I started to compose this article on Memorial Day in anticipation of Flag Day and the Fourth of July. At present there are flags displayed outside various houses and a whole row of them waving outside of the Veteran's Administration Hospital on University Avenue here in Birmingham. I anticipate flags flying in graceful precision for Independence Day all along Highway 31 in Vestavia Hills. And with a latent and inarticulate call of patriotism, I now try to recall why it was important for me last year to finally buy and display my own American flag in time for the Fourth of July. The film's first 20 minutes showing American soldiers at war had most audiences shaking in their proverbial bootstraps and mentally screaming for an end to the confusion, noise, and raw carnage.
War is indeed hell.
But while we may have been moved by the movie, while we may genuinely be horrified at various pictures or television news footage beamed our way, we still only experience a sterile version of war. A grateful American on the cusp of a millennial milestone, I have never known war up front in my lifetime. True, this nation's freedom was founded in bloodshed, and the soil here in the South is no stranger to gore, but the horrors of war are no longer in our backyards as they are still in many parts of the world. Such a world has been my birthright privilege, however. I have never known another way of life.