Yes, my father said, but only three months ago the Italians were bad, and fighting them was good. It now appears they were only poor misguided victims of Mussolini, who couldn’t wait to get rid of him, ignoring for the time being a heritage of fascism that went all the way back to the Roman Empire. But then, Will, this is all about fascism, dictatorship, totalitarianism, and enslavement versus liberty, justice, freedom, and Abraham Lincoln’s mother’s dog, isn’t it?
I was about to tell him I didn’t particularly appreciate the note of sarcasm in his voice because I happened to believe that’s exactly what this war was about, and I was willing to defend with my life if necessary the very principles he seemed to be mocking. But he wasn’t expecting an answer, and he wasn’t waiting for one. He brought his hand up sharply to clamp the Homburg tighter onto his head as a fresh gust of wind threatened to send it skimming across the railroad tracks to where the Negro troops were billeted. We’re saving the world for democracy all over again, he said, speaking louder than the wind and with the same angry sarcasm, his head turned toward mine, his face wet, his blue eyes demanding attention. We’re assuming, of course, that what the world wants or even needs is democracy, he said, and we’re assuming that our great American experiment — which is now only in its hundred and sixty-eighth year — will succeed one day, will come to full maturity one day. I wonder just when that’s going to be, though, don’t you? We came through our puberty when we fought the Civil War, Will, and we might have made it safely into manhood if only the world hadn’t involved us in another war so soon afterward. But the very young are always expected to solve the problems of the world, and God knows we were the youngest nation around just then. Europe had thrown some sixty-five million men into the meat grinder and solved nothing at all, so I guess it seemed only proper for us to throw in another four million and set everything right. Well, who knows? Maybe Europe’s getting too old and too wise to ever fight another war after this one. Then again, I thought she was too old even after the last one — which didn’t turn out to he the last one at all, did it, but merely the first one.
I wish you’d stop making puns, I said.
And now we’ve got the second one, my father said, and after we win it — oh yes, I’m fairly certain we’ll win it, we’re a strong and determined nation — after we win it, I’m not too sure we won’t make the same errors all over again, the errors we made last time, the ones that led inevitably to what we’ve got now. The sad part, Will, is that we’ve never really been permitted to grow out of our adolescence. You could write the history of our country through the eyes of a teen-ager because that’s exactly what America’s been for as long as I can remember — an impulsive, emotional, inexperienced adolescent, who, I’m beginning to suspect more and more, enjoys action, enjoys violence, enjoys, yes, murder. It’s murder, son, don’t look so outraged. I don’t care if you’ve got a Nazi boy pulling that trigger, or a Jap, or a sweet apple-cheeked lad from New Hampshire, it’s murder, it’s killing another human being without anger and in cold blood, it’s the worst kind of murder.
My face, wet and raw from the rain and the wind, was burning now with anger besides. If he was trying to prove to me that the adolescent was a murderous animal, he had certainly succeeded because I was ready to strangle him now, father or no. I mean, what the hell, I was working my ass off training to be a pilot so that I could go over there to help end this damn thing, and he was telling me, in effect, that I was being trained to commit murder. That was a good way to build somebody’s morale, all right, especially your own son’s, especially when he was in Basic and was hoping to get his wings come next May and be in Europe or the Pacific by July. That was a nice way to send your son off, by telling him he was a murderer for wanting to kill the people who were trying to enslave the goddamn world. Look, I said, nobody wants to fight a goddamn war, but sometimes you have to defend yourself, can’t you understand that?
Yes, he said, I can understand that. We all had to defend ourselves last time, too. France had to defend herself because she’d lost Alsace-Lorraine when the Germans beat Napoleon III. England had to defend herself because Germany was becoming a very big maritime power, and was grabbing off too much of the world’s commerce. Germany had to defend herself because tariff barriers were going up against her everywhere she turned. Russia had to defend herself because getting the Balkans would have satisfied her historic itch for an outlet on the Mediterranean. Even America, an ocean’s width away, had to defend herself because of her own expanding importance; if we had let the most powerful nation in Europe win the war, we’d have lost too much of the world’s trade, and our prestige as a rising power would have plummeted. We all had a lot to defend, Will. It just wasn’t what they told us we were defending, that’s all. And now we’re justifying yet another war — the Japanese attacked us, so of course we have to defend ourselves — striking our familiar adolescent pose and pretending we’re motivated only by high ideals and lofty principles.
He looked me straight in the eye then and said, Go fly your airplane, Will, and convince yourself it isn’t all bullshit. I’m afraid I can’t do that any more.
I was genuinely shocked because my father rarely swore, even in anger, and he did not seem to be angry now, he seemed only to be overwhelmed by an intolerable grief. I wanted to reach out suddenly to touch him. I wanted to say It’s okay, Pop, I’ll take care of you, please, Pop, it’s okay.
We forget, my father said. In July of 1918, I killed a man for the first time in my life, Will, I shot him in the face because we were defending an important hill overlooking a strategic plain.
I can’t remember the number of that hill now.
I can’t for the life of me remember it.
II
January
Eau Fraiche hadn’t changed much.
My division had moved into Germany shortly after the Armistice, and I’d stayed with them as far as Simmern, where the Army doctors decided they couldn’t get my feet to stop itching and recommended me for discharge. That was all right with me.
I arrived in New York on January 10, 1919, almost two weeks after my nineteenth birthday, and then went by train to Milwaukee. Everybody there was talking about Victor Berger, who was of course a Socialist and one of our state’s congressmen, and who had been convicted of conspiracy in December (while my division was proceeding into Germany via Luxemburg, to Saarburg, to Morbach, and then to Simmern where the doctors gave up on my feet). The conspiracy trial had taken place in Chicago under the Sedition Act, which meant that Berger had either said or written or done something tending to upset the authority of the government; when arrested, he was charged with obstructing the draft. He had been sentenced to twenty years in prison, and Milwaukee was still all abuzz with the verdict. I guess most civilians at the time were feeling fiercely protective of our freedom, and weren’t about to let the Bolsheviks take over America the way they’d done Russia in 1917. To me, it looked like a lot of fuss over nothing; all I knew was that the Great War had given me itchy feet.