By: Mike DiMatteo
“If the country is good enough to live in, it’s good enough to fight for. With privilege goes responsibility.”
Those were the words of Eugene Bondurant (E.B.) Sledge (1923–2001), taken from his book *With the Old Breed*—his firsthand account of serving in combat during World War II at Peleliu and Okinawa. He was a United States Marine and memoirist who became a respected biology professor at the University of Montevallo in Alabama.
I came across *With the Old Breed* by accident—which seems to be a specialty of mine—having run across *Napoleon and the Awakening of Europe* just as I was at a crossroads in college. That discovery, and the subsequent reading, became the impetus for my entire teaching and coaching career. As was the case with *Napoleon*, *With the Old Breed* had a significant impact on me. The book is raw, emotionally charged, and lays out the horrors of war in graphic detail. It wasn’t so much the killing that struck me, but the daily struggle of a man trying to navigate the notion that, at any single moment, his life could end—or be altered forever.
Said Sledge:
“The only redeeming factors were my comrades’ incredible bravery and their devotion to each other. Marine Corps training taught us to kill efficiently and to try to survive. But it also taught us loyalty to each other—and love. That esprit de corps sustained us.”
It is the last six words that spoke to me the most: That esprit de corps sustained us. It wasn’t the food. It wasn’t their ingenuity in doing what they needed to do to stay alive. And it wasn’t the efficient killing of the enemy either. It was them—something engendered among them that sustained them during the most cruel moments of battle, as they watched each other weather the storm of their Japanese counterparts.
It is something we civilians simply do not understand—and certainly not something those who can’t fathom the notion of battle ever will. The closest we might get is on a football field, where ten other players—your teammates—engage in physical combat, relying on one another to do their jobs in order to complete the task of winning the game. But, in truth, there is no comparison. Football is a game; war is life and death.
We can’t understand the notion of sacrifice—especially the idea of laying down one’s life for another. It’s not natural, and it’s not fathomable for most of us, which is why the training is so intense.
We might see flashes of our own capability: the mother who summons superhuman strength to lift a car and save her baby, or the father who charges headlong at a wild animal ready to attack his family. But those are flash instances—moments when raw emotion takes over, when there is little thought, only action. In battle, it isn’t that way. For the men and women who serve, there is the constant awareness that, at a moment’s notice, they may be called to put their lives on the line for their nation—no questions asked, only action.
As Sledge said:
“Until the millennium arrives and countries cease trying to enslave others, it will be necessary to accept one’s responsibilities and to be willing to make sacrifices for one’s country—as my comrades did.”
But there are so many who don’t understand—and who refuse to understand—because they live under the umbrella of safety provided by the men and women of our armed forces. It is easy to be critical, to be flippant, and to be “all for peace” when there is no threat to one’s survival.
I can recall those who protested the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, referring to returning service members as “baby killers” and other such names—without knowing the circumstances. I can’t help but wonder what those who hurled such epithets might have thought if they had been under threat—not protected by oceans on either side, but faced with the cruelty that only humans can inflict upon one another. I wonder if they would have been so willing to protest, to name-call, and to accuse if their lives had rested in the hands of the brave warriors who protected them.
Safety and security have their benefits, but they also breed weakness of spirit.
Often, we civilians do not grasp the gravity of what we ask of our fellow citizens—now part of a fully volunteer military. If we did, if we understood what we ask of them or what they endure during battle, we might shudder as we sit in our homes, warm by the fire. Maybe if we understood—in our bones, not just our intellect—the damage war inflicts on those who fight, we might be less willing to condemn their actions.
Sledge wrote:
“In writing it, I’m fulfilling an obligation I have long felt to my comrades in the 1st Marine Division, all of whom suffered so much for our country. None came out unscathed. Many gave their lives, many their health, and some their sanity.”
For those who survive war, it is more than simply continuing on with life. It is continuing on knowing that the bubble we civilians live in—a bubble where our biggest worry is whether traffic will be bad on the way to work, or why our doughnut isn’t the right one—is a luxury. We don’t understand the fragility of this life, and we shouldn’t. That’s the gift those in the military provide for us: we don’t have to worry. They’ll protect us.
Those who serve—like the members serving now, or my uncle Bill Mahler, who served as a forward observer in Korea, or E.B. Sledge himself—are the selfless ones, the ones willing to do what is necessary for this nation to continue. For that alone, whether in peacetime or war, they deserve our thanks and our gratitude. Theirs is the holiest blood of self-sacrifice, and there is no greater gift.
Said E.B. Sledge after the war:
“We didn’t want to indulge in self-pity. We just wished that people back home could understand how lucky they were and stop complaining about trivial inconveniences.”
Would that we might take his words to heart on this Veterans Day.
