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PACIFIC AIR FORCES NEWS SERVICE
RELEASE:
639
9-24-65
Editorial
ERIC SEVAREID’S ESSAY
This Is
a proper time to consider those young Americans who fight in heat and slime in
alien places like Viet-Nam, in the kind, of undeclared war of limited, aim that
is alien to our tradition.
They
fight, as did. their elder brothers in Korea -- not for loot because there is
none; not for glory, for there is little of that around; their homeland. is not
threatened, their fellow country men at home make no companion sacrifices and no crusader’s zeal drives them
on. The question remains: what makes them do it and. do it so wall, beyond the
minimum requirements that the uniform ordains.
In
answer it has been said that they are professional soldiers; but boys of
nineteen and twenty are professional at nothing, certainly not at managing the
meeting of life with death.
They
fight, they endure, even though they may not understand the geopolitics of this
distant war; even though thousands of their countrymen tell them every day, in
protest and parade, that the war they fight is a senseless war. They keep on, as
they did In Korea, when these circumstances were much the same.
The real
answer must lie deep in the tissues of whatever is the substance that keeps
America from becoming unstuck; It must have something to do with their parents
and teachers and, pastors, with their 4-H clubs and scout troops and
neighborhood centers or gangs. It has to do with tie sense of
belonging to a team, with the dishonor of letting It down. But it also
has to do with their implicit, unreasoned belief in their country and their
natural belief in themselves as persons.
Whatever
the full answer, it is a considerable thing that they are doing, when they stick
at this kind of war, fighting without universal support and fighting for results
obscured in tie mist of the future.
Official weeks and days are impersonal symbols to take note of something intensely personal. But they provide an opportunity for the rest of us who are not covered with mud, and weariness and nightly fear to pay a measure of respect.
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