By Chef Jeff

Just the other day I heard on NPR that one of the last surviving WWI veterans, Frank Woodruff Buckles, now 107, was being treated to a special party. In the 1930's, he would have been given a different kind of party, especially if he was one of the WWI vets who participated on the March on Washington and lived in a Hooverville encampment.

You see, vets have not always been appreciated, especially after the war is over and people want to move on with their lives. No one wants to linger long on the terrible subject of war; neither those who watched it from afar, nor those who participated in it.

Just the same, it's usually easier for a non-vet to move on, especially if they didn't lose anyone in the war, than it often is for the vet. In WWI, "The Great war", there was something medics called "Shell Shock", which was the reaction soldiers had to any loud, sudden noises. In WWII they called it combat fatigue, and recently we have a full-fledged medical term, Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, or PTSD.

These are all different words for the same thing - anyone who sees terrible things, witnessed powerful, horrible events is subject to PTSD. Soldiers are not the only ones to suffer from it, but our veterans are more likely than others to suffer from it.

My old friend, now departed, Bob Bainbridge, was also WWI vet, and he trembled uncontrollably when he recalled the trenches. He wanted to speak with me about it, since I am also a vet, and he told me about the struggles he had, personally, and on behalf of other WWI vets, when they had to literally fight the government to get the things they had been promised for their having volunteer to go "Over There".

Another friend I met while stationed in Spain was Max, who participated in the Normandy landings in 1944. His boat was in the first wave and just as soon as the door dropped, the men were all killed or wounded by a German machine gun that was right in front of the vessel. Max was in the back, and the men fell backwards against him, burying him and pinning him at the back of the ship. He had to endure the long trip back to England under the dead and wounded comrades he had spent his entire Army career with up to that point. He was the only one unwounded, and one of the few to survive.

Every year at the end of May Max would begin trembling, drinking, swearing and he got angry over everything. He would check into the hospital, which is where I first met him, and mumble incoherently as the valium began to take effect. He would stay semi-comatose under the drugs until the middle of June, after which he would slowly come out of it and resume his normal life.

My friend John was in Korea, where he was nearly captured as his unit was overrun just after Chinese troops entered the war. He had blood on his jacket and he was able to hold his breath long enough to pass for dead, and as the lone Chinese soldier who walked by bayoneting the wounded turned his back, John reached up, pulled the man to the ground, and slit his throat. This was the only time John had ever killed a man. John, you see, was a medic. The wounded were patients in his M.A.S.H. unit. John was also the lone survivor, and was only saved when a sudden counter-attack by allied troops took back the camp.

My other friend John was in Viet Nam. He was drafted, so he went because he had to. He didn't believe in the war, protested it vigorously, but went when his number came up. One other friend asked him, ‘Why are you going when you hate the war'? He replied, "If I don't go, some other guy will have to". John, a U. S. Marine, died in Viet Nam, killed by a booby trap as he tried to disarm it and save the lives of others in his platoon.

As a Civil War re-enactor, our unit goes to participate in early June at the V.A. home in Milwaukee. We get to see and interact with many of the veterans there, men who largely are forgotten by their families and friends. It seems odd that as soon as someone is injured, or suffers from stress-induced mental illness, people abandon him or her. Veterans suffer deeply, some more than others, but if you dig enough, you'll find, I truly believe, that all vets have some memories that trouble them. It is a shame that vets who most need personal contact with other human beings are deprived of that simply because it is inconvenient, or uncomfortable, for us to see them with their injuries.

And when they die in the service to their nation, people forget their sacrifice, forget that what they did could have been worked out some other way. I have certainly had my share of people yelling in my face, first because I served at the end of an unpopular war, Viet Nam, and later because I said aloud that Viet Nam was a needless war, a politicians' war, brought about by ignorance, unreasonable fear, willful pride and the stubborn inability to talk first. It was also a war where few people of wealth, or the sons of the same, fought. Their fathers screamed "Do your patriotic duty!" but refused to allow their sons to participate. That is why, perhaps, the Credence Clearwater song Fortunate Son was such a popular hit amongst the troops "over there".

Lately, talking with potential foes has been likened to appeasement. But to me appeasement is when you needlessly give up things in a vain attempt to allay a bully. It is used by fools who think if they just give in, then war will be prevented. It is operating from a position of weakness, with the vain hope that if you ignore a bully, he will go away.

Diplomacy is the vigorous give and take that can often reduce tensions, leading to a peaceful, or at least less bloody, reduction of anger. It is backed up by power, by the notion that if the talks are not entered into seriously, then war may be the result. It is bargaining from a position of strength.

Propaganda is the antagonist of diplomacy, and we, as a nation, must be wary of the jingoistic propaganda being forwarded by people who have an agenda to push. Talking with Iran or Cuba does not mean we have to mindlessly give up our areas of interest, our important national goals, just to get an agreement. It simply means that we first try to resolve the conflict, from a position of diplomatic and military strength, and then if that doesn't work, and if it's in the national best interest, we take it to the next level, and possibly to the level after that, if again, it is in our best national interest.

That said, I, as a veteran, do not want people who are paid to spout their opinions on TV, radio and in the printed press to make policy, make demands for war, and to influence people to support idiotic ideas. These, I most heartily agree, are the Sunshine Patriots we read about in Social Studies class.

Read your Thomas Paine and learn the truth about who these Sunshine Patriots are, what they want you to do, and why they are unwilling to fight themselves, but are perfectly willing to send you, your sons and daughters, into deadly combat for ideas and ideologies that are most likely NOT in the best interest of the nation.

Sunshine Patriots are phonies who fire up the crowd and then deny any responsibility for the effects they have brought about. They set one group of people against another in order to force upon you their point of view, and then slink back while others, (meaning you), take the beating. They live amongst us, and we can hear them, see them, read their words, every day.

My father told me at an early age: Be careful when someone tells you to look over there, because that is when they slip the something past you. I pass this sage advice on to you: Be careful when a pundit tells you to focus on his or her agendas, because they are slipping something past you, and you may not even know it.