5:30 a.m. - Sunday, Feb. 17, 2002
Ms Leslie gets an \"aha!\"
You know what? I owe those two screaming eagle jerks a vote of thanks. They inadvertently helped me learn something I needed to learn a long time ago. There�s nothing to be proud of for having been in the 101st Airborne Div., or any other military unit.
I mean, I wasn�t voted in by the Motion Picture Academy or anything. All it took to be in the �elite� screaming eagles was brawn enough to complete 21 days of intense physical activity and brains insufficient to think better of leaping out into nothing from a sound aircraft in flight. Everything else about becoming a screaming eagle was purely a matter of chance.
For all these years, I have felt some pride when I said I was with the 101st Airborne Division. I got a kind of warm feeling inside, knowing that I was just a little cut above the average ground-pounder. I was �special�. Those yahoos the other day helped me to see that my attitude was no different from theirs. Airborne soldiers and plain old soldiers are just two more groups we make up so that one group can feel superior to the other. Good grief� I have been no better than ole Ben and Ron!
Keeping that sense of pride all these years only shows that the army has retained a vestige of control over my mind for all these years. The army controlled and exploited me just as much.. even more.. than did the mormon church. They used me as a proxy in the field to do the things that they themselves were either incapable of or unwilling to do for themselves. I had no idea whether I was defending democracy or supporting a corrupt puppet government. All I knew was that I needed to follow orders while doing my best to survive. I would have killed anyone I was told to. In fact, I did.
If I�m special in any way, or if I have any honor at all, it comes strictly from myself. I honored myself by keeping my word to obey and sacrifice. I didn�t run or try to get shot in the foot� as some �special� soldiers did. And I am special because I survived, and continue to survive. In those two things, I am like all the men and women who have gone through similar experiences.
Men who are attracted to danger enough to volunteer for airborne duty are either ignorant, immature or insecure. I was all three. Tolerance. Open-mindedness, or a sense of worth of self or others were not requirements for entry into these units. Some soldiers had these qualities, some didn�t� just like real life. I realize now that those who did have those qualities, if they survived the screaming eagle experience, moved on and away as quickly as they could. Only those who remained ignorant, immature or insecure stayed behind, reliving over and over the experience of being, for once, �special� and �elite�. They make websites, march in parades, and search each other out, pining for those old days at the same time they are crying from the pain of having lived them.
I�ve been there too long. It�s high time I moved away from that. I have nothing in common with these guys and no need to be accepted by them. I had only one brother in arms and he was taken from me on 3/8/68. I�ll have to deal with the others on a case by case basis.
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