The Art of Loving War

The image of a soldier is that of a stereotype. He barely passed high school or did not pass at all. He laughed at the idea of college, he laughed at the price. He works every weekday and drinks every weekend. Bosses and police officers have no reasons to give him a second chance. "One more screw up and you're out," his father threatens year in and year out, until the threats and his father blur into the background of a life he no longer wishes to live. Maybe one day while bagging groceries, or serving a hamburger at the local stand, he notices a man in a uniform. He notices how proud the man looks, how strong, how brave: he pictures how brave he would look in uniform. A few letters, a few phone calls, and he is enlisted. "It was my one-way ticket out of Hell," he says years later, to a wife who does not know him, to children who do not miss him. And he comes back ten years later from someone else's war with only one leg and the bravery he was never strong enough to forsake, to a Hell he was never meant to escape. He must have been desperate, for he chose the path of war. Because that is the military, right? The path to war?