veteran

Memorial Day.

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ 1 Comment

In the United States, Memorial Day is a public holiday, and a disturbing amount of people mix up Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day.

Memorial Day is about those who served and never returned.

I’ve spent a few Memorial Days in the U.S. visiting the vast military graveyards, knowing that for many whose bodies are interred had painful last moments. We who have served sign up for this, though it’s not in the brochure and it’s not something spoken or written of as often as it happens.

To make matters worse, “supporting the troops” has become a football for some politically loud sections of the United States, thinking those that do not support the decisions of the government to send people to war cannot support the troops – but then, is supporting the loss of life and quality of life for reasons that are questionable ‘supporting the troops’, or is it ‘throwing the lives of troops away’?

Take a look at what Russia has been doing with it’s troops. Forced conscriptions sent into a meat grinder for… what? Trying to reclaim territory of an entity that no longer exists (USSR)? We look at that and many of us draw in a breath and shake our heads, even as we cheer for Ukraine’s drawn out victory with their forced conscriptions, all men, with women volunteering. To what end?

For Ukraine, it’s a battle of defense – a battle of autonomy, a battle of identity, a battle of their way of life. This is something that is easily relatable to. Russia’s offensive reeks of a failed painter with a very small mustache: Conquest with 19th century tactics and 20th century weapons in a 21st century world.

In Sudan, the same thing is happening, though the lines are not as clear though the blood is just as red, and the scale is smaller from what we see reported, but it’s still happening.

This all came to mind as I was watching Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant, which is based on real events but is not a true story.

It’s a story we want to see and hear because we want the good guys to live happily ever after. Not everyone does, and in the movie only one from the team makes it back – the premise for the whole story. Those that did not make it back, though, died in support of their orders which is what Memorial Day is about – based on the idea that the government knows what is best to defend the ideals expressed over hot dogs and hamburgers on Memorial Day.

Where I have lived, where I do live, Memorial Day isn’t a holiday. Where I live presently, in Trinidad and Tobago, there’s not even an equivalent, and seeing fellow veterans is a rare thing.

Yet I remember what it’s about. There are no hamburgers or hot dogs this long weekend, a break in the death march of work we subject ourselves to. We lose people in uniform, we lose people, and we hope that we did for good reasons and better judgement when that’s not always the case.

Saying, “Happy Memorial Day” seems peculiar to me. Memorial Day is a day of reflection for me, as you can probably tell, and for it to be happy… well, I don’t think it would exist.

Memorial Day is the reminder of the price paid by others and their families and friends. In this way, I hope Memorial Day carries just a small amount of the weight we balance any victory or loss against so that we do remember – and do not lose meaningful lives over meaningless things.

Chance Meeting with Jarheads.

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ 1 Comment

Yesterday evening I was lucky enough to run into a few fellow veterans while I was picking up dinner, which is very rare where I live. I ended up having a beer with them because… well, camraderie. I’m an old Corpsman, and serving with the Marines was one of the best experiences of my life. It made me grow, it allowed me to think on my feet, and it allowed me to be a part of something greater than myself.

Civilians won’t understand. They can’t possibly understand. What makes it worse is that most people who know me know that I’m not a big fan of war, or harming others – but that wasn’t my job. Most of the time, a Navy Corpsman is embedded with his beloved Jarheads, gets razzed for being in the Navy (nowadays, they call us Ubers), and so on.

BUT. These are experiences the average civilian won’t understand, and when veterans get together… we may have never met each other before, but there’s a camraderie that I have never found better.

There were things I did that were stupid during that time, just like everyone else, but I had the ability to do those stupid things with a safety net and guides. I also got to do very smart things, which I did and fortunately that outweighed the stupid stuff.

My Marines were in good health, despite themselves, and myself and other Corpsmen worked hard to assure that.

It’s hard not to feel a little nostalgic over a beer or two. They went their way, I went mine, and all was well in the Universe.

They certainly made my day. Good times.

On Suicidal Trees

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ 1 Comment

Suicidal Hog Plum Tree.Like most suicides, it gave no warning. The machinations of digging the pond included the tree being over the pond.

The pond was dug right at the very end of dry season. The tree seemed to be fine, this large hog plum tree. No roots were broken, no damage to the tree.

Leaning against it, I learned of the biting ants and learned… not to lean against it. It became a landmark of one of the many things to avoid casually touching on the land, like the weaponized chlorophyll of the Trinidad Roseau.

Maybe it was that lack of touch that was the signal. Maybe, somewhere in the latent consciousness of trees it decided it was not just alone but lonely. Maybe I had chopped down some of it’s children and it couldn’t stand to live without them. Maybe it had seen it’s reflection in the beginnings of the collected water of the pond and it didn’t like what it saw.

Whatever the reason, I found it in the pond one day, broken at the roots. At the roots, I saw the stone.

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I do not know why it committed suicide. It seemed happy enough. And here I was left, having to remove it’s burdensome body from the pond, something that between the pickup, tractor and excavator was done… dismembering it accidentally here and there. Corpses are so fragile.

I write all of this to show how easy we are to anthropomorphize non-human things, and how we treat humans like non-human things. About how people commit suicide every day – U.S. military veterans alone at a rate of 22 per day, once every 65 minutes – dismissed as numbers that march into the sunset.

Civilians, too, who pass quietly into the night, not the celebrity.

And here I wrote about a suicidal tree.
And you read it.

Share this to support Suicide Awareness. The life you save may never know.