WAR
by SFC David H. Plenge
September 1970
ARMY magazine

Submitted by fellow Spur, Bill McCalister

 

War is easily and inadequately defined in Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language as "open, armed conflict between countries or between factions within the same country." This definitions is surely correct, but war is so very much more; it is kaleidoscopic confusion to which humans react in countless ways.

War is pain, sudden and sharp. War is grief, numbing and lasting. It is a friend who disappears in a cloud of gray smoke and a red mist. It is a small child who cannot understand why its mother won't wake up. It is a stream of refugees leaving nothing and traveling to another kind of nothing. War is gut-grabbing, bowel-binding fear and sheer joy when life and limb remain. It is destroying a town to save it. War is having the ground next to you explode, thanking God for sparing you, and then damning Him for taking a buddy. It is blood, dust, smoke, noise, C-rations, no cold beer and waiting for a letter from home. It is death in the night as darkness flashes eerily to light and somehow you experience joy as the machine gun bucks in your hand and you kill foe after foe. War is a beautiful sunrise with the first light showing the dead and dying hanging on the barbed wire. It is the knock on the door that all wives and mothers dread, and the terrible word that your man is dead. It is calm detachment and paralyzing fear. It is brave men risking their lives to help others live, and more fear. War is that condition which makes men walk the thin red line that separates the brave from those who cower, and makes men walk the tightrope of sanity over the abyss of irrationality.

War is joy as the napalm drops and the firing stops and only the hardened can look at the scorched result. War is the stench of death or a morning breeze as war seems so far away. It is sore feet, bad water, cold food, heavy packs, oppressive heat and small children begging for cigarettes.

War is not knowing what will happen but wishing you did, and at the same time being thankful that you do not. It is a friend beginning his trip home wrapped in a poncho, and life draining redly out of another because the area is too hot to bring in the Dustoff. War is sound: the chop of helicopter rotors, shouted orders, the stutter of machine guns, an urgent cry for a medic, the rattle of rifle fire and the screaming stillness of the newly dead. It is the muted crump of incoming mortar fire, more fear and perhaps a prayer to a distant Almighty God for deliverance. War is color: the deadly quiet beauty of the jungle, the pale blue sky from which death may fall, a bright red web of tracers reaching into the night, the serene blue beauty of the sea, the awful orange flash of a near miss and the terrible, stark contrast as bright red blood pulses from a torn body into the thirsty dust.

Was is also a crisis of emotions. Fear is surely the most prevalent, but there is also love for your fellow soldiers, hatred for a seen or an unseen enemy, compassion for a small child, wonder at a flower somehow untouched, heart-rending sorrow when good men die, and the mixed emotions of joy and happiness when you leave war behind. This emotional crisis, after a time, mercifully causes at least a partial paralysis of the emotions, and it is this numbness which blanks the mind and allows men to continue on to success in battle.

Is war really worth the terrible price paid by society in terms of a spent generation of young men, by children who will never see or know their fathers, by the wives and mothers who weep in the night, and by the men who fight and bleed and die? Although at times we question the terrible cost, question the wisdom and the morality of fighting an undeclared war in a faraway land to preserve the peace in our country, the conclusion drawn must be the affirmative. Every shot fired, every battle fought, every life given, and every war won are the essentials that free men who wish to remain free must be ready and willing to provide in order that we may continue to enjoy the sweet, succulent fruit of freedom.

 

THE AUTHOR a career soldier with 15 years of service, has served in Europe and in Vietnam as advisor to an armored cavalry troop. He is now on duty as first sergeant of a basic combat training company at Fort Knox, Ky.