War is hell. Some reports of U.S. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s 1879 address to cadets at the MichiganMilitaryAcademy are more elaborate:
“There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glamour and glory, but let me tell you boys, it is all hell,” said the man who arguably turned the city of Atlanta into hell in his campaign to help win the Civil War.
On Memorial Day we honor thousands of brave Americans who experienced the hell of war. We might participate in or watch marches and other ceremonies, showing our pride for those who have defended our country’s freedoms and interests. Veterans will accept proudly our heartfelt gratitude for their service.
Memorial Day, as its name suggests, is about more than all that. It recognizes primarily those who never had a chance to become veterans — those military personnel whom we’ve lost in service.
According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, of some 42 million who have served in all U.S. military campaigns, roughly 1.2 million of our soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen and Coast Guardsmen have died during their service, more than 660,000 of them felled in actual combat. And the casualties extend beyond those lost lives — to the families who have lost their children, parents, brothers, uncles and aunts.
The hell of war also goes beyond the theaters of war. For many people who have served, it doesn’t end when they return stateside. Many have said that war changes a person, and many veterans come home to years of stress, nightmares and inability to fit in with the society that embraced them just a few years before. More than 10,000 veterans have committed suicides since 2014, the VA reports, at a rate of about 17 per day — a number that gives officials hope, since just a couple of years ago the rate was more than 20 a day. Veteran deaths reportedly comprise 18% of all suicide deaths, although veterans are about 9% of the population.
It behooves us, then, to avoid the hell of war whenever we can. To be sure, some military actions might be justified; few people question the need for the American Revolution or U.S. involvement in the world wars. And that is why we have standing military forces ready to defend our people and interests. But the aggressive use of those forces always must be a last option.
Our elected officials should keep that in mind when forming and applying their policies. The current administration’s reluctance to involve U.S troops in the Ukraine war is welcome. Despite our own military superiority, aggressive stances can incite aggression, especially from covert terrorists. Despite the horrors we see from the area every day, outside involvement could trigger similar responses from other countries, on both sides of the conflict, and only prolong and worsen the plight of the people in that country.
The best way to honor those who have sacrificed everything to keep our country free is to help ensure that their children and grandchildren don’t suffer the same hell needlessly. Let us all endeavor to enact and support policies that maintain peace, and keep the number of people we honor on Memorial Day to a minimum.
