The Things We All Carry

In the last couple of days, a book by a Minnesota-born writer, Tim O'Brien, has come to mind a few times. It's titled, The Things They Carried. That particular title comes to mind now and then anyway, but only because it pertains to life on so many levels and for so many people, myself included. All that baggage we carry, all that stuff that follows us around from room to room.

Tim O' Brien is a Viet Nam War veteran, whose stories of his experiences there still haunt us, and I expect him, as well. I first read his novel, Going After Cacciato, which won the National Book Award in 1979, a whole lot of years ago. I then went on to read everything else he wrote as it came along. In the Lake of the Woods, remains a favorite. It's not just the locale, but the story itself. It so perfectly depicts a particular time in our lives.

Yes, we all carry around some baggage, but I believe war veterans, all war veterans, carry around more than their fair share. One particular story in this collection has stood out over the years as an example of the absurdity, the absolute absurdity, of war, the horrible loss of life and our attempt to make some sense of it, to find a way to maintain one's sanity amidst such utter and complete insanity.

The story is about a soldier named Curt Lemon, who steps on a landmine, something that doesn't just end his life, but scatters his body into pieces, some of which are left hanging from the branches of a nearby tree. His comrades climb up into the tree to retrieve his body parts, and as they do so, one of the men starts singing Harry Belafonte's song, "Lemon Tree." I will not write the words down here. You know them.

This came to mind, I believe, after hearing of the U. S. soldiers who are being accused of, and charged with, war crimes. It appears they killed several people in Afghanistan and then kept some of their body parts, fingers is what they're reporting, a sort of trophy collecting of the most difficult-to-understand nature. I am working on not passing judgment on anyone, even these soldiers who got caught up in war and, perhaps, their own struggle with keeping their sanity amidst the nightmare in which they found themselves. Yes, we can say, "That's horrifying! What kind of people are they? Who would do such a thing!?!"  And the crimes, as reported, are truly difficult to understand. But, when darkness emerges in such circumstances, and it does, can anyone truly say, "I would never...?"

I want to say, 'Never,' and I'm as certain as I can be, that's true. I'm certain you feel the same.  But, I have to ask myself, is that what these young men thought too, before they went to Afghanistan, before they acted so brutally, so callously, against human life? Would their mothers, their fathers, have ever thought their sons were capable of such atrocities?  A military court, no doubt, will handle their cases, but they sealed their own fate when they made the choices they did. And, there are always choices. It starts with one.

I would ascertain we've all made choices, whatever their nature, seemingly large or small, that took us into that strange twilight, if not the darkness, we never thought we'd find ourselves in, only to wake up and see ourselves emerging from the woods, standing at the edge of the field, looking for forgiveness.

Please forgive my less-than-happy foray into this topic. I can't explain why I'm writing this today, but I've always tried to listen and be guided into what I write about, so here it is. I wrote about Wilfred Owen, the World War I poet, in an earlier post. This topic is not new for me. I cannot write about gardens without writing about all the aspects of life, and, as I have mentioned before, the mystery of death is contained in the mystery of life. My impulse is to recoil from this topic, but in doing so I invite fear and I want to dispel fear, in all its guises, including anger.

I received an anthology of war poetry as a gift several years ago, Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness, edited by Carolyn Forche. I don't go there often. It's too painful. I do go there often enough to not forget. Her books dedication:

For those who died
and those who survived

Bertolt Brecht (1898 - 1956), poet and playwright, wrote powerful indictments against war and those who take us there. Marked for execution, he fled Germany in 1933, and spent sixteen years in exile, including time in the United States, where he was called before the House Committee for Un-American Activities. He returned to Germany in 1949. In his three part poem titled, "To Those Born Later," Brecht wrote, in part:

All roads led into the mire in my time.
My tongue betrayed me to the butchers.
There was little I could do. But those in power
Sat safer without me: that was my hope.
So passed my time
Which had been given to me on earth.

Our forces were slight. Our goal
Lay far in the distance
It was clearly visible, though I myself
Was unlikely to reach it.
So passed my time
Which had been given to me on earth.

You who will emerge from the flood
In which we have gone under
Remember
When you speak of our failings
The dark time too
Which you have escaped.