Image courtesy of Foreign Policy. By Major Matt Cavanaugh Can we educate a strategist in an hour? Some would argue this task is impossible, that it takes a lifetime, or at least 10,000 hours. But what if we had to? Imagine it...
Read MoreImage of British World War I poster and slogan courtesy of the Imperial War Museum (UK). By Major Matt Cavanaugh War is big, huge, enormous, large, vast, and giant elephant-sized. Though this claim needs no support, try these...
Read MoreImage of Rodin’s Thinker courtesy of Wikipedia. By Major Matt Cavanaugh Strategic thought. Insight? Context? Perspective? Pick up any copy of the Harvard Business Review and you’ll get a definition (or six thousand)...
Read MoreWarriors get all the heroic upside if war goes well; families are left with all the downside if war goes wrong.
On this Veteran’s Day, though it’s worth honoring and remembering the fallen, we should also convey our deepest sympathy for those left behind. Like Mrs. Eleanor Bradley-Peters, mother to a son killed in World War I, who spent her last 23 years living in France watching over the Tomb of a Very Well Known Warrior (more on that to come). Or the West Point classmate of mine, who’s surviving spouse twice attempted suicide in the flood of grief that comes with death. There are too many stories like this, because for each fallen soldier, there are multiple survivors that live on with a canyon of blank social fabric. Those that remain know war in a different, non-heroic way, adequately described by Knut Hansen, a Norwegian resistance veteran of World War II: “Warriors deserve our deepest gratitude and respect, but though wars can bring adventures which stir the heart, the true nature of war is composed of innumerable personal tragedies of grief, waste and sacrifice, wholly evil, and not redeemed by glory.” War destroys people. War devastates relationships.
Author Sebastian Junger has said much the same thing, though with a bit more detail, in a radio interview:
“I know it sounds strange to say that, but when you go to war, you’re bombarded by so many different experiences and so many of them are meaningful, and intense, and even pleasurable. I mean, the camaraderie in a small group in combat is very pleasurable, you know the excitement is very intense. It’s a lot of good stuff that happens out there any stuff you can’t get back home.
So it’s possible to miss the central point, which is: it’s all just actually tragic as well, and, when [close friend and photojournalist Tim Heatherington] died, that point was driven home in a way that I couldn’t avoid and ultimately didn’t want to avoid. And within an hour I decided not to cover combat again. I didn’t want to risk traumatizing everyone I loved by getting killed myself.
I mean, you go to war, you think you’re gambling with your own life and I realized that what you’re really gambling with is everyone else’s lives – everyone who cares about you. You’re dead, it doesn’t matter, it’s over, its everyone else who has to deal with it. I hadn’t really gotten that either and when Tim died I did and I also just ran headlong into this central tragedy of war which is that good people get killed and I sort of didn’t want to have anything to do with it anymore.”
As a currently serving member of the Army, I can say that it is only recently, after 16 years in uniform, that I have come to know war in this way. Were I to go to combat, I would do so leaving my wife and two daughters behind. I’d be privileging the needs of the nation ahead of their need for a husband and “Daddy.” What gives me the right – without their input, whatsoever – to make decisions that have consequences my family must live with forever? This thought puts knots in my stomach. Can I even do this anymore?
Read MoreImage courtesy of The New York Times (Credit: Ruth Fremason). Note: We’re revisiting some of our most popular material from the past 10 months for our newer readers; this was originally posted June 9, 2014. Enjoy! By Major...
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