Sunday, March 12, 2017

War stories

One difference between the German Nazis of yore and today's American hard Right is that we hard-Right Americans seem seldom to swap military war stories. I do not know exactly why this should be. Some of us (including me) have worn the uniform of the United States. Some of us (not including me) have done combat in that uniform. Many of us have done neither, but soldiers' tales have been a manly staple of every civilization. Why don't we go in for them?

Jake Freivald, a U.S. Marine and a Christian conservative, not hard Right, recently recounts:
I remember being in my early twenties, reading the story of [Lt. Gen. Hal] Moore and his soldiers, feeling the responsibility that Moore felt for each of his men as well as his mission. He knew and accepted that some of his men would die, but those losses touched him deeply despite their inevitability. There was no casual loss. No man could be left behind. Yet he also knew what his responsibility was, and he wouldn't give in to despair or give up on winning the battle. There was nothing squishy, no false mercy for his men, in his actions. And his men rose to the challenge set by his example.
Read Freivald's full tale here.

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