What’s it like to grow up during war? To be a victim of violence or exiled from your homeland, culture, family, and even your own memories?
When America’s talking heads talk about war, children and teenagers are often the forgotten part of the story. Yet who can forget images of the Vietnam “baby lift,” when Amer-Asian children were flown out of Vietnam to be adopted by Americans? Who can forget the horror of learning that Iranian children were sent on suicide missions to clear landmines? Who wasn’t captivated by stories of the “lost boys” of Sudan, traveling thousands of miles alone through the desert, seeking shelter and safety? From the cartel-terrorized streets of Juárez to the bombed-out cities of Bosnia to Afghanistan under the Taliban, from Nazi-occupied Holland to the middle-class American home of a Vietnam vet, this collection of personal and narrative essays explores both the universal and particular experiences of children and teenagers who came of age during a time of war.
J.L. Powers is the editor of Labor Pains and Birth Stories and the author of two young adult novels, most recently This Thing Called the Future, an alternative fantasy set in post-apartheid South Africa. She began collecting essays on children and war while pregnant with her first child and says, “The experience was both painful and uplifting, not unlike giving birth. The most memorable aspect of these essays is their stark portrayal of both survival and hope in the midst of incredible suffering.”
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Observing Memorial Day…Second-hand
By Sue Summer
(Previously published in small town newspaper)
Sometimes I feel that I have experienced war, if only second hand.
I was no more than three, still sleeping in my parents’ room, when one night I was awakened by a scream: “Get your head down! Get your HEAD DOWN!”
From the darkness I heard a strange bumping noise. Suddenly, the light clicked on and I could see my father on the hardwood floor. His head was pushed under the bed, and his arms and legs were flailing in a desperate struggle to crawl further underneath. He hurled himself against the bed springs, again and again, harder and harder—but his shoulders were too wide to fit.
A tangle of scars on his legs twitched like spider webs in a fierce wind.
I cried out in fear.
He twisted his neck around and screamed from over his shoulder: “GET YOUR HEAD DOWN!”
Just as suddenly, he dropped his head back under the bed and started crawling again.
The memory ends there.
I do not remember who comforted him awake or who comforted me back to sleep, but the terror of those few seconds—the anguish in his voice and the flailing of his arms and legs— has remained with me through all these many years.
I was much older when I learned the details of my father’s nightmare. He was one of the Marines who landed on Iwo Jima in the third wave. He was one of the Marines who crawled on his belly through the barbed wire on the beach, one of the Marines who maneuvered around and over the dead as he dodged bullet after bullet—keeping his head down all the while.
Only one in four Marines who landed on Iwo Jima in the third wave survived. My father was among them. With his own eyes he saw the American flag raised there on the hill—but by then he had also seen with his own eyes enough death to haunt a lifetime of dreams.
When my father returned home at the end of the war, he carried in his knees, schrapnel. He carried in his mind horrific memories of fellow Marines who were killed on that beach beside him. He could no more erase from his memory the horror of those images than he could remove the schrapnel from his body…or than I could erase from my mind the terror of that night when I was three.
My father performed his duty as a man, as a Marine, as an American. All of those who have since worried for him and comforted him and loved him—they, too, have experienced war, if only second hand.
They, too, have performed their duty. As family.
Sometimes I think that I have experienced war, if only second-hand.
While my brother Danny was between tours of duty in Vietnam, he was stationed at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina. For a while it seemed that our house was a designated R’n'R center for every Marine on the east coast. Many a week-end, six or seven would come home with Danny on Friday night and stay until Sunday evening.
They called the visit a “swoop,” and the only rule of a swoop was: no one could go to bed on Saturday night until the Sunday paper hit the porch. We played Risk, we played Spades—we played dumb as we laughed too easy, too loud. Danny’s buddies came to view our house as a safe place, a place where they could forget if only for a little while.
I cooked for them. I waited on them. I cleaned up after them. I listened to them speak of things that I wasn’t sure anyone should hear. Some were returning from Vietnam; some were heading in that direction. In the eyes of those who were returning lurked the pain of young men who had seen too much, too soon. In the eyes of those who were leaving was the fear—and bravado—of young men facing death.
I learned their stories, but I chose not to learn their names. I chose not to learn their fate.
Not once did I ask who of our previous visitors had left for Vietnam. Not once did I ask who among them did not return.
Worrying about one Marine was frightening enough, and I could not find the courage to care too much about another.
So it is that I cannot now go to the Wall and discover who lived and who died.
Still, I sometimes wonder.
Still, I sometimes grieve.
Still, I sometimes see their faces and recognize my father as a young man.
They, like him and my brother, performed their duty as men, as Marines, as Americans. And all of those who have since worried for them and comforted them, loved them—and mourned them—they, too, have experienced war, if only second hand.
Sometimes I think that I have experienced war, if only second-hand.
I read in the news that some veterans did not want President Clinton to visit the Wall on Memorial Day. He was a war protester, they said, and he had no right to be there.
They may feel I have no right to go there, either.
In the spring of 1972, because I desperately wanted my brother to come home, I participated in an anti-war demonstration at USC. I acted as an American who felt genuine concern and compassion for the young Marines I had entertained at my mother’s house. I acted out of a fierce love for—and in strong support of—my brother.
For those same reasons, I now intend to visit the Vietnam Memorial.
On Memorial Day I will make that pledge to the young men whose last names I chose not to know—because some of those names, I know, are chiseled on that Wall.
I feel a need to remember them, to honor them, to mourn for them.
From what I learned about those young men during “swoops,” they would not be bothered about what I did one spring afternoon in 1972 out of love for my brother and concern for them. They would want me to bring a deck of cards; they would want me to sit down with them; they would want to talk for a while.
So I will.
In my own way, I will honor those who survived and mourn those who did not. I will make them a promise to be ever grateful for the peace they brought to this nation at great personal sacrifice. I will make them a promise to put aside all social and political differences so that we may come together as a nation….to comfort, to love, to remember, and to mourn.
That is our duty, and we will perform it—because under the flag that was raised on Iwo Jima, we are one people. The time is right for us to come together so that we may pray together: Long may that flag wave.
As an American who has experienced war only second hand, I will visit the Vietnam Memorial out of respect for the dead and the wounded and the survivors. I intend no offense to those who say I have no place there, but I owe something to those young men whose names I chose not to learn. I owe them a “swoop.”
They—and those who came before them—made it possible for me to live free and to have experienced war only second hand. May God bless all of those who performed their duty as soldiers—and those who are even yet performing their duty as family.
Semper fi.
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