Stories & Poems About War
Letter to the Marines from a Quaker
Dear Marines,
I worked nights as a waitress, paying my way through
college, in Honolulu during the early 80s. Between work and school, I didn't
have much time to meet other people, and my family was thousands of miles away.
Several Marines frequented the bar, and one GySgt. of a Marine sniper
platoon, Larry Hatfield, sensed my shyness and invited me to participate in
a lot of Marine recreational events. We became close friends, but I could
never understand how a person could look through a scope and willingly kill
another human being. As a Quaker, the very concept of a sniper troubled me.
I was raised that killing is always wrong - period. I often told him, and
the other guys in the sniper platoon, my opinion on this.
They usually remained silent on the subject.
As time went by, I lost contact with the Marines I knew from
that sniper platoon, but I was privileged, later on, to be invited to
produce tours as a volunteer (USO/AFE) for Marines on various bases
overseas. Those of you who have met USO/AFE entertainers know that we are
nowhere near the combat zones, and are in fact well-insulated from the
horrors of war. We have fun entertaining you; we love eating with you at the
mess halls or sitting out in the dirt and hearing your crazy jokes; we do
our handshake tours of hospitals and PR tents and feel good and then are
lucky enough to go home while you stay behind.
But Iraq was different.
For the
first time I found myself
weeping at night after I came back from doing handshake tours. I couldn't
adopt the USO maxim of looking the Marines in the eyes and shaking hands on
the hospital tours, because there were teenage Marines with no hands and no
eyes. A bomb at a well while I was there on my last tour left 200 women and
children dead or injured at the hands of their own countrymen. The image of
a Marine, badly wounded, struggling to carry a small 3 yr old girl to safety
is forever seared in my mind.
I wondered - a lot - about the kind of sacrifice that it
takes for a person to volunteer in the Corps and experience this kind of
tragedy on a regular basis. Iraqi women refugees would tell me, through
translators,
about how the Kurdish women would throw their infants from trucks on their
way to being executed by Saddam Hussein in the hope that strangers would
raise the soon-to-be-orphaned children, and how often it was only the U.S.
Marines and military units who would help them get medical care if they did
survive the terrors inflicted upon them.
This is what I have learned about war and the Marines: that
I have never seen a U.S. senator cry while telling me about holding a dying
friend in his arms, and there's precious few senators who come home from
work missing a leg or two.
That I have never heard a U.S. congressman tell me what it's
like to pass out soccer balls and writing paper to children who have been
denied an education since birth.
That I have never heard any politician or corporate leader
describe to me, as one Marine did after a show, that she wanted a better
life for her child back home but wanted better lives for the children of Iraq,
too.
Marines are living - and sometimes dying - for democracy,
not just talking about it for the CNN cameras. They do their jobs, and come
home, quietly, to go back to farming in Iowa or driving trucks in Kentucky ,
and, for the most part, don't talk about it. And God knows we civilians
don't get an accurate picture back home of what is going on.
I still think killing is wrong, but I have come to
understand that sometimes it is necessary and that lack of intervention,
especially in humanitarian missions in oppressed nations, is tantamount to
pulling the trigger on innocent civilians who only want what we want: a safe
home for their children and food on the table and the right to be who they are.
I'm not naive enough to think that most of our political
leaders go to war for compassion (I think most of them want to protect
corporate interests), but I do believe, from knowing the Marines I have been
lucky enough to know, that Marines act from compassion, decency, and with
hearts bigger than most people will ever experience.
I understand now that a sniper - or any Marine, in any job
supporting the ideals of the Corps - does what he or she does because the
Constitution of the United States is not some remote piece of paper; the
idea of freedom is real to a Marine.
As one young lance corporal told me, as he guarded us during
a show set-up in a particularly volatile area (after our show had been
cancelled the day before because terrorists had blown up another 27 children
nearby), "Don't worry - we got your back."
It shames me to think that I had to leave my country on
these tours in order to understand what precious gifts I have as an
American, that every day, somewhere in the world, a Marine is watching my
back. I never considered that a sniper, or any Marine, may be asked to kill
in order to save innocent lives but now I understand. So to all of you
Marines out there, please accept this heartfelt thanks for what you do.
To the
guys from the sniper platoon in Kaneohe - this is a late apology for
questioning you, and a thank you for what you have taught me, but I hope
some of you read this. In our American culture, we don't talk much about
being noble, decent, loyal and honorable. I have yet to meet a Marine who
did not possess all of those qualities. You are the big kids in high school
who didn't let the bullies hurt the little kids. If you are reading this
from Afghanistan or Iraq or Camp Lejeune ; if you are reading this from a
V.A. facility; if you are reading this from your home, know this: that what
you do is important.
When you are feeling weary and discouraged, remember that there are people
in the world living in freedom because of you. Not only the refugees from
war - but me, too.
Sincerely, Laura Minor