Was it worth it?
A CIEMR
by Don Harward
I think so, but every once in a while I go back there and wonder if all that was worth it.
Were the hundreds, thousands of lonely nights worth it? Were all those missed birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, Christmas’s, and diners out with friends that I messed worth it? Was missing all that for the men who stood with me, or I with them, worth it?
Did people remember, did they take a pause in the middle of that family time and warm home after a thanksgiving dinner to think about those standing out there in the middle of nowhere? Man I wonder, was all that worth it?
Was it worth hauling that boy off the battlefield and watching him bleed to death and wishing I could get just two more knots of airspeed out of that old dirty war bird. I cry often thinking about that and other soldiers. But I never met some of them, and I don’t know most of them, but I love them. Hell, I can’t see the dammed keyboard again…were all those times when I get pulled down into sorrow, was that sadness worth it? Do you people out there who call yourselves Americans, were you worth the sacrifices? Worth my missing seeing my boys grow up? Three of them for me, and a lot of their years, most of his years for my oldest there are no pictures of them and me together. They turned out great, thanks to my wife, and for that I am thankful. But are you worth the price that she also paid?. My boys told me that they heard mom crying so many nights. They told me that when they asked her what was wrong, she told them she was missing daddy.
Seriously are you good enough to be worth what I lost? For what all we gave up?
And fools we are because we’d do it all again! Do it because we love you and we love this nation, but I guess we are all made in that way, heck, I don’t know. I only know when it goes down, instinct takes over and we jock up and move toward the noise. And who am I? I aint just me, I am the American soldier. I’m that man who sits quietly with not much to say. But when someone does something disrespectful, he is the first out of his seat, and like my pastor likes to say, I’ll tell you what, comes a time people, he is getting ready to make things right. But are you worth it? Are you worth him getting arrested for doing what you should do, but that he knows you will not do? Why should we have to fight over there, then have to come home and fight again while we’re trying to put our lives back together?
He’s that old guy on the loud Harley with the beard, no helmet, and the 101st Airborne tattoo. He’s the farmer in the old truck with that very familiar and much loved US Marine Corps decal on the back window. He’s a young guy at the cash register at O’Reillys who looks you directly in the eyes when he shakes your hand. He’s a young dad who saw a lot of combat but now is quietly correcting his disobedient son with a strong but loving hand.
Sometimes we just wish you all will just pack up and move and make room for someone with some substance. Like that boy all mangled dying on the floor of my Huey. Dammed kid got blood all over everything. Any of you know what that looks like? Any of you know what that smells like? Yea, I know, not much chance of seeing that in the bank or at the office. And that’s because of him.
So you ask yourself when you are looking in the mirror. Am I worth what those men and women lost and continue to lose?
Ask yourself, am I worth a broken family because a soldier was deployed too many years? Am I worth that boy in the mall with some curved thing attached to his knee where his leg used to be? He would have been chasing after some pretty girl if some lunatic hadn’t set off a 122 which killed his friend, took his leg off and planted a horrible image in the minds of some Army helicopter crew who had to pull all that mess apart.
You better be worth it! You better make up for the years with my family that I missed. You better be worth the issues my boys and girls sometimes have to deal with because I came back all screwed up. They shouldn’t have to deal with that, and you better do something that matters that will in part pay them back for what they dealt with!
You better, God’s watching! And those young men, those incredibly stupid and brave young men deserve better than you who have allowed this moral decay, and communism, and lying politicians who drag our president through the mud to trash out our home. Did you allow the voice of some transsexual be heard over that of a broken soldier? Did you allow some common criminal, arrested sixty times to become some sort of a hero over brave police officers who stopped him once and for all?
America, shame on you for not hurting for us. Hurting enough to be inconvenienced enough to stand up for what is right when it fell in your lap or in your neighborhood. We don’t want to hear one more “Thank you for your service” Please stop. Just get our six, like we had yours over there, or on America’s streets like officers have every single night of every single week and year.
Want proof that you don’t know much of our world? What’s a VBIED, a J-dam, or what does sour grapes mean? You don’t know because here in this land of the somewhat free, dogs don’t blow up, they just play and bark. Cars don’t drive into day care centers and explode. And a hundred things like that which all have their little acronym which we know, but you don’t, doesn’t happen. It doesn’t happen because dead men can’t get on planes and fly them into buildings. And criminals locked up for twenty can’t rape your daughter, or worse! That’s why your life is more or less normal. But you haven’t policed the chicken coop while we were away, and now we have mice, weasels, raccoons, foxes and who knows what stealing our eggs and disrupting the roost.
Want to show appreciation? You see a soldier get on the airplane, get out of your first class seat and give it to him/her. See one filling up at the pump, slide your card in and pay for it. Know of a deployed Marine, go mow his grass, pull the weeds his overburdened wife can’t get to. Buy them a membership at the pool and a gift certificate for a free oil change. Take care of them and if it costs you hundreds count it as a blessing.
Although it will never come close to covering our pain of watching another American die in a land so far from his family it will show genuine appreciation. He just might hear about it round about the time he is thinking about Joe or Jamie, or Tucker who died when he should have.
Want to really help? Want it to be worth our sacrifice? Then answer your nation’s call like we did when it was our turn. Turn this all around. Rail against all that is wrong. Rise and show those who have sold their souls that we will not go quietly into the night. Show them that there is a mighty bedrock of patriotic Americans out there, we aren’t going to stand for this injustice any longer. See those bikers out there flying American flags like they mean it? Well follow them if you can’t figure out what to do.
Stand up and be strong. If you won’t then don’t look me in the eye. Turn your head and walk away, because you don’t matter and won’t matter in the end. Please decide once and for all that freedom, our nation, and our right to worship Jesus is synonymous with being an American. Make them tremble when you assemble!
I want to see Harley Davidson leather standing right beside khaki slacks and jeans with stains from painting. You stand together and those who fear us will see us as one, the way it should be. Show me something to let me know that all we gave up and that I lost and left behind, for you, was worth it!
