A Journal of War and Peace by Christopher Mahon copyright 2003 All Rights Reserved

This column is dedicated to the art of the memoir. It is also meant to discuss a related literary genre, journals, and the art of journaling, since journals can sometimes form the foundation of memoirs. I’ve been thinking that the times we live in may be important ones to keep a personal journal which, perhaps for some, may even become part of a public record. In that spirit, I offer several entries in a journal of war and peace.

Easter Sunday, April 20, 2003

I awoke this morning at 5 a.m. in order to watch Anthony Swofford, author of "Jarhead: A Marine’s Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles," on Book TV. He wore a wine red crisp long-sleeved shirt outside his pant waist, and light colored pants. He seemed sensitive, soft spoken, intelligent, shy, uncompromising, and kind.

Swofford was a member of the U.S. Marines of Surveillance and Target Acquisition Platoon (he was a scout and sniper), Second Battalion, Seventh Marines, during the 1991 Gulf War, and he dedicated the book to the Marines of his platoon and to the memory of his brother.

It occurred to me that he represented the resurrection principle of Easter Sunday. He was no longer a Marine. He’d been resurrected into something else. A teacher at Lewis and Clark College. A civilian. A writer. Yet the Marine experience would always be with him, just as the bodily form was still with the resurrected Christ.

This comparison is ironic because Swofford doesn’t believe in religion. He was raised Roman Catholic and, during his military service, the letters "RC" were stamped on his dog tags. He eventually requested those letters to be removed but they never were. Whenever new tags came back they always had the the same stamped letters "RC," as if the military, through a personal twist of fate, still wanted him to fight as a Catholic. (Apparently, Marines often request new tags for various reasons and they can compile stacks of tags like so many lucky talismans, which they perhaps leave behind as protective icons in various parts of the world.)

The book is a riveting account, in many ways. It speaks of his youth, his training, his actions in the war. He despaired of his actions in the war. Towards the end of his book, he writes:

"I am entitled to despair over the likelihood of further atrocities. Indolence and cowardice do not drive me — despair drives me. I remade my war one word at a time, a foolish, desperate act. When I despair, I am alone. In crowded rooms and walking the streets of our cities, I am alone and full of despair, and while sitting and writing, I am alone and full of despair — the same despair that impelled me to write this book, a quiet scream from within a buried coffin. Dead, dead, my scream.

"What did I hope to gain? More bombs are coming. Dig your holes with the hands God gave you."

He adds: "Some wars are unavoidable and need well be fought, but this doesn’t erase warfare’s waste. Sorry, we must say to the mothers whose sons will die horribly. They will never end. Sorry."

After his reading, someone asked, "What would you tell an eighteen-year-old who came up to you and said he was thinking of joining the Marines?"

"I’d ask him to read my book," Swofford said, "to see if that was something he really wanted to be a part of. And I wouldn’t ask him to buy my book. I’d give it to him."

Tuesday, April 22

The war is over in Iraq, I think now. Many of us won’t really know what it was like until, perhaps, ten years from now, somebody like Swofford publishes his or her own book. Swofford lived in a war. Most of us others are on the far outer circles, watching TV, or reading headlines in the New York Times, like "Elated Shiites, On Pilgrimage, Want U.S. Out" or "U.S. Overseer Vows Quick Restoration of Iraq’s Services." Today there are parallel headlines in The San Diego Union-Tribune: "Garner Tours City; More Iraqis Captured (Restoring electricity viewed as urgent need)" and "Joyful Shiites Converge on Holy City (After years of repression, pilgrims revive key ritual)." And, in the newspapers, there are, of course, other headlines to chronicle the times, like this: "Nina Simone, 70, Soulful Diva and Voice of Civil Rights, Dies."

***

I want to wave a wand over the Middle East and create peace across the whole region, especially in Iraq, especially in Jerusalem. I want to wave a wand over all the public schools in America and provide them with enough money. To provide all the students with new clothes, new books, fresh hopes.

At home, I consider the war, consider my opinions, and feel that my opinions must matter. On the freeways, I see all those automobiles and imagine every one of the adults and older teenagers inside the cars must have an opinion on the war, knows what they, too, would do if they could wave a wand over the Middle East.

My power in this democracy, of course, is my vote. And any other actions I might take in a community of others. Now I think I can only set my own course, decide for myself what I believe in, in matters of peace and war, and try to implement them in my own life, and create whatever small ripples I can, with the current of my kindred spirits, awash in the currents of all those many others.

April 28, Monday. 2:24 p.m. (California Time)

I’m in the air now, on a Northwest airplane, 35,000 feet above the ground. I’m flying from Detroit to San Diego. I have just attended the funeral Mass of my father — I gave the eulogy and spoke, among other things, of his service in the military during World War II — and right now I’m somewhere over Illinois.

I think back to my arrival this afternoon at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

In the shuttle I took from Budget Car Rental to the airport, I talked to the driver.

He asked me if the freeway was crowded when I drove to the rental agency near the airport

"No," I said.

"That’s good,"he told me, "because President Bush is in town."

He meant there might be traffic jams because of the president’s visit. Apparently, President Bush was still at the airport even as I rode to it in the van.

As we rose up on a hill, the driver pointed out to me the military cargo plane that carries Bush’s limousines and other presidential materials and, then, off in the distance, he pointed out Air Force One.

It stood far away, by itself, in the middle of a runway. It gleamed. I noticed the flag painted on the airplane’s tail.

The van driver told me the president was in Detroit to meet with an Iraqi expatriate group.

"So, we’ll be watching that on the news tonight," I said.

"Yes," he said.

We both felt tension in the air between us. Neither one of us knew how each of us felt about the war or whether we had any opinions for or against.

We were groping toward the future — the future of the conversation; and the future of Iraq.

"I guess now they’ll have to decide who gets the power," my friend said.

I wondered what to say.

"I wouldn’t want to be one of the power grabbers," I finally said, "but I hope they form alliances with all the neighboring countries."

I felt an immediate connection with the driver. He opened up. He began talking about Syria. He indicated that, in Syria, "women don’t wear veils." He talked about other issues regarding the Westernization of Arab countries.

I thought about the phrase "the veil is lifted."

"I think that’s the direction things are going," I said.

He began talking about the importance of women’s rights. How, in the Mideast, sometimes, a man’s business, when he dies, is given to a male family member — perhaps a brother — rather than the man’s wife.

"And the wife may have worked in the business for many years," I said.

He opened his eyes wide, as if in affirmation.

It was all around us: The president in Detroit. The future of Iraq and, really, the rest of the world.

"Well," I said, getting off the van, thinking of the media coverage that was bound to follow the aftermath of war in Iraq. "I hope we can all watch it happily."

"No doubt," he replied tersely.

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