War Is H-E-Double Hockey Sticks

Today while talking with my 9-year old son about his current favorite book, Band of Brothers, he said something that really got me thinking.  "Mom," he said.  "We've been at war since I was 4-years old and I didn't know what that meant until I read this book.  That guy was right...war is H-E-Double Hockey Sticks."  In the conversation that followed he told me that the worst part of the book for him was the Battle of Bastogne.  He also said it was the best part--because of when the two sides started signing Christmas carols together.  When I asked why, not arguing the details, he said simply that it made him feel happy and sad and that is what war must feel like all of the time for the people in it.  The last thing he said before running off to play war with a new giant cardboard box, his sister and some Lego's was that he wondered why he didn't feel that way about 'our' war?

Yikes!  It was a great question and I wasn't sure how to answer it.  I grew up with stories of war--my Grandfather was an Admiral in the Navy in WWII.  My father was a fighter pilot in the Navy and was in the Red Sea somewhere when I was born.  And, people in my generation grew up in a culture where the visuals of war weren't so hidden like they seem to be now. Yes TV brought the war into our homes, but it also brought it--the issues, the pain, the sorrow, home for us. We were, for better or worse, closer to the reality of war and I think that was a good thing.  It wasnt' a lesson in a classroom where you tried to remember the salient details, you absorbed it with context and commentary and filtered it, slowly building your own perspective. 

My education on war continued to be built over time.... I have those startling visuals in my head--from the Vietnamese Napalm victim to the nose camera video  in the missles hitting Baghdad from the first Gulf War overlaid with the protesters in the streets of San Francisco, Seattle, Washington DC.  I guess my question is, have we identified those cultural touchstones from 'our' war that will help this generation build a fully realized perspective on war?

Personally I don't think so.  My son and daughter, for all their awareness of the war, don't know what it means.  And that is my job I guess.  So, I'm not going to answer his question.  What we will do is expose him to it.  We are going to start with old William Tecumseh Sherman who was right when he said "War is Hell".  We'll read his memoir, "Memoirs of William T. Sherman, By Himself" and talk about how a guy who was so good at war actually really hated it.  We'll read a little known book, "They Were Expendable" about the Phillipines in WWII.  My Grandfather is in there somewhere.  We'll move through "Alan's War.  The Memories of GI Alan Cope" a great graphic novel.  And another, "Persepolis".  And I'll probably introduce "The Bang Bang Club" which is an excellent book about photojournalists and war.  And, he is going to write up some questions to interview his Grandpa with.  He wants to write those answers up and send them to his cousins.  (Heck, Iwouldn't mind a copy either.)There will be others, and as well, the newspapers of course.  And we won't do it all at once.  We'll read, talk and then let it simmer and then start all over again.

And in the end I hope we end up where we began, with him understanding that yes, war is more than the game he plays with a box and some Legos.  That it is,  in all reality for the people in, around and beside it, H-E-double hockey sticks.  And maybe, hopefully,  he'll be a voice in the future that helps us stay out of one.