"The Loneliness of the Military Professional"
by Charles Faint
With acknowledgement and appreciation of
The Loneliness of the Military Historian
by Margaret Atwood
Confess: it’s my profession
That alarms you.
This is why few people ask me to dinner,
Though Lord knows I don’t go out of my way to be scary.
I wear clothes of sensible modernity with long sleeves
And unalarming logos and graphics
I smell neither of gunpowder or blood and seldom visit the barber
No warrior’s close-cropped mane of mine
Or tattooed limbs bearing snakes, or daggers, will frighten the hipsters.
If I roll my eyes and mutter, at questions insensitive or inane
If I wake up and scream in horror
Over bodies chewed up in a mad scene
I do it in private so nobody sees
PTSD? No, not me.
In general I might agree with you:
The world should not tolerate war
Should not “reflexively defer” to the military
Or use the word “Victory.”
You should accept all sides and denounce nothing
Because it is easier than taking a side
You should march for peace
And look down upon those who serve.
Suckers, chumps; war is always “for someone else.”
That, and bumper stickers “I Support the Troops!”
And all sorts of moral cheerleading
Also: mourning the dead
If you remember them at all
Between Facebook, sports, and “reality” entertainment:
The new opiates of the masses.
Instead of this, I tell
What I know is the truth
A blunt thing, not lovely.
The thrust is seldom welcome
Especially at dinner
Though I am good at what I do.
My trade is courage and the prevention of atrocities
I embody one and confront the other
I do what I can, where I am told to do it
By you, the American People
I don’t ask why, because it’s mostly the same
Wars happen because the ones who start them
Never have to fight them
And to 99.9% of America, the wars are not “real.”
Not you, not your father, not your daughter, not your friends
Not even your money
Why should war end, when most of the people never have to pay the cost
In money or blood
Or dreams unrealized
Limbs, lives and futures gone in an instant
You are the 99%, but we are the .015
And proud of it.
Some days I am the hammer, some days the scalpel
But always the upright defender of our ways
But because I did what you did not, dare not,
You fear me. You don’t understand why someone with options in life
Would risk life and limb for ideas written hundreds of years ago
By “dead white men”
And that’s OK.
I don’t need you to understand, I do not need your pity. I chose this life.
And it chose me.
I would choose it again
But I will accept your friendship, if you will give it; and I offer you the same
There is much we can learn from and teach to each other
Even if we don’t always agree. Especially if we don’t always agree.
You need not fear me, no more than the flock fears the dog that guards them
At night. I am no threat to you, if you are no threat to me.
In my dreams there is no glamour
For I know what others do not, date not know:
That there is evil
In the world
Evil men, evils systems, evil beliefs
There is is not the way of reason, of sanity
There is is the way of the gun and the bomb and the knife
Of murder and mayhem
Indiscriminate
Who will confront them? You?
With your delicate sensibilities and your moral rationalization
“everything is equal nothing is better or worse than anything else”
No, not you. Who, them?
“Here I am, send me.” But know what sending me costs.
And let me win.
An airplane crashes
Into a tower. Fire against metal. And two tall buildings fall.
And the world changes forever
The asinine might say: “came home to roost.”
Those awake, they know better
Evil exits. It must be confronted. And destroyed.
Despite the propaganda, there are in fact monsters.
And they only deserve to be buried.
But finish one off, and circumstances
Or domestic political crises
And the Internet create another.
So who do you want me to fight, and where, and when?
Everyone? No one. Everyone? All the time?
Believe me: whole armies have prayed fervently
To God all night and meant it,
“Let war not come” and it came anyway.
We in uniform do not have the luxury of choosing who,
Or when, or where, or why we fight.
If we did, the results might surprise you.
In combat,
Some men throw themselves on grenades and burst like paper bags full of guts
To save their comrades.
Maybe it makes the news back home.
“Traveling Soldier,” If anyone watches. If anyone cares.
But rats and cholera have won many wars too
Those, and public support
Or the absence of it.
The word “hero” figures on a lot of talk shows
Of course I accept a platitude or two
And press newspaper article into a scrapbook
For a souvenir
I’m just as human as you.
But it’s no use pinning all those medals
Across the chests of the dead
Keep our medals, your tiny bits of ribbon
Give me back my friends
Who died
Give me back their limbs
Lost
And their mental health
Restored
Or let us honor them with victory.
But it’s no use asking me for a final statement.
As I say, I deal in tactics
Also, statistics: .01%
If you want peace, you must prepare
For war.
Read the story behind the poem here.
Charles Faint is a US Army officer currently serving as the Deputy Director of the Modern War Institute at West Point. He holds an MA in International Affairs from Yale University and served seven combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq while assigned to the 5th Special Forces Group, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, and the Joint Special Operations Command. This poem represents his personal reflections on the war in Afghanistan and his experiences as a student at Yale, and is not an official position of the United States Military Academy or the United States Army.
Learn more about the Veterans Repertory Theater here.
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