By David K. Shipler
At a rest
stop in Vermont recently, I fell into conversation with two men staffing a
table set up by a veterans’ organization. One, about my age, had been an
officer on a destroyer off the coast of Vietnam during the war. So we compared
notes. I’d been an officer on a destroyer at the same time, but in much safer
places, half a world away in the Atlantic and Mediterranean.
“Thank you
for your service,” he said. No need for thanks, I replied. I had cruised to
exotic ports, loved being at sea, and benefitted from responsibility placed on
me at a young age. “But you put yourself in harm’s way,” said the other guy,
who’d been in the army. I shook my head. I was never in harm’s way, I told
them. I was in more harm’s way as a journalist later, in a couple of war zones,
Vietnam included. And I served my country much more significantly reporting important
news than sailing on a ship through peaceful waters.
But
American society has adopted a narrow view of service. At least superficially,
in the pageantry that accompanies sporting events and various public
expressions of patriotism, the men and women in uniform are celebrated. Rightly
so, in many cases. But what about the civilians—providers of humanitarian aid,
human rights observers, news correspondents who have also risked, and lost,
their lives in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere in the mission of
assisting victims and informing Americans?
During the
recently broadcast series on the Vietnam War by Ken Burns and Lynn
Novick, citizens who had sacrificed a good deal to oppose the war emailed among
themselves, and sometimes spoke and wrote publicly, in wounded complaint that
their contributions to the country had been virtually ignored or, worse, given
a negative cast by the filmmakers.
