First and foremost: This is a family history post, sort of. So, that being said, I apologize if this isn't as interesting to you as it is to me (which obviously, it won't be, considering how personally involved I am with this particular bit of history, but still...), and I will now actually begin to talk about what I wanted to talk about.
So. This summer, I spent a week or so at my grandparents house. This is honestly not so unusual - I do so every summer, as I'm thinking most of you do/did. However, this particular summer, I began to snoop a bit around my grandfather's (newly organized*) desk.
*For a bit of a tangent, I'm going to explain why the desk was newly organized, and why I'm also excited about that. Feel free to skip to the next paragraph to avoid this tangent, it really has very little to do with history, or the rest of this post. Okay - tangental story time. The first time I visited my grandparents this summer (which was earlier than the week-long visit referred to previously), my grandfather asked whether my twin or I would have use/want of the typewriter my father had given to my grandmother about a decade ago, which was taking up most of the space on his desk. Mind you, this isn't exactly an antique typewrite - it's actually a fairly recent (read: end-of-the-era) typewriter that comes with a computer monitor, and allows you to choose between traditional typewriting, and typing onto the monitor first (at which point you can use spell check, and the main typewriter part becomes more of a keyboard/printer combo). Honestly, I have no need of this typewriter, considering the laptop I'm currently using to type this blog post, and the printer in my bedroom boxed up and ready for transport back to my dorm room. However, I have a sentimental attachment to this typewriter, having used it to write short stories when I was little, and knew that unless I took it, it would never be used again. So - I came up with a plan for the use of this typewriter: A message board for my suite-mates and myself to use this year at good ol' UA, instead of a boring old marker board. Fingers crossed that my suite-mates (whom I have not yet met...) are as into the idea as I am.
Okay - main point returning. While looking on my grandfathers desk, I noticed an old family Bible for what appeared to be the first time (I can't be sure - I've probably seen it thousands of times before, but never noticed...). Upon looking in it, I found a written account of family births and deaths from the turn of the 20th century until World War II. The discovery of the Bible and the record, in and of itself, was an exciting, Nancy-Drew-feeling-inducing find for me. What was even better, though, was asking my grandfather about it (at which point I found out that it was originally his father's father's - which made sense considering both his father and his father's father were preachers at the coal-mining towns they lived in), and going through it with him in detail, at which point we began to realize that the enlistment dates were only 17 years after the recorded births. After talking to my mother and looking back on ancestry.com's legal records of their enlistment papers, we realized that several members of my father's family had lied about their ages in order to enlist early in the army - as had several member's of my mother's family, as we had discovered earlier by finding their real birth years on their tombstones and using the same method of comparing them to enlistment papers.
The point of this whole ordeal was really not only to recognize how easy it is to discover new sources of pride in the courage of family members (Yay!), but also to ask you, the reader, a very important question that this discovery raised for me: If so many men wanted to serve their country so fervently that they took the trouble to not only enlist, but to lie in order to enlist early - not to mention the intense response from citizens in support of the American effort in WWII (i.e., gasoline rations, nylon/aluminum sacrifices, war bonds, general work ethic for the purpose of contributing to the war efforts and troops) - what was so drastic an addition to/omission from the American culture in the last 60-70 years that it has changed the general American response to the nation's military efforts?
(Please note that I am not expressing an opinion on the change through this question, but am rather expressing my curiosity over what actually caused it.)
I think it could be chalked up to a couple of things: In WWII, there was a lunatic literally trying to take over the world, and Europe had already been fighting for 2 years when we entered the war. In WWI, people were less enthusiastic, and we didn't enter the war until the very end, when our allies were bloody messes.
ReplyDeleteAlso, back then, America had never lost a war. But then we had Korea (which was never officially ended), and the travesty that was Vietnam. Our morale has yet to recover.
And also, I doubt war will ever be fought on the scale WWII was. Combat has changed, it's sneaky now, with casualties coming in small numbers. We don't have scrap drives and stuff because we don't need them anymore.
One last comment, I think we were less gung-ho about this war because we're not fighting a country, just a concept. When Hitler died, the war in Europe was over. Bin Laden is dead, and we're still over there. Great article! I loved it!
Yeah, I definitely get those, but I'm not sure that's all. I mean, it's certainly enough to change a culture, but I just think that there's more to it than that - like, questioning of government actions is so much more prevalent now, and I'm not sure it's about wars lost. Really, I have to think it's something besides just that because military actions are still supported when they begin/ are short - the Gulf War was highly popular (and Short!), and even this war was *extremely* supported at the beginning of it, because so many people agreed with the reaction. By now, though, the majority belief is that there's no reason to be involved, and while loss of morale is no new thing, the intensity of criticism this war has been met with - and the extent of it as such a majority feeling - it just seems odd that the culture could have changed so much within the last 60-ish years, and not just in the lack of enlistments and such, but in the belief in government... it's just odd to me. Sorry, rant-y.
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