This was one of the most incredible essays about war I've ever read. At some points I forgot that I was even reading an essay about war, but everything came together in the end.
I think Sandlin was one of the few authors (perhaps alongside Remarque) that could adequately capture the silent resignation into fear (or 'fey' as he put it) that so many people have; my father was one of those people, and while his time at war was something I barely understand and was never told about—probably to shield me—his description of those restless nights dreaming of patrolling Okinawa (or Fallujah, Kandahar, or Kashmir) are something that truely can't be described by the language of peace, or even by people who were not there—like myself.
There's a certain melancholy in the tone of the entire essay, something that I think grips so many people in my generation (and that Sandlin mentions while describing Wagner): the belief that while life continues on as normal today, the world is about to be irreparably changed for the worse; perhaps we'll go to war with China, Russia, Iran, or some other country, but in the aftermath, everything we've taken for granted in life will be completely gone. I think an entire generation of young men now believe that they'll eventually be shipped off to some war and might not return—and if they do, just like Eugene Sledge, the entire world around them will be completely different. And eventually, no one will care to hear about their war stories and their memories of it will fade.
> I think an entire generation of young men now believe that they'll eventually be shipped off to some war and might not return
Things are pretty grim for me, and I think I'm undraftable.
If I stay in the US, what if I get targeted by stochastic terrorism for my identity or my beliefs or my speech?
If I leave the US, what if I regret leaving my friends and family? What if they suffer and I could have prevented it?
If I leave the US and everything is fine, and it's just an embarrassing waste of time and money, then what?
If the US falls into civil war... If Russia advances farther into Europe and China moves for Taiwan and the US goes into war mode to project power, even though Trump dithers between siding with Russia and against.
I don't think I'm overreacting. The government is being disassembled day by day as good people resign and corrupt loyalists are hired in. The tipped scales of the Electoral College, the Senate, the mis-allocated House, and the "apolitical" legislature of the Supreme Court are all finally aligned with a well-organized wanna-be fascist regime. The hopes for sanity are that the Republican party might infight long enough to run out of steam, and that the US might be so big and defensible that even the US could not invade the US, especially if an organized defense were mounted.
You know, a year ago, I had dreams. I was going to get cosmetic surgery and buy a new car just because I wanted one, and I was going to take up expensive hobbies and do some self-care and really enjoy myself. Right-wing pundits want me dead or imprisoned and I just want to be left alone.
Not to compare it to the horror of seeing your buddies explode into bloody chunks, but I feel like I'm living in a bit of a cold war.
I don't see the point having a full-time career or putting money into my retirement fund when I might not be in the US in 2028, or I might not be alive, or I might need a huge sum of cash to save myself and some loved ones.
And I have to keep telling myself, I'm not overreacting. A friend of a friend was kidnapped across state lines by ICE this week, kept for days with no contact with their family, and probably will never get justice. That is terrorism. Committed by a government elected by a 30% majority of American voters, against people who look different or pose a threat to their order. None of my friends have faith that the Democratic Party, which peacefully ceded power to a man who wants to be king, will put up a serious fight. I think as an atheist, I never appreciated how much faith it takes, even secular faith, to live day-by-day. My friends condemn "civil religion" while I only long to believe again. We never deserved the Statue of Liberty and we sure aren't earning it now.
I hope someone takes this seriously. If anyone reading understands this, the Republican Party is mounting a 51% attack on America. It is the same problem that can happen to cryptocurrency, because in the end democracy only works is power is distributed. Please please vote Democrat next year, if there are elections. Please stand up to ICE. Please say "No, you can't kidnap people and hold them without trial just because you decided they're suddenly illegal." We used to at least pretend to have standards.
While I do agree with a lot of what you're saying (wrt. people in the US feeling that their country is slowly falling apart, perhaps into fascism) I just wanted to point out that I don't actually live in the US.
Though I think the nascent feelings you describe are very universal: living in a (thankfully) stable democracy, I think these feelings that the world is slowly unraveling are quite universal—we constantly see in the news that the U.S. is slowly falling apart, that there are now large-scale land wars in Europe again, and that China is inching towards a crisis in the Taiwan Strait. I think for a lot of people it feels hard to imagine a world that gets better in the short-medium term, especially as the U.S. slowly starts to unravel itself (from an outsider POV).
I'm not really sure whether the world is slowly starting to become more crazy or whether this has always been the case (I wasn't even a teenager when Trump was first elected), I sometimes wonder if the feeling that things are reaching a breaking point is the same feeling that people had in 1928.
Totally worth the time to read. Some of it hits very differently in a post 9/11 post Covid world than it probably did when written. 9/11 was a reminder of the war fever; Covid of how desperately we want to forget. Of course both pale in comparison to the horrors of WWII.
I didn't know it was still possible to read something which would add so much to my understanding of the central event in the century I was born. I may have to read it again.
Ye a really good read. I can especially relate to the growing up part, where the author goes from the romantic view to the, what should I call it, humane and sad not my cup of tea view on the matter.
He mentions that every war since Napoleon is different, fought with different technology.
It would be nice if war could be traced back to just shifting of technological power. Maybe the development of tanks makes one war inevitable, and the development of ICBMs makes another war inevitable.
And one day if we're very lucky, technology will be Good Enough and it will plateau and things can coalesce into a global government with no border and few standing military. It might be over 100 years, I might not live to see it.
It would be nice if war was not an endemic part of the human condition, but just the shocks and aftershocks of tectonic shifts, and one day the ringing will die out as everything is abundant enough.
But considering the wars before Napoleon, maybe it is endemic.
One unified global government sounds like a nice ideal, until you realize that a few rogue billionaires can seize control of it through legal means. This happens on a national scale already, of course, but at least there are other nations..
This was one of the most incredible essays about war I've ever read. At some points I forgot that I was even reading an essay about war, but everything came together in the end.
I think Sandlin was one of the few authors (perhaps alongside Remarque) that could adequately capture the silent resignation into fear (or 'fey' as he put it) that so many people have; my father was one of those people, and while his time at war was something I barely understand and was never told about—probably to shield me—his description of those restless nights dreaming of patrolling Okinawa (or Fallujah, Kandahar, or Kashmir) are something that truely can't be described by the language of peace, or even by people who were not there—like myself.
There's a certain melancholy in the tone of the entire essay, something that I think grips so many people in my generation (and that Sandlin mentions while describing Wagner): the belief that while life continues on as normal today, the world is about to be irreparably changed for the worse; perhaps we'll go to war with China, Russia, Iran, or some other country, but in the aftermath, everything we've taken for granted in life will be completely gone. I think an entire generation of young men now believe that they'll eventually be shipped off to some war and might not return—and if they do, just like Eugene Sledge, the entire world around them will be completely different. And eventually, no one will care to hear about their war stories and their memories of it will fade.
> I think an entire generation of young men now believe that they'll eventually be shipped off to some war and might not return
Things are pretty grim for me, and I think I'm undraftable.
If I stay in the US, what if I get targeted by stochastic terrorism for my identity or my beliefs or my speech?
If I leave the US, what if I regret leaving my friends and family? What if they suffer and I could have prevented it?
If I leave the US and everything is fine, and it's just an embarrassing waste of time and money, then what?
If the US falls into civil war... If Russia advances farther into Europe and China moves for Taiwan and the US goes into war mode to project power, even though Trump dithers between siding with Russia and against.
I don't think I'm overreacting. The government is being disassembled day by day as good people resign and corrupt loyalists are hired in. The tipped scales of the Electoral College, the Senate, the mis-allocated House, and the "apolitical" legislature of the Supreme Court are all finally aligned with a well-organized wanna-be fascist regime. The hopes for sanity are that the Republican party might infight long enough to run out of steam, and that the US might be so big and defensible that even the US could not invade the US, especially if an organized defense were mounted.
You know, a year ago, I had dreams. I was going to get cosmetic surgery and buy a new car just because I wanted one, and I was going to take up expensive hobbies and do some self-care and really enjoy myself. Right-wing pundits want me dead or imprisoned and I just want to be left alone.
Not to compare it to the horror of seeing your buddies explode into bloody chunks, but I feel like I'm living in a bit of a cold war.
I don't see the point having a full-time career or putting money into my retirement fund when I might not be in the US in 2028, or I might not be alive, or I might need a huge sum of cash to save myself and some loved ones.
And I have to keep telling myself, I'm not overreacting. A friend of a friend was kidnapped across state lines by ICE this week, kept for days with no contact with their family, and probably will never get justice. That is terrorism. Committed by a government elected by a 30% majority of American voters, against people who look different or pose a threat to their order. None of my friends have faith that the Democratic Party, which peacefully ceded power to a man who wants to be king, will put up a serious fight. I think as an atheist, I never appreciated how much faith it takes, even secular faith, to live day-by-day. My friends condemn "civil religion" while I only long to believe again. We never deserved the Statue of Liberty and we sure aren't earning it now.
I hope someone takes this seriously. If anyone reading understands this, the Republican Party is mounting a 51% attack on America. It is the same problem that can happen to cryptocurrency, because in the end democracy only works is power is distributed. Please please vote Democrat next year, if there are elections. Please stand up to ICE. Please say "No, you can't kidnap people and hold them without trial just because you decided they're suddenly illegal." We used to at least pretend to have standards.
While I do agree with a lot of what you're saying (wrt. people in the US feeling that their country is slowly falling apart, perhaps into fascism) I just wanted to point out that I don't actually live in the US.
Though I think the nascent feelings you describe are very universal: living in a (thankfully) stable democracy, I think these feelings that the world is slowly unraveling are quite universal—we constantly see in the news that the U.S. is slowly falling apart, that there are now large-scale land wars in Europe again, and that China is inching towards a crisis in the Taiwan Strait. I think for a lot of people it feels hard to imagine a world that gets better in the short-medium term, especially as the U.S. slowly starts to unravel itself (from an outsider POV).
I'm not really sure whether the world is slowly starting to become more crazy or whether this has always been the case (I wasn't even a teenager when Trump was first elected), I sometimes wonder if the feeling that things are reaching a breaking point is the same feeling that people had in 1928.
Think carefully before you click through. Almost three hours of my day disappeared.
The best histories are the ones that give you a sense of what it was like to be there and then. This essay (or novella?) does so in spades.
Totally worth the time to read. Some of it hits very differently in a post 9/11 post Covid world than it probably did when written. 9/11 was a reminder of the war fever; Covid of how desperately we want to forget. Of course both pale in comparison to the horrors of WWII.
I didn't know it was still possible to read something which would add so much to my understanding of the central event in the century I was born. I may have to read it again.
Ye a really good read. I can especially relate to the growing up part, where the author goes from the romantic view to the, what should I call it, humane and sad not my cup of tea view on the matter.
Loved it. I have little to add but I will anyway.
He mentions that every war since Napoleon is different, fought with different technology.
It would be nice if war could be traced back to just shifting of technological power. Maybe the development of tanks makes one war inevitable, and the development of ICBMs makes another war inevitable.
And one day if we're very lucky, technology will be Good Enough and it will plateau and things can coalesce into a global government with no border and few standing military. It might be over 100 years, I might not live to see it.
It would be nice if war was not an endemic part of the human condition, but just the shocks and aftershocks of tectonic shifts, and one day the ringing will die out as everything is abundant enough.
But considering the wars before Napoleon, maybe it is endemic.
One unified global government sounds like a nice ideal, until you realize that a few rogue billionaires can seize control of it through legal means. This happens on a national scale already, of course, but at least there are other nations..
(1997)