Think of the Kids

    I have two daughters.  A few years ago, a friend asked me if I wished I had boys.

    “Are you kidding me?” I said.  “Have you seen my daughters?  I’ll never have a shortage of boys around.”

    And it’s always been true.  For the last ten years or so, I’ve had more boys around than I knew what to do with. 

    It’s been an education.  I never realized how dopey teenaged boys - and even young men - could be. 

    One time my oldest daughter’s fiancee was helping me trim some branches off the apple tree by the garage.  About twenty feet up, he stopped and straddled a limb, then plucked an apple off a branch and, bracing himself against the trunk, swung the axe like a baseball bat, trying to connect.  He missed, and nearly overbalanced.  So he tried again.  And again.

    I looked at my daughter.  I said (ever the Master of the Understatement), "I don't think that young man is doing his best thinking up there."

    She rolled her eyes. “He’s a boy.  Boys don’t think first.  They do, then they think.”

    When I look at the two young men who shook out of the pack and stuck around, I can appreciate them for their good qualities.  They’re both funny and bright and reasonably charming and certainly show an adorable, puppy-dog kind of goofiness.

    They’re young men now, but I’ve known them both since they were about 17 and in high school..  In many ways, that’s how I’ll always see them - young, dorky, prone to shaky judgment, prone to the occasional hangover, and sometimes just ... well, prone.  Hey, they’re kids.  A night spent hugging the toilet bowl is God’s way of teaching us that alcohol ought to be sipped, not guzzled, and it’s a lesson most of us learn the hard way.

    All this brings me - in a typically roundabout fashion - to November 11th.  What my American friends know as Veteran’s Day is known in Canada as Armistice Day or, more commonly, Remembrance Day.

    In the morning on November 11, I’ll do what I always do: go down to the Cenotaph in the centre of town and watch the ever-thinning parade of snowy-haired, stoop-shouldered veterans march past and accept the gratitude of their fellow citizens. 

   And as I watch, I’ll think about who they once were.

    They were teenagers, most of them - or at best, barely into their twenties.  They were the very same age as those young men who my daughters look at with such adoring eyes.  They were alive and brimming with energy and confidence and great ideas and sky-high hopes and that unique feeling of utter invincibility that comes from being so ridiculously young that any aches you get disappear overnight.

    It’s hard to picture that as these senior citizens parade past.  But then, it’s equally hard to imagine my daughters’ boyfriends and their lumbering, goofy pals in the boots those veterans wore 60-odd years ago.

    Picture a teenaged boy you know well - a son, or a nephew, or the kid down the street.  Now, lock his face into your mind ...

    ... and picture him, all gangly and coltish and fuzzy-faced, in an Army uniform.  How preposterous he would look, how laughably out of place, crouched down in a landing craft rolling violently off Juno Beach in the hours before dawn of June 6, 1944.

    Picture that teenager you know so well leaping up as the landing craft hits the shore, piling into the backs of his buddies as the front gate slams open ... and finding himself in the gaping maw of a Hell he could never have imagined when he signed up to serve King and country. 

    He rushes forward, the very air around him rent and rippling with streaks of sizzling death, the ground under his feet shaking, every sense overpowered.  Somehow over the incredible din he hears a familiar voice scream his name and he turns. 

     It’s his best friend, the pal he used to go out and drink beer with only a few months and a lifetime ago.  They’d build huge bonfires on the beach and bet one another they could jump over the flames, and he can still remember the time his buddy misjudged and ended up with flames licking at the crotch of his pants and had to run over and sit in the water and how they laughed about that for months.

    But now when he looks back, his best friend is missing half his face, and that can’t be right.  And in the next few seconds eight more bullets slam into the inert body, adding unspeakable insult to death.  Someone smacks his back, urging him up the beach and he hesitates, then goes even though every step brings him closer to the same kind of hideous fate.  But he runs, because what else is there to do ..?

    It’s so hard.  I close my eyes and focus, and still it’s almost impossible to see these ... these boys that hang around my house going through that kind of Hell.  That’s a good thing, I suppose.

    But it means I have to work harder to appreciate Remembrance Day.  I have to tax the very limits of my imagination to catch even a fleeting glimpse the sacrifice and pain and horror these veterans went through so that my generation - and my daughters’ generation - wouldn’t have to.

     It's so hard.  But I have to do it. 

    These old men who once were so young deserve nothing less.

Comments

[Emma]

Wow. Thank you Nils, that really brought it all home. Am sitting here wearing my poppy and waiting for the 2 minute silence at 11 and you've made me remember *exactly* why we do this every year. Thank you.

[Susie]

Amen. You struck a nerve, here, Nils. If only those over 40 were sent to war, how many wars would there be? Why do we (humans) not see the immorality in sending boys and girls whose brains aren't even fully formed (research now says that doesn't happen until the mid 20s) to war. Older people have more ego strength, more life experience, more of a personality "shape" to withstand the kind of horror you describe. Not that anyone should have to withstand it, but older people are better equipped, mentally, spiritually. We exploit young bodies, minds, spirits; this is just another way, IMO.

[Bucky Four-Eyes]

What Susie said. In the US, a boy who can't legally buy himself a beer is still perfectly able to wear the uniform, wield the weapons, and suffer the consequences of war.

Why is that OK?

[peefer]

That was one of the most touching and thought-provoking Remeberance Day services I ever attended. Thank you.

[suburban misfit]

Thank you, Nils. My brother and nephew are vets. I'm going to link to this in my post today, since you said everything I wanted to say and you said it so beautifully.

[Effie]

Nils--
I love the way you put it...Don James (a Canadian poet with whom I converse) emailed me a poem with a similar vein--I posted it today....

"Lest We Forget"

[Squirl]

Thank you.

[Brikwall]

Great post!

But not all of them were so young...my maternal grandfather volunteered for active service in September 1939, aged 25. My paternal grandfather was 29 and a father himself when war broke out. Both had also seen a number of years of Militia service prior to the war, each joining when they were in their teens (my maternal grandfather was only 14 when he joined the PEI Highlanders).

We should also remember that those were very different times. They may have been fresh-faced youngsters but many were already making a living for themselves by the time they were 17 or 18. Those who grew up during the depression, unlike the youth of more recent generations, could not rely on their parents for everything, could not sleep all day and party all night, and definitely could not be as footloose and fancy-free as the 18-year olds of 1985 or 2005. They grew up much quicker then.

Unfortunately, for those who paid the ultimate sacrifice, they also died much quicker then...

Lest We Forget.

[Dima]

That was beautiful. Even I, the most anti-war-of-any-kind person I know, was touched by your words. It's sad that at any time and age, anyone had to go through what some of these guys have been through, and for some of them at such a tender age that should be only filled with chasing girls and avoiding responsibilty, and not crawling under fire and watching their peers die.

That being said, I am still bitter than my bank is closed today, and I have to pay late fees for a bill as a result.

[Jim Fogg]

I was at Bruce Park in Winnipeg this morning. My father is a merchant marine veteran, he joined when he was fifteen. He always says it was the greatest adventure any fifteen year old could have. He was all over Europe, South America, Cuba, Aruba and though the Panama Canal serveral times. For the past few years he lays a wreath at the cerermony in Bruce park. Lovely day today 12C and sunny. Large crowd. It took years and years for the Merchant Seaman to be ackowleged they used to come after the Boy scouts and Girl Guides. They've moved up to behind the ladies auxiliary! Our experiences as 15 year old were quite differnt......to say the least........

[Closet Metro]

Beautifully written, touching post.

[Ern]

What a touching post, Nils. Thank you.

I was going to say what BFE said about signing a boy up for the military who can't even buy a drink. Because they lack judgement? But give that boy a gun!

My husband is now several years beyond the draft age, but he still seems so young to me. It's impossible to imagine him going off to war over 10 years ago. Ever, I suppose.

[John Boy]

You captured a bit of the humanity for us that is lost in war, often without good cause. I tried to bring about a similar acknowledgement in my post, but of course, nowhere as nicely as you did here.

[HDL]

Very moving, Nilbo.

[bill]

Thank you for such a wonderful post. A friend of my family's funeral was on friday. He died in combat in Iraq. He was 30 years old and I have not seen him since he was 18 or 19. That is how I picture him.

[Amanda B.]

Amazing Nilbo. So true and so sweet.

[eclectic]

Lovely. Moving.

Truly.

[Gerah]

You took the words right out of my mouth.

[wordgirl]

Ahh, Nilbo. We feel each other's pain. Happy Thanksgiving!