Sharon Kourous: Better angels of our nature
Her father served in the Spanish-American War; her grandparents and their siblings remembered the Civil War. My mother, born in 1910, lived through two World Wars – once as a child and once again as a young mother herself. Her life was shaped as much by war as by family. In her childhood town, nearly every house had a blue or a gold star in the front window. She told me how the women knitted socks, made helmet liners, waved recruits goodbye at railway stations, managed without news of husbands and sons … and slowly ran their fingers down lists of the dead and missing on the Post Office door.
Days etched on her memory: church bells on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month; the bells ringing again on VE Day; again on Aug. 15, 1945, and a few short years later, the dates each of her sons received their draft notices. She lived always in dread of the costs of war.
Memorial Day is not just a long weekend, a flag flying from the porch. More than 1.1 million Americans have died in all our wars. America has been at war for more than 92% of the time since its birth. At peace for less than 20 years. For many, Memorial Day is every day.
More than 1.1 million dead. War memorials in every town; cemeteries filled with flags. Some graves new, many old, many older…
War also means loss by traumatic injury and by PTSD – suffered mostly without attention or media coverage: the cost to individuals and to society is enormous. According to the most recent census, there are around 16.5 million U.S. veterans; in 2019, 15.3% experienced a serious mental health condition including PTSD. About 5.5 million veterans have a service-related disability. Veteran homelessness is widespread and appalling. As we remember our dead, so also we must remember and better provide for those who come home from conflict.
It is impossible, of course, to measure the cost of war in terms of the potential lost, the good that might have been done, the leadership skills never discovered, the inventions and discoveries never made, the families never built. More than a million deaths have changed us in ways we cannot know.
My mother’s experience was not isolated; she stands, in my thoughts, emblematic of mothers throughout history for whom war was a constant. Wives and mothers of her “Greatest Generation” were the strong homefront for whom soldiers fought and died in terrible numbers. Then they watched history move on: other wars, other selective service notices in the mail, other agonizing decisions made.
When the World Wars ended, they supported aid to countries devastated by war. Schoolchildren, my classmates among them, filled care packages to be sent to children far away. Nations began to build institutions to preserve peace. The League of Nations in 1920 and the United Nations in 1945 were built on the understanding that nations must survive and flourish together.
As many years as we have been at war, a greater number of years were filled with hope for peace. Can we dedicate ourselves to the memory of those whom we lost in a way that honors their sacrifice – by finding ways of resolving conflict before wars erupt?
We move toward dangers which will impact the entire globe: climate change, food shortages, migrations forced by hunger and loss of land. In this future, the actions of each nation impact the lives of all others. Can we protect our young future soldiers by forging peace among nations? No one said it quite like President Abraham Lincoln, and today we can perhaps apply his words to our one single world-wide union:
"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
Sharon Kourous is a retired teacher and member of Stronger Together Huddle, a group engaged in supporting and promoting the common good. She resides in Monroe and can be reached at mcneil102@icloud.com
This article originally appeared on The Monroe News: Sharon Kourous: Better angels of our nature
