Civilians play an important role in country
There’s a tendency in the country to overvalue military service and to undervalue the civilian side of things. It would help if things were in better balance.
In saying this I’m not being unappreciative of the sacrifices that are made on our behalf by the men and women of the military. I’m fully conscious of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen who have died or have been wounded since the country was founded in 1776.
I like what Lincoln said, “I … speak in … praise … of the many brave officers and soldiers who have fought … We never should, and I am sure, never shall be niggardly of gratitude and benefaction to the soldiers who have endured toil, privations and wounds, that the nation may live.”
So all hail to the men and women in uniform. They have saved and served the cause of freedom, fighting and dying for their country even in the face of desperate odds. Their graves, monuments to courage and devotion ring the globe.
And yet not everyone who has served was a hero, which is the habit of thinking — and it’s a bad one — we’ve fallen into.
My father was an Army butcher during World War II. He served at Camp Stoneman in northern California, not far from San Francisco. Occasionally, he reminisced about those years. Stoneham was an embarkation point for men headed off to the Pacific. He told of the forlorn look on the faces of the men boarding ships that were bound for the war against Japan. He made it sound scary, which I’m sure it was.
He also spoke of officers who late at night would sneak from their quarters to commandeer a steak or roast from Army freezers — cuts of meat meant for enlisted personnel, some of whom were headed off to the fight and some of whom were even then confined to Camp Stoneman hospital beds recovering from their wounds.
My father told these tales of pilfering with more than a tinge of disgust.
Forrest Pogue was an Army historian during the war. In the classic “Pogue’s War,” his memoir of those years, he casts well-deserved aspersions on more than a few rear echelon troops, especially those stationed in Paris after that city’s liberation in August 1944.
“There could be found,” Pogue writes, “deserters who had joined with local gangsters to run the black market. Kings for a day were the Army truck drivers who discovered that a truck and its cargo of blankets, gasoline and food would bring $5,000 — enough to live well with the pick of the prostitutes for several months.”
Items shipped from the States for the troops were auctioned off to the highest bidders within sight of the Arc de Triomphe and the resting place of France’s Unknown Soldier. It was “to the shame of the American army,” Pogue declares, that all of this took place.
Some Parisians, Pogue relates, would mutter under their breath about the American goldbrickers, “Worst than the Germans.”
An Army reservist in the 1970s, I slouched my way through six years of half-missed drills. Two-week summer camp was one long escapade of evasion. My friends and I could get out of any duty, gracefully or otherwise.
Heroes? Hardly.
At the same time, we should not be blind to the fact that civilians are more than mere cogs in the engine of democracy. They are just as important as anyone serving in the military to the health of the country.
Civil society — composed of all of us who are not among the 1.3 million Americans in the regular service — requires as much, if not more, vigilance and dedication as any soldier and sailor serving on the frontlines.
The fact that we have let things slip can be gleaned from as a simple thing as voting. Those returning from World War II marched to the polls every four years in impressive numbers. Starting in 1952, voter participation remained in the 60 percent range through 1968, after which it dipped into the 50s.
In 1860 and 1876, a little better than 80 percent of eligible Americans showed up to vote (some herded there no doubt by strong party bosses).
In 2012, 55 percent of the electorate cast ballots for president.
Recent turnout for Congressional elections has been far worst. The 2014 mid-term elections drew 35 percent of eligible Pennsylvania voters to the polls, which was still better than the 33 percent national average.
Texas, that bastion of rugged individualism, was dead last among the states with a turnout rate of 24 percent.
Though not voting sometimes makes sense, these numbers are disturbing. We are trodding on dangerous soil.
The nation requires a revival of vital, active citizenship, not just from the few but from the many.
Just as there is Memorial Day and Veterans Day, there should be a national Citizenship Day — a day set aside to commemorate and remember the acts and sacrifices that are required to keep the Republic up and running.
I realize civil boosterism is out of step with the times. People are fed up with politics, and we hate politicians. But the idea that democracy and, by extension, democratic politics is inherently corrupt runs counter to the national interest. To accept the idea is to flirt with disaster.
We should look to strengthen civic life -making it seem just as honorable and important as the military is strong, resilient and capable.
At the close of the Constitutional Convention, someone asked Benjamin Franklin what the delegates had wrought. “A republic, if you can keep it,” he said.
Franklin spoke those words to a civilian.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books: “Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation” and “Our People.” He can be reached at grandsalutebook@gmail.com.