Remembering the veterans of the future

By Edward Grinnan
Editor-in-Chief, Guideposts

I don't know about you but I haven't been seeing as many of those once ubiquitous magnetic yellow ribbons--compliments of China--on the bumpers of SUVs these days exhorting us to support the troops. A few years ago it felt almost treasonous not to sport one, like politicians with their lapel flag pins. What does it mean? Has America, never known for its national attention span, moved on?

There is a strangeness to these wars our country is fighting, a contradiction. No longer do we have to wait for dispatches from Ernie Pyle or even footage from Walter Cronkite to get a glimpse of the front lines. Where once a mother might have waited months for a letter from her soldier son, she now hears from an enlisted daughter by cell phone minutes before she goes out on patrol. Satellite technology allows war correspondents to report in real time and with fewer filters. If Vietnam was the first war to come into America's living rooms, the current fighting is the first to come on to our laptops and Blackberries. Yet why do these wars feel more removed from the daily lives of most Americans than any before? Why do they lack the collective purpose of past military campaigns? It's as if we've outsourced the war to our kids, and only a relatively small cohort of them.

I remember hearing stories about my father's war exploits. Although he was in the Naval reserves at the outbreak of WW II, a recruiter back in Philadelphia told Dad he was in such balky health his services would only be called upon if the Liberty Bell were in danger of being captured by the Nazis. So instead, he used to take the family boat out onto the Delaware Bay on weekends and scan the horizon with a pair of powerful Navy-issued binoculars looking for signs of German U-boats. He endured some ribbing for this, especially from my mother's family, whose great ancestor, Captain John Rossiter, was Commodore Barry's first officer in the Colonial Navy during Revolutionary War. Dad never gained such acclaim, nor did he ever see a U-boat lurking in the waters off Philly, but at the war's conclusion I know he felt he did what he could for the cause. I don't know what he would have made of magnetic ribbons.

More poignantly there was my uncle Vince who, as they said at the time, liked to keep to himself. Vince was blown from a tank during the Battle of the Bulge, the crew's only survivor. Always the quietest of the three Rossiter brothers, Vince became ever more so when he returned home. He never married, lived alone, ate dinner every night at my aunt Cass's house in Paoli and took a week of vacation at the same time every year so he could watch the World Series, whether the Phillies were in it or not, which they rarely were. He totally chain smoked and died of lung cancer in his early sixties. He once told my mother he had nightmares "almost every night."

Today he would most likely be diagnosed with PTSD, one of the most common syndromes seen in our returning military, and he would have been treated instead of being left to live with his terrible memories. Which is what hasn't changed about war. Young men and women still come marching home, some horribly maimed and damaged, to return to their families and communities. We send them off as soldiers and sailors and Marines--warriors--and they come back as veterans. And without us, without our unyielding support and gratitude, they have nothing really to come home to.

The company I work for, Guideposts, does a lot of outreach to the military, especially to the chaplains. We provide them with millions of magazines, books and prayer support through one of our web sites, OurPrayer.org. More than anything, the chaplains tell us, our troops want to know that they are remembered in the hearts and prayers of their countrymen, both in battle and, especially, after. It is easy for most of us to move on from war; some of us already have. It isn't always so true for our warriors, our veterans. They need us as much or more than we needed them when the time came. Ever greater numbers of them will fill our ranks in the years ahead. And they will require--and deserve--something better than magnetic yellow ribbons on our cars. They will need our loyalty and our care for the sacrifices they have made.

Edward Grinnan is Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of Guideposts and Guideposts.com. He is currently working on a book about the power of personal change.

By Edward Grinnan |  November 11, 2009; 7:01 AM ET Save & Share:                 
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