Our local Army unit has, historically, specialized in bridges. The Army decides where recruits can be useful and does not necessarily employ youth in local units. Still, this fact both explains and perpetuates the way many of my neighbors and relatives relate to the young man's conflict--volunteering for military service, while affirming willingness to kill only when it is immediately necessary to save another life. This attitude is not what the Army really likes to see but it has built an excellent team of bridge specialists.
Dear Soldier, we all hope you train
For job skills you can use again!
Learn to build or destroy a bridge,
Then rebuild houses on the Ridge*;
Or be a medic or a nurse,
Come home, and be one, none the worse;
Or on a base be guard or clerk,
And use those skills in office work;
Or study those computer skills
Demand for which the want ads fills.
In peacetime you no doubt did plan:
Service would surely form a man
From out of an eighteen-year-old;
From there, let your career unfold.
Oh, "quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat, if met where a bar is..."**
Sang the poet of renown;
But time has brought refinements;
We now expect unharmed
Return of all consignments
We send out trained and armed.
Though you're to be prepared for war,
We hope you'll fight and kill no more
Than targets set up on the range--
Would Hardy have found this more strange?
Prepared for combat, march away,
And live in peace--we hope and pray.
* My home town is situated between two long chains of hills known as the Clinch Mountain and Moccasin Ridge.
** Full text of Thomas Hardy's poem:
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