Desert Storm Bravado

I had it figured that the world would end when all the computers were down on the same day. I was wrong.

The world has ended. I know it because last Tuesday I heard a young person refer to the war. It took me a slow minute, like ink soaking into a blotter, to realize he meant the Persian Gulf.

Desert Storm, the first military action baptized by Madison Avenue, was to this pink-cheeked college junior who supported the troops by staying home, the War.

Alas, Ike, I knew ye well. Farewell Bradley, Patton, Nimitz, Halsey, you missed The Big One.

Tobruk, Kasserine Pass, Anzio, Salerno, Normandy, Remagen, Bastogne, U-boat wolf packs, the frigid Murmansk run, the flak-filled skies over Ploesti and Schweinfort, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Iwo Jima.

Piffles.

GIs deafened by roaring throngs of thankful Romans on Via Veneto, blanketed by flowers and dampened by kisses of grateful French women on the Champs Elysees.

Ho hum.

And back home? Gold stars in living room windows. Gas rationing. Food rationing. Air raid block wardens. A slip of the lip will sink a ship. Rosie the Riveter.

Much ado about nothing. Didn’t even warrant a name. Only a mundane WWII.

Ah, but Desert Shield and Desert Storm. What a nice, genuine ring. The way a war should sound. Produced by Monogram or Republic.

The liberation of the People’s Democracy of Kuwait to the relief of an anxious, thankful world. That was a war worthy of flags and yellow bunting and parades and bumper stickers and exaltation. That’s the War to my young, pink cheeked, unscathed college junior.

WWII? A ruptured duck.

Ave atque vale, Dwight David. D-Day has come and gone and you didn’t even have an agent.

MITCHELL TENDLER, San Diego