“Compared to war all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God, I do love it so!"
General George S. Patton
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| American soldiers, Germany, after VE Day |
Jack Mullen grew up in Medford, Oregon. Like me, he managed to avoid being drafted into the war in Vietnam. We considered that war wrong. We worked together thinning and picking pears while in high school in the late 1960's, then we each worked as field representatives for U.S. Representative Jim Weaver in the mid-1970s. He is retired and lives in Washington, D.C.
Guest Post by Jack Mullen
No federal holiday brings forth more introspective thought than Veterans Day. Peter twice published the photo of his father, in Germany, victorious, with fellow soldiers. I see their faces. I see a hand on another man's shoulder.
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| Jack Mullen |
Tip O’Neil once said “all politics is local.” He might as well have added that “all war is local.” Last week, two guest posts, one by Robert Sage (November 12) and Larry Slessler (November 14), gave moving accounts of the war experiences of those two longtime Medford residents. They weren't celebrations of war. They each were stories of pain, danger, and risk of death. Mr. Sage served in the European theater in World War II, Mr. Slessler in Vietnam. After the war Robert Sage became an elementary school teacher and then principal. Larry Slessler worked helping veterans.
Robert Sage grew up as a farm boy near the foot of the two Table Rocks--the distinctive flat-topped escarpments that jut up suddenly above the floor of the Rogue Valley. They have the look of fortresses. Sage's family bought the farm in 1883 from a man who had acquired it under the Donation Land Claim Act of 1850. Under the law if a White or mixed-race American citizen lived on land and farmed it, he or she could claim up to 320 acres. The Oregon Territory became the possession of White Americans by conquest. Mr. Sage's farm was traditional Indian land. Arrowheads and worked stones are common on Table Rock-area farms. White settlers outnumbered and outgunned the Indians. The Rogue River Indian Wars ended after a decade of back-and-forth raids and settlement massacres when a treaty sent Indians survivors off to a reservation 250 miles to the north.
Neither Peter nor I were taught anything about this in our Medford schools. We learned about wagon trains and gold rushes, not the Rogue River Indian War or how the land came to be available for the Territorial government to distribute. Pioneers with plow and ax were the heroes as we learned it. We learned the state song, Oregon, My Oregon, which starts with the words:
Land of the Empire Builders
Land of the Golden West.
Conquered and held by free men
Fairest and the best.
There was nothing in our school classes about one of the Rogue River Indian War's most famous participants, a young Army officer named Phil Sheridan. Sheridan’s military experience in Oregon made him a valuable asset during the Civil War. He became a war hero after his cavalry unit’s daring charge that turned the tide at the Battle of Chickamauga in 1863. Then his cavalry ran Robert E. Lee’s army out of the Shenandoah Valley leading Lee to surrender at Appomattox.
Sheridan’s effort on behalf of African Americans contrasts with his view of America’s Indigenous population. His post-Civil War military career consisted of overseeing the military effort in the Great Plains to eradicate "the Indian problem." He is often sourced for the quote, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” He was so successful that Sheridan was promoted to the rank of General of the Army, the highest possible rank. The two parts of his career leaves one with mixed feelings about Phil Sheridan.
Some soldiers go home from foreign wars and leave soldiering behind. Robert Sage and Larry Slessler did. Others never leave. it.
I find myself thinking about what possessed the 80 ex-military and law enforcement people to be among those who stormed the Capitol on January 6. They defended America then attacked it. One of the defendants at the Oath Keepers' trial gave me a clue when he said, for more than any other reason, he joined the Oath Keepers because it gave him a feeling that he had missed since his return from the War in Iraq. It was a feeling of camaraderie, the feeling of being part of a larger cause. He said he now realizes what a goof he was to fall for all the conspiracy theories. He was just excited to feel what he felt in Iraq, together with his buddies.People find like-minded companions in the military, in religion or religious groups, on a sports team, even in the workplace. When they lose that companionship, or never have it, some people feel empty. In the post-Civil War days, soldiers from the North and South found camaraderie once again when they fought in the Indian Wars. Today, some find it in the Oath Keepers.
10 comments:
Contrary to the quote from General Patton, war sucks. I can understand war veterans wanting to maintain their bond with others who shared such intense shared experiences, but what a waste if they bring the war home instead of learning from it. It’s estimated that two million civilians were slaughtered in the Vietnam War alone. There was no good reason for it, but those who stormed the Capitol thought they had one: they didn’t like the election results.
Veterans traumatized by the horror and futility of war should consider joining Veterans for Peace rather than anti-American militias such as the Oath Breakers. Afghanistan was a waste, Iraq was a waste, but their experience back home wouldn’t be if they helped bring our state of perpetual warfare to a close.
Soldiers and airmen talk of the good times they enjoyed in war. Not spoken is horror and night terrors that follow to the end of days, unspoken fear, pain and loss.
I have often posted a comment about how I think that some men (and women) are "warrior types" and only come alive when challenged during a war. That and the companionship and mutual trust among their buddies in war. I have often felt that the sudden change in this activity when they come home is one source of the PSTD they experience. I wonder what we can do to engage and utilize this warrior spirit when they get home?
And also we need to get more young people engaged in exciting and challenging outdoor adventures.
"The Oregon Territory became the possession of White Americans by conquest".
As it became the property of the previous possessors, and those before them, and so one, even unto the Asiatics who crossed the land bridge to dispossess the Clovis. The reductio ad absurdum of politicize, ahistorical moralizing....
"The only good Indian is a dead Indian".
Did no local wag use General Sheridan's (purported) quote to suggest an alternative replacement to "Dead Indian Memorial Road" for the controversial "Dead Indian Road"? Seems to me "Good Indian Road" could have been a win-win.
Man’s inhumanity to man dates back to prehistory – all the more reason to learn from history rather than repeat it, sed ne me incipiat.
Much of the current territory of the USA was by conquest. Fortunately for the USA, our land was considered nearly worthless so it was ceded without much bother. The Ohio Vally, the Mexican Session, Hawaii by palace intrigue,Texas in two steps, Puerto Rico, Oregon by threat of war. And yes, the native people before White settlers possessed the land by a succession of conquests. Humans fight for turf.
Ah but this was, per Mr. Mullen, specifically and tellingly, an example of extra-sinister White People conquest, somehow different in kind not just degree from how happenstance geopolitical topdogs have conducted themselves since the dawn of time.
Either that or it refers simply to the group, in the Western Hemisphere, anyway, which won the eternal dice-roll the most recent time through. No group deserves a pass for bad deeds, of course. Nor simplistic demonizing born of transactional politics.
Dear LD
Your sense of guilt is showing, so you took a general and flatly true statement and presumed he implied “extra sinister.” He didn’t. I know the writer’s intent. I cleaned that section up in my editing of Jack’s draft. I wrote that. White miners and farmers displaced the prior inhabitants with disease , greater numbers, and better technology. The conquered it, just like the state song says. I personally think that these “land acknowledgement” statements one hears in some “proper” gatherings are misapplied and cheap expressions of too-late remorse. . It is a cheap sentimental way to give a brush off and avoid the harder duty to recognize that what happened with the Indians was business as usual for human. We White people wanted the land, gold, and trees, so we took it, because we could..
I condemn Putin’s actions against Ukraine but not because I think them abnormal. I think they are all too normal. I condemn them because they disturb the peace. Neither Jack nor I were accusing White people. I was stating a fact of life in a Hobbesian world. Whites weren’t attacked. Humans were described. Relax. If you want to feel persecuted find a different incident. May I suggest you grimace that the media doesn’t focus on the most important news story of a generation, the laptop computer of the most important and powerful person in the world, Hunter Biden.
Peter Sage
“”White” was wholly gratuitous in the way Mr. Mullen used it, hence it could only be (extra!) pejorative.
Persecuted? Hardly. I will note parochial, pharisaical thinking on race and history, and its attendant harms.
To the anti-woke crowd, suggesting whites mistreated the Indians is almost as deplorable as suggesting racism remains a problem in the U.S. But don't worry. I'm sure that besides the House select committee to investigate Hunter's laptop, "wokeness" will also be in their crosshairs.
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