It Was Everyone's War...

On a snowy day (yesterday) one may find oneself looking at old magazines  . . .

This is  the December 1942 issue -- even older than I.

As I leafed through the pages, I was struck by one thing in particular.

Everyone was expected  to be a part of the war effort. 

Whether producing superior files or jigsaws, it was all tied to helping Uncle Sam prevail.

 

And it was up to YOU, as a patriotic American, to curb your consumption . . .

The wars the US fights recently don't seem to be like that.  They seem to be wars of choice, pre-emptive actions, fought to defend economic interests. fought increasingly with the help of mercenaries such as Halliburton or Blackwater. 

Without a draft in which anyone's (and that would include Congress and the President) anyone's son or daughter may be called up to put their life on the line, it's all too easy for the great majority of us to ignore these wars. 

We might throw out a token 'Thank you for your service' if we encounter someone in military uniform but as far as sacrifice that involves curbing consumption -- why that would be un-American, Big Business cries, flinging up its hands in dismay.

As for the shameful treatment of our veterans, well that's a post for another snowy day...

 I'm certainly not longing for another world wide war -- but I do wonder if reinstating the draft -- and making it all-inclusive -- might make our country think long and hard before leaping into military action. 

May 1941 and beyond . . .

In May of 1941, the citizens of the US were still trying to believe they could stay out of the European war.  They were buying big bushy gardenia plants and safety patrol boys were taking trips. And there were lynchings.

My parents were on their honeymoon, in a roadside diner when they heard the news about Pearl Harbor.  Soon my father was in the Army and my mother, saying goodbye to Tampa, Florida, was following him from post to post in the western states -- Reno, Nevada, La Quinta  and Indio in California. (My birth in California can be considered a military accident.)

And then my father went overseas -- to stand at Pangsau Pass, one foot in Burma, the other in India, he wrote on the back of the snapshot. My mother and I returned to Florida to await his return. I remember none of this, of course, but these old newspapers and pictures conjure up that time. 

And I wonder if the people back in May of '41, buying those big, bushy gardenias and new bandeaus by Helene of Hollywood, the people reading about dry rot in Germany, had any notion of what lay ahead and how their world was about to change.


And I wonder what lies ahead for us -- what radical changes may be just around the corner that we, busy with life as usual, don't anticipate.

For more Sepia Saturday posts, go HERE.

Everyone's War - Sepia Saturday

While rummaging around looking for suitable photos for Sepia Saturday, I came across my father-in-law's WWII ration book . . .

 and this mini-edition of The New Yorker which was printed for distribution to members of the armed forces. . .

 in which the talk of the town is the atomic bomb and the cartoons show butchers with no meat to sell . . .

 and housewives who have learned to make do with rationed food and constant shortages . . .

and I thought of the All-In-This-Together Spirit that pervades English books from that era and is shown so well in the Foyle's War television series.

And then I thought about the differences in wars. In WWII, women went to work in factories and on farms to free men to fight; there was a draft; there were shortages which affected everyone; in fact, pretty much everyone made sacrifices. 

The wars the USA is fighting today are different. Certainly the service people are making tremendous sacrifices. But as for the general public -- unless we have a friend or relation in harm's way, our lives go on undisturbed. 

What if there were a universal draft - men and women - with none of those exemptions that so many of our current war supporters in Congress took advantage of because they had 'other priorities?'

A universal draft would put more people in the military so that the same poor National Guard units didn't keep being rotated back to Iraq and Afghanistan, so that we weren't paying Halliburton and Blackwater to peel the potatoes or run the motor pool or serve as bodyguards  -- jobs that in an earlier time were done by the troops.

What if Congresspersons were seeing their children drafted? Would they be rethinking these wars?

 For more Sepia Saturday posts, go HERE.