And if, somehow, I managed to get home again, I promised God and myself that I would find a quiet piece of land someplace and spend the rest of my life in peace.” Richard D. Winters
Did you know, that in the later years of the Medieval period, it was common for the Knights of Europe to study Greek and Latin classics? They would also read and write poetry, and enjoyed the music of traveling troubadours. Oftentimes, they would hold literary discussions with learned clergy to further their education and refine their social skills.
Did you know, that at approximately the same time, but on the other side of the world, fearsome Samurai warriors were also known to read and enjoy poetry. Many also practiced ink-painting, gardening, or calligraphy. Interestingly, most samurai sought spiritual enlightenment through the study of Zen Buddhism.
It wouldn’t seem such sensitive pastimes would not have been of much use to those ancient practitioners of violence and death, would it? Such behavior is contrary to stereotype we hold that such men must have been nothing more than ignorant warmongers and knaves. But those warriors have very good reasons to cultivate a more enlightened side to their temperament. It was a way for them to hold onto their humanity in the face of brutal horrors.
The formidable warriors of both these cultures were trained from an early age to develop their skills in war and death. To keep these living engines of destruction from turning into unfeeling monsters, society educated them in the arts of music and literature to help them moderate their more brutal aspects, and to learn how to repress their violent natures in more peaceful times.
I will come back to this topic a little later. I do have a specific reason for writing this post. But before I get to it, I need to provide a little background information that will make my point more clear.
Honored to serve my country
I have been retired from the Air Force/Air National Guard for just over 10 years now. I want to make it clear that I am very proud of my service. My enlistment started during the last decade of the Cold War. I signed up during Ronald Reagan’s first term as president. Those of us who enlisted in the 80’s were known affectionately “Ronnie’s children”. During my career in the military I was a part of many eventful moments. I helped stand up the alert commitment at Buckley Air Force Base on September 11th. I deployed to the Middle East numerous times in support of Southern Watch, Northern Watch, and Iraqi Freedom.
This will sound like bragging but it’s not. I was a damn good avionics aircraft technician. There is no shame in acknowledging the obvious. I’ll admit I that I certainly wasn’t the best avionics mechanic to turned a wrench. I personally knew and served with many airmen who had far better innate mechanical skills and were much more knowledgeable in aircraft maintenance than me. But I made sure to learn from them.
And through hard work and study, I became a valuable resource for my avionics shop and the 140th Wing in general. My supervisor’s and fellow airmen knew that they could count on me. Gradually I became a subject matter expert, and was often a liaison between my shop and Operations (aka the pilots). And as the years went by, I became a supervisor, trainer and mentor for some truly awesome young men and women who chose to serve their country. It was an honor to be a part of something bigger than myself. I always felt my work had purpose.
Life in the military
That being said, living the life of a modern day warrior is certainly not for everyone. Regardless of the branch of service, or the career field a member of the armed forces serves in, the military is stressful way of life. Constant deployments, always undermanned, high turnover rate, and micromanaging on a scale most civilians would find appalling.
And some specialties, such as an infantryman or Marine rifleman, can be especially horrific and brutal. Just watch ‘Saving Private Ryan’ or ‘American Sniper’ as notable examples.
I’ve heard people say “there’s stressful jobs in the civilian world too. What makes the military so different”? And, these people would be right. There are extremely difficult jobs in the civilian world. Just off the top of my head, I can think of law enforcement, firefighting, emergency room medicine, brain surgery and air traffic control as stressful career fields. But most of those fields don’t require a little something called “Basic Training” as an entry requirement.
Stamping out individuality
Basic training, regardless of the branch of service, sucks. Marine basic probably sucks the most, while the Air Force’s probable sucks the least. Interestingly, talk to most veterans and they will probably admit that basic training wasn’t really the hardest part of their military service. The hard parts come later. It’s just that Basic is a complete shock to what was until recently a slack-jawed, slovenly, and irresponsible young civilian. Having a square-jawed man, with a “high and tight” and wearing a Smokey the Bear hat, yelling insults about your mother to your face at o’dark thirty in the morning is an amazingly effective way to get young minds to concentrate.
So, yes, Basic is difficult. But what separates the military from the civilian is what Basic Training sets does to the mind of the new recruit.
After the first miserable night in the barracks, the the first thing new recruits are taught is how to march in formation. No more strolling along as an individual. Nope, it’s “hut one, two, three, four” from now until graduation. And their first objective is the barbers. Their hair (at least on the males) is completely shorn away, like flocks of sheep in the fields.
Afterwards, it’s time to be issued uniforms, which includes everything up to and including underwear. Then, the recruits are marched back to their barracks, where they have to relinquish ALL of their personal items for the duration of Basic. They even take away their eyeglasses, and replace them with black horn-rimmed glasses, commonly referred to as “BCGs”, or Birth Control Goggles.
Recruits even lose their names! Your new first name is either Airman, Soldier, Marine, or Seaman. The brand spanking new uniforms don’t have name tapes with the recruit’s last name as of yet. Those won’t be issued for several more weeks. When they finally do, the recruit regains their last name, but never their first. From now on, for the duration of the recruit’s career, his or her rank is their first name. Corporal Murphy, Senior Airman Yeager, Sergeant Rock, Commander Riker.
A cog in the machine
Now all external traces of individuality have been removed from the recruit. They all pretty look alike. Their status before they joined, be they from a rich family or a poor one, means nothing. It also doesn’t matter if they came from the big city or a rural farm. Education level means nothing either. Whether the recruit has a college degree or a GED is moot. The military will teach the recruit what it feels the recruit needs to know. In essence, every recruit is just an interchangeable cog in the machine.
The wants and needs of the recruit means next nothing to the military, and by extension, the United States government. The military will decide for you what it wants and need from you. You serve in a manner the powers that be have decided befits you. It is the very embodiment of John Kennedy’s famous “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”. Or, perhaps, Mussolini’s maxim “all within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state” would be more apt.
Two of my brothers-in-arms during a duststorm in Iraq, summer of 2009
The modern warrior as an artist
With all that exposition out of the way, let me get back to the real point of this post. Namely, how warriors in all eras search for ways to counter-balance the art of war with the art of creation. For, in spite of their best efforts, it is impossible for modern militaries to completely stamp out the self-identity of their service members. In their spare time, many of those in the armed forces seek out ways to satisfy their creative inclinations as a way to deal with the stress of military service.
One of my fellow brothers-in-arm, one who I feel the closest kinship to, has developed his skills in cooking. The man could be a professional chef if he wanted. I had a supervisor who took up photography in his spare time. Many of his gorgeous photos are hung proudly in various rooms and corridors of the 140th FW.
I know that two of my comrades who are into model trains. One has even turned a large part of his basement over to his hobby. A great many of my compatriots have turned to woodworking, and are able to create amazing things with their hands. Heck, I even served with a man who now tinkers on cars, and races them on weekends.
I find it fascinating at how the artistic impulse thrives in these modern day warriors.
That’s why I garden
My interest in gardening actually grew in fits and starts. I didn’t intend to become a full blown gardenophile. But the more I got into gardening, the more I realized that the activity was giving me a way to handle stresses of life. The physical labor, digging, raking, mowing and so forth, functioned as a relief valve, allowing me to “blow off steam” so to speak. Gradually, I became aware that gardening was also providing me an outlet for my more ‘artistic’ side. Designing the landscape, laying out beds and borders, and installing hardscaping such as gravel paths and a flagstone patio, all were a form of personal expression.
Allen Lacy wrote in his book “The Garden in Autumn”, that music and gardening were very similar artistic activities. Both are “ruled by scientific imperatives. He states that music is based in physics, whereas gardening draws on such fields such as botany, chemistry, geology, biology and astronomy. So, gardening is a form of art and of science.
Moreover, I find that gardening helps me bring peace with my troubled soul. I am not like an infantryman who by his actions directly led to the death of another human being. Nevertheless, by ensuring that the fighter aircraft I maintained was able to drop its bombs and fire its gun with accuracy, I am indirectly responsible for an uncounted number of deaths of America’s enemies. I didn’t pull the trigger, the pilot did. But I made sure that when he did pull that trigger, the “gun” worked perfectly. Important work. Necessary work. But every kill was somebody’s son/father/brother. In the words of Will Munny inthe movie Unforgiven: “It’s a hell of a thing; killin’ a man. You take away everything he ever had and ever would have.”
As I said earlier, I am quite proud of my service to my country. I loved the men and women I served with. And I am also proud of my skills as an avionics mechanic, I thrived in a field I never would have dreamed of entering before I enlisting in the Air Force. It was not a natural fit for me, but I made it work. Working on aircraft is skill, but it too has a bit of art to it. Still, a fighter jet is a machine of destruction. It’s whole purpose it to rain death on the enemies of the United States. A necessary purpose to be sure. But the airmen who keep these warcraft flying know full well what that purpose is.
From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. Chief Joseph
