Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Veteran's Day Meditation

"A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things that men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of an old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil."

The Things They Carried, by Viet Nam Veteran and fellow Minnesotan Tim O'Brien

To her nephew, Dexter (in Iraq) eccentric Uncle Alan (retired Lt-Colonel) Don (just home from Afghanistan) and dearly departed Grandma Don (WWII): she places this paragraph in the space of your silences when asked about the battle.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That says it all -- I wish all the generals and presidents and premiers would read that.

Anonymous said...

Tim O'Brien nails it as well as Erich Remarque.

Nishant said...

I wish all the generals and presidents and premiers would read that. Work from home India