So many things going on...
I've been working on editing my grandfather's journal of his 1965 Yankee station cruise, the last of his career, off and on for more than a year. I always end up putting it aside because it is just too difficult for me to deal with on so many levels. Reading it makes me angry, outraged, and very sad. He was serving on an old World War II-era carrier that had been hit twice by kamikazes, killing hundreds of sailors, the ghosts of some of whom still seemed to inhabit it. All the grease in the expansion joints had been burned out and it creaked and groaned like an old man with arthritis. Their air strikes against North Viet Nam had destroyed all crucial targets, including 70 percent of the country's POL supplies, within two weeks and there was nothing of value left to bomb, yet still Washington insisted on air strikes against a country the economy of which was based on bicycles and water buffalo. Robert McNamara personally harassed the CAG with calls refusing to accept the accuracy of the after-action reports he was reviewing and demanding they be altered to show better results. He even dictating the number of sorties each pilot should fly daily and what the bomb load of each aircraft should be. And all the while they were losing more airplanes than they had during the Guadalcanal campaign. McNamara demanded that stop, that pilots should bring their battle-damaged planes back to the carrier to be repaired rather than ejecting to save their lives. Well, you can guess what that led to, those planes that could make it back to the carrier crashed attempting to land and not only air crew but flight deck personnel became casualties. My grandfather wrote passionately of how he did not want his son, my father, to become a naval aviator, but did not know how to dissuade him. And he didn't. Seven years later my father was flying combat missions over North Viet Nam.
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When you're all cried out, you might as well laugh.
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A dear friend, who completed five deployments to Iraq and three to Afghanistan, suffering for years from brutal PTSD as well as pain from injuries -- he had been blown up and shot so many times that he couldn't remember them all. Really. He would have been killed long ago if it were not for his PPE. But that doesn't prevent all injuries, to the extremities, of course, but also and especially internal organ damage and brain trauma --; well, he decided he had had enough of this world, the final bug-out of the 'stan was really the last straw, and went on ahead, leaving his wife, who had stood by him all these years, no matter what, utterly bereft, and his children lost. I once asked him why he didn't get out of the service and let it all go. But he said he couldn't do that. If he didn't go someone else would have to, and it was better he did it. And besides, he couldn't abandon the guys in his unit. They needed his combat savvy to make it safely through their deployments. I understand that.
I was talking with my mom about how we remember or imagine the past to have been. We always recall or envision it to be better than it was for those living it at the time. All the distressing details have vanished and there is only left a golden glow of good times. Well, what's wrong with that? We're not actually ever going to go back in time, so why not imagine it the way we want it to be?
We also talked about music and how men and women differ in their tastes. Guys love music that when they listen to it in their cars they end up driving 100 miles an hour. Girls prefer music that makes them wistful and if it makes them cry, so much the better. Guys will wonder why on earth would you want to listen to music that makes you cry, but, you know, sometimes you just need a good cry for no reason at all. It's a female thing. Males wouldn't understand.
Anyway, this tune combines both my affection for times gone by that I never lived through and my need to sob into my spiked sarsaparilla. Oh, and I like to dance to it, too. And it's nice to know lots of other people do like the old songs and songs composed and performed in the old way.
