing is to stay, to remain calm, and to work, heeding the lessons of history.
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| Civil War Cemetery, Fredericksburg, Virginia |
Ah, you've got me there. a touching and sensitive and true post. I've been known to shed tears at war memorials, but it's not because I glorify war at all or believe in heroes. I cry for youth lost in vain; because of the stupidity and greed and failures of leaders and followers. I had a great grandfather who was a confederate soldier, you know. He looked a bit like me.
ReplyDeleteI can't speak for anyone else, but I'm only looking for a part time refuge abroad, because I'm tired of the two steps forward, one step back type of progress I've seen in my lifetime. I'm tired of the political isolation and eternal vigilance gets to be too much for me. I'm tired of living in a war loving nation - and we always have been. The question of whether or not our struggles are a death agony or growing pains gets less important when I myself am tethered to my own inevitable decay.
It's no country for old men, if you prefer the succinct Mr. Yeats description of his own country in similar times of trouble and my own dream of sailing to Byzantium is more the result of getting old in a place where only youth along with its untested certainties, its exploited gullibilities and intemperate passions are respected.
Time moves more slowly on the beach, where a billion years is only another rise and fall of the tide.
Capt,
ReplyDeleteI have often thought of going, but not without my loved ones. It would take all the resources I have left to make that move; there would be little available to get me back home to see my children and grandchildren. And, sometimes, I imagine they might still look to me as a model for living. So, in spite of my weariness, anger, fear, and isolation, I stay. And write. And aim for some dignity in a time that seems designed to strip us of it.
This sentence is both beautiful and true: "The question of whether or not our struggles are a death agony or growing pains gets less important when I myself am tethered to my own inevitable decay."
Nance, an excellent reminder, thanks. I remember that when I was a wee dino, I used to read up on the history of the Civil War. It was fascinating stuff, but of course, what could someone so young appreciate of the real human misery involved?
ReplyDeleteI recall Voltaire's exemplum regarding how we define rights,
"Il est défendu de tuer; tout meurtrier est puni, à moins qu’il n’ait tué en grande compagnie, et au son des trompettes; c’est la règle." (Dictionnaire philosophique, Section 1, Droit: Droit des Gens, Droit Naturel. 1771)
Translated: "It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets; that's the rule."
I'm not one to be so harsh about what soldiers must do in the line of duty, but at the same time, I think Voltaire captures the utter insanity of organized, large-scale violence: it entails the annihilation of every principle we claim to hold sacred, and yet we do it with astonishing regularity.
"We are a warrior nation, a fact some of us only regret in the aftermaths of our actions."
ReplyDeleteThat sums it up. Iraq and Iran are the current example of this 20/20 hindsight. A lot of conservatives are reluctantly agreeing that we shouldn't have invaded Iraq. And yet these same people are champing at the bit to "neutralize" Iran.
And the cycle continues...
Nance, you tell of these events very well; you make me weep. How easily we are willing to surrender to war as inevitable. We turn dying in battle into a noble and glorious sacrifice and somehow that eases the pain of the loss of so many lives. The problem is that it also allows us to remember only the glory of war from generation to generation and submerge the memories of the millions who lie under tombstones in our fields and those whose bones still rest underneath foreign soils. We have grown complacent with death and have muddled love of country with a willingness to sacrifice our young in the pursuit of patriotic glory.
ReplyDeleteMy antipathy for war should not be mistaken for a lack of respect for the men and women who have served this country. My father was in the military, first the Marines and when he decided to re-enlist because of lack of civilian jobs, in the Navy. He says that the Marines weren't interested in a married man with children. He rode across the country on a bus from NC to California when he enlistged in the Marines. HE had to ride in the back and couldn't enter any of the rest stop restaurants until they were out of the southern states. He's very proud of his military service but every time he speaks of it I can't help but think of him at age 18, willing to risk his life for a country that dictated that he had to ride at the back of the bus.
I don't think that I'm very patriotic but I do respect those who have worn and continue to wear the uniforms of our country's armed forces.
I think of vets as victims. They are either victims of a glorified, romanticized nationalistic philosophy or victims of the draft or victims of a brutalizing economy or victims of political posturing or..."and so it goes", as Vonnegut once said.
ReplyDeleteSheria, I don't think I'm very patriotic, either, and that surprises some people, coming from a military spouse. Maybe insiders know the drill best. I have enormous respect for the coping, the rationalizing, the emotional barbarity, the physical punishment, the dislocation and distortion that our vets and their loved ones experience. I have all but none for the idiocy of war-making and its mongers.
For me, Veterans Day is about almost more empathy than I can bear.
I would be proud of your father Sheria - in fact I am too.
ReplyDelete"Patriotic" is a word I shun, because it was taken hostage ages ago. Wanting our country to be something near what it's pretended to be all along is patriotism, but today it's called "America Bashing" from the Fox megaphone. What it has meant to the people who are basically war lovers, warriors by proxy, is support for any and all military action, from saber rattling to supporting tyrants, to toppling democracies to unprovoked invasions and carpet bombing of civilians. For many years, the flag was an ugly thing to me and to much of the world.
As one of the veterans day flag wavers if his patriotism extends to actually doing something better for veterans, for active military and their families; better pay and benefits, for instance, and see how their expression changes when they think they may actually have to pay the piper.