Musings On A Summer Day

I was musing earlier today (yesterday, now), as is my wont, to see where my ‘intuitive’ thoughts lead me, and they led me to a memory of a Vietnam-era ant-war film, and in relation to a gesture I made at that time towards being a Medical Corps volunteer over there; the whole thing rounded out by a letter that I received in today’s mail.  The story; as it were. 

First, the film.  I forget its name; it was about a young guy from a Typical American Family (no, not ‘Born on the 4th of July’; but in that genre) living on the East Coast somewhere, just having graduated from high school, and facing either college or The Draft, with his father having dutifully saved up for him to go to college, at least first, who suddenly, with no consulting of anyone, not even his closest friends, quietly withdraws his college money from the bank and disappears from that life; going on to have some adventures in the country, avoiding anything that would smack of permanency (as if sensing the inevitable outcome of his choice and life), and who ended up - literally - in a small trailer in the back of beyond in Alaska, where he ate the wrong wild plant, as he subsequently realized from looking more closely at the book on such things that he had bought, and saw out his final days looking at the sky through the viewing port on his trailer above his bed.  (As though into another, better world.)  His family, of course, upon hearing the news, being heartbroken, and left with questions.  A subtle anti-war film, but very moving in its understated way of dealing with the subject. 

The gesture part of the musing was in the very early ‘70s, when in working at a small furniture factory in the Bay Are of northern California I got involved in a discussion about the Vietnam War with a son of one of the owners, who was upset about being vulnerable for the Draft (still in place then) and possibly going off to die in the paddy fields of South Vietnam.  He was very anti-war, which sentiment was beginning to take off then in earnest.  A sentiment that I could understand.  But I could also see the other side of the picture.  The side that said that the US. was fulfilling its obligation, under the SEATO Treaty, to come to the aid of an ally, against the communists, who were then threatening to overwhelm Southeast Asia.                       

A piece of this story is that I had long since severed my own ties with this world, and its geopolitical constructs, and when my own time had come to ‘face the music’ as regards military service to my country under the Draft, I had applied for and become a ‘c.o.’ - a conscientious objector, in which capacity I had served my two (just post-war) years in the military as a medic in Korea.1  But by then I was on a search for Truth in life - having dropped out of university on that pursuit; and thus had lost that ‘cover’ and become subject to the Draft in the first place - and after my TDY in Korea was up, and I was released from my civic duty, I came out determined to a) find the compete answers to my quest, and b) help make this world a better place in that light.2  But in the meantime, things were as they were; and I accepted that America - my country - had a vital role to play in the world.  The battle was getting clearer, between the forces of Darkness - that is, those who would attempt to smother freedom in the world, and make all of humanity toe their collectivist line (as though they had the Truth of things; which I knew by then, if not the whole Truth itself, that they certainly did not have it) - and those of the Light, as championed foremostly by the U.S.; that if the U.S. was not the ultimate answer, for all of its faults (particularly among them, to my mind, its treatments of the environment), it was the closest to The Final Goal, for its championing of the individual, and his inalienable, fundamental rights, as a child of God.  So - what was I to do, in this interim time?? 

Disregarding for the moment my concerns that the Vietnam War was indeed beginning to look like what it was being portrayed as by the anti-war crowd - i.e., purely a money-making operation by the MIC - I was incensed enough by the measures being raised against it, and what I considered to be its legitimate purposes (the SEATO Treaty), that I wrote to some official federal body or other and volunteered to go over there as a medic.  My offer was politely turned down (I should probably have realized that, being around 37 at the time, I might well be more of a liability than an asset to them); but I made it in good faith, and to be able to live with myself. 

This business of ‘being in the world but not of it’ can have its difficult moments…

We come now to the letter that I received today, and its relation to this story.  And how it moves me to tears every time I come across it.

It was from an outfit that I have already had dealings with: the General Patton Memorial Museum, and included a brief summary of that formidable man's life.  i could say a lot about what this brings up for me.  But what it mainly brings up for me, is what Gen. Douglas MacArthur also championed:

Duty.  Honor.  Country. 

And how I feel that I am an old warhorse.  Champing at the bit.

To get the job done.

And move on.

Enough of seeming procrastination.

Let’s get the job done.

And then,

go

Home.

Honorably.

—

footnotes:

 1 Actually, I ended up very early on in my TDY there (Tour of Duty) in Special Services, involved in putting together touring Soldier Shows, and doing the logistics for similar and other touring show troupes, including stateside groups.  A cush job, that I enjoyed very much.  But that’s another story.
   As regards this story; just to say, about my deciding to be a c.o.: It was because by then I understood that beyond The Play we are in, we are all One; and to do harm to Another was really to do harm to my Self.  And so it made no sense to do such things to each Other; because in truth, there Is no Other.  There is 'only' The All That Is; of which we are currently but fractal parts.

2 To that end, I had, a decade before the time of this story, hit on the awareness of the role of ‘money’ in all our travails on this earth, and was living in fundamental rejection of the realm of money, specifically that of interest-bearing money.  But that, too, is another, though related, story.