The Cost of War for your Average Soldier

I realize that is has been sometime since I have written. These past few weeks have been a crucible through which I have unfortunately had to pass. Since most of this is of a personal nature, I will not elaborate in this forum. Suffice it to say that neither I nor those under my leadership have committed a crime, and that seldom in my life has there been a time where I would rather have not lived those days at all, as bad as they may have been, but that is true of the past month. I would gladly sacrifice all those days to the colossal garbage disposal, and perhaps other better days in the bargain, just to not have lived them.

Perhaps it is for the best that such things are not possible. Now I have a true test of character, and I will know more about myself than I did before. While I feel as though I am utterly abject, and must now start again from scratch. Well, at least I still have my knowledge and my name, but little else that I valued.

This is a good opportunity for me to discuss what makes this war so hard on the soldiers. I am not the first to find myself in just such a situation, nor will I be the last. When soldiers deploy they leave behind a world that keeps going on without them. In essence, we are only progressing in the military, and everything else we have gets put on hold.

This is the product of a volunteer military, and has not been true in any conflict of the last century. Panama, Grenada, the Balkans, and so on were all of short duration. In the case of the Balkans, the conflict lasted a while, but soldiers were only gone for six months, which is not too bad. Viet-nam, Korea, and WWII were longer wars, but were fought by the whole country. In WWII every able-bodied man deployed, so while you were gone, so was everyone else. You did not have to worry about coming home and competing for a job that other people had been working at for the last four years, because the only people who stayed behind were viewed as either weak or not patriotic. While the same was not true with Korea and Viet-nam, pretty much everyone of a certain age was pulled to participate in the military at one time or another, so it was sort of a right of passage.

The advantages of a volunteer military are manifest. Compare the execution of this war at the tactical (Battalion and below) level, as opposed to Viet-nam. Even better compare the Iraqi army (pre-invasion) with the American Army. But many of the soldiers, myself included, are returning alive, and sane, but have no life when they get back. That is no big deal for those whose life is the military, which is true of senior planners. But the construct of the military, volunteer or not, assumes that there will be a high attrition rate. (There are three private positions for every sergeant position in an infantry platoon.) Most soldiers are still citizen soldiers, and when they give their lives and have to come home to nothing, it becomes a much harder sell.

The bottom line is, I will survive as I always have until now. And hopefully someday soon I will become my old optimistic self. But I am not optimistic about the future of the military, especially the Army. I am the Foxhole Philosopher, but I will not be in the foxhole much longer. And many are coming with me. There is an old adage that if it is truly important, it will staff itself. We shall see.