Days of Drums and Bugles

It’s everywhere now. The war talk, I mean.

I hear it around Farmers Market where two old men, like characters in a Bill Mauldin cartoon, are saying we ought to go in there and smash hell out of Saddam.

“Teach him a lesson he’ll never forget,” was the way one of them put it.

I hear it in Venice where activist Jerry Rubin is trying to get signatures on an anti-war petition. “Nuke the Arabs!” two kids shout.

I hear it in Glendale from a woman flying the American flag who believes the longer we wait, the worse it’ll get.

“It’s a shame,” she says, “but we can’t let them get away with it.”

I hear endless words on radio and television throughout the day, talkin’ war even when there’s nothing new to report, like drummers pounding away long after the parade has ended.

Koppel, Brokaw, Rather, Jennings, Gumbel, Shaw, Donaldson . . . and faces of a thousand experts in montage, their voices muting to a common riff.

I read it in headlines as black as a night in hell and in ads that hustle a commodity always in demand when bombs fall and blood flows: music.

“Forty-two Great Love Songs From World War II!” one ad says. “An Unforgettable Collection For Sweethearts Everywhere!”

Buy an album, buy a flag, buy a yellow ribbon . . . buy a tombstone.

I sing today of war’s cold shadow because, like Roseanne Barr grabbing her crotch, it’s what everyone is talking about.

What I detect in the voices of those I hear around this sprawling megalopolis is a contradiction of concern, bravado and incredulity.

“It happened so quickly,” a woman said, seated across from me at a dinner party. “One day we’re cheering peace with the Russians and the next day we’re sending troops to the desert.”

“It’s oil,” a television writer observed wisely, picking at his lemon chicken. “We’ll kill for oil.”

It’s an “Arab Hitler,” another said in a tone not meant to tempt debate. “We let Adolf get away with taking Poland and look what happened after that.”

I didn’t say anything.

That’s not like me. Give me a couple martinis before dinner and a little wine en route and I’ll do the dance of the devil’s advocate as wildly as a ballerina spinning across the table top.

But this time I just listened and remembered. The people there were younger than me and, like three blind men trying to describe an elephant, they were dealing with something they had never experienced.

War, I mean.

My generation is steeped in the stuff. I grew up in World War II, reached young adulthood in time to fight in Korea, matured in the Vietnam War and now slide into my cruel middle years during the . . . what? . . . Arab War?

“Have you ever seen human blood laced across fresh snow?” I finally said to those at the dinner table. “It’s like red ribbons on white tissue.” No one responded.

“Why did you say that?” my wife asked later. I couldn’t answer.

“Are you afraid?” I asked a young friend in the Navy. He’s stationed aboard the missile cruiser Long Beach. It could be with the next carrier group to sail for troubled waters.

“I’m nervous,” he said. “You never know what’s going to happen. If the Ranger goes, we go too. We’re part of the task force.”

“It’s all right to be afraid,” I said.

“I’m not afraid, I’m edgy,” he said. He’s 19. There’s still swagger in his tone. “I don’t think it will come to the point of shooting.”

“Bertolt Brecht said war, like love, will always find a way.”

I had meant to cheer him up, not terrify him. The kid didn’t even know who Brecht was. He was just trying to reassure himself. It won’t happen to me . . . will it ?

“You have to have vision,” the wise writer at the dinner party was saying. “It’s like Korea. No one’s going to remember a war in Arabia. But they’ll remember if we don’t stand up to aggression.”

“That’s the trouble with war up close,” I said. “Smoke and pain cloud vision.”

Later that night I sat in the middle of my den and dug through a box of souvenirs from Korea. A camouflaged helmet cover, a diary, letters . . . and a photograph.

It’s a young man holding an M-1 rifle. There’s bravado in his stance, but horror in his eyes. I sigh deeply and sit staring at the face in the picture for a long time.

I remember the smoke, I remember the pain and I hate what’s happening. It’s deja vu. The guy in the picture is me.