When a person puts on a uniform, certain qualities of life are gained and certain qualities are lost. When we are looking at athletics, the gain/loss dynamic is mostly inconsequential. For example, a middle school student playing on the school soccer team finds herself or himself locked into a certain agreement with the adult world that can usually be considered a positive experience. The student gives up independent whims to follow orders from an adult coach that benefit the student and his or her teammates. All well and good, usually.
However, when the uniform in question is a military one, the dynamic can often become one of a moral nature. What the soldier gives up for the benefit of the master she or he serves is one’s moral autonomy. That loss in Basic Training or AIT (Advance Individual Training) becomes almost a game — let’s see what I can hold on to while playing the role of dutiful soldier. When the stakes are higher — say, in a war zone — the consequences of giving up one’s basic morality to follow the orders of one’s “superior,” become much more dramatic. Literally, life-changing. The most egregious example of that dynamic taking place in recent history occurred in the Vietnamese village of My Lai. American soldiers lined up villagers and shot them, throwing them into a ditch oftentimes. We are talking about over 500 non-combatants including children. If you listen to some of the more heart-breaking interviews of soldiers who took those lives, you’ll hear exchanges like this–the interviewer asks: “So you killed women and children?” The soldier: “Yes sir, I did.” Interviewer: “Why?” Soldier: ” I was following orders, sir.”
After I got back from that war and started raising my own family, I reflected a great deal on what happened to me when I was compelled to put on that uniform. Although I did not participate in anything close to the My Lai massacre, I realized that I was walking through the world as a part of a well-oiled machine and very well could have destroyed lives for the sake of following orders. My moral autonomy was put on hold and anyone seeing me wearing that uniform knew it. Of course there is still positive military service that needs to be acknowledged. It’s just that people have to be aware of consequences and choices. So, when my son reached the critical age of 13 — beginning his movement from boyhood to manhood — I wrote him this poem as a warning of sorts:
GIVING SILENCE
For My Son Josh and His Best Friend David turning thirteen
If ‘namvets were ancient shamans
now would be the moment
we’d choose
to give you shelter
from the coming storm
But we are merely
survivors of suburbs and cities
not forest nor mountain
Modern men
offering you our silences
our words
to guide you going out on your own
Yet we have known for years now
that the silences of our fathers will not do
And we have known that words alone
cannot bleed you free
of your raging doubts
So listen up
to what we have found
between silences and words:
Open up your fists
Watch women move
Scorn uniforms
Don’t march
Dance
—Doug Rawlings
Rawlings is a Vietnam veteran and the author of four collections of poems: Orion Rising, A G.I. Portrait, In the Shadow of the Annamese Mountains, and A Baker’s Dozen (children’s poems). He is a founding member and former poet laureate of Veterans For Peace.