AMERICAN STARS

March 10, 2003 - There is a Marine Sergeant, waiting in Kuwait. I met him when he was just 5 years old. He is my secretary’s son I watched him grow up. There is an Army Lieutenant there too. He was 12 when his dad and I became friends. His dad won the Bronze Star in Vietnam. He was an all conference tackle in high school. He is sitting in the Kuwaiti sandstorms as well.

I just cleared away a petty matter in the local courts so that a Marine Lance Corporal could be deployed with his unit. He is 24 years old with a wife and two kids. There is a Lieutenant-Colonel stationed at the DMZ looking north. We became friends while he was teaching military history at the University of Illinois. His Army unit is the trip wire over which the North Korean force will stumble on their way south.

When I think of the war the President is hell-bent on waging with Iraq or the war in Korea that he seems bound to stumble into I think of these four young men. They are first in my thoughts. I don’t consider great movements of history or watersheds in the tides of the affairs of men. I think of Mike and his mother. I think of Ryan and his father. I think of Paul and his wife and their two daughters. I think of Tony and his kids still living in Champaign. I ask myself, what great reason, what holy purpose is there in the death of any one of them?

I ask that question because that is what war is. It isn’t a great national adventure. It is individual Americans sent far away to kill and to be killed. War is that killing, individual and one on one. It is bullets flying, bombs dropping and men and women dying.

There is a tiny town in Piatt County, just 1400 in population. Ryan and Tony and Mike all went to school there. So did Paul’s wife. Just three years ago, on Veterans day the town built a memorial to those veterans who lived there and served in America’s wars. Ryan’s dad is among those whose names are inscribed there. Tony’s dad is also and Tony’s name is listed with the veterans of Desert Storm. Mike’s stepdad is on the Vietnam list. They all came home. Bement lists everyone who served, not just those who died. The soldiers who fell are marked with a star as the Gold Star banner marked the homes of the boys who died in World War II.

When its memorial to service was designed the good folks of Bement, Illinois left two stone slabs blank. The blank slabs are for the names of those who will follow on in Americas wars to come. Paul and Mike and Tony and Ryan will join that list of names soon and I pray that none of them gets a star. Nothing we have heard is worth one of those young men. We have enough stars for one generation to watch in the firmament of history. We don’t need any more Gold Star mothers.