All quiet on the frontage road.

We'’ve sent a few of our young out on the frontage road once more. We do this every so often, as an executive might do a cat stretch behind his big mahogany desk. The executive survives, but the circulation is a little different. There, the similarity ends.

In WWI, we sent young boys to kill one another for great causes they soon forgot, along with the feel of warm sheets and wet lips. They came back to a dejected nation, a lackluster economy. WWII saw the next set of side road walkers out like flare signaling the coming of the Great White Fleet. Rosie now had a job when John came home. Besides, he'’d seen too much in the sands and forests to care much for lawns and beaches.

The VA became a trap-house for these men. Now poor, disheveled and detached. We'd recharacterized their reality out there, and did nothing to resolve it on the way home.

Korea and Vietnam. This time, the roads are trails, muddy and pock-marked; the fights closer; the cause not valiant. And again, glazed eyed old men came back, sat through their early twenties and half-lived their half lives. Again, we ignored them. Instead, we etched their friends into dead stone so that they could have companionship.

They are a nation within us. For those who doubt it, they rally to a black flag. Now, they look at undoubtedly at our next detachment to the frontage road. Through the sandy plumes, they see more worn eye-lids and sad jaws. They see it happening now. These young men go off to war. Behind them, others find new jobs, build equity, and get married. They joined to find their own riding lawnmower and an acre or two. Instead, they ride on an unpaved road next to our own. They will overtake us to wisdom, but we when we meet them, we will have taken their livelihood but we will call them heroes.

[ The US military is well known as a disproportionately minority force. (for some numbers, see: this link). It is disproportionately less educated. It is disproportionately poor. Now, with thousands of reservists in Iraq and elsewhere, the same military which promises education, experience and dignity, fails to provide the bare minimum - it does not pay on time. Soldiers stealing moments in a tent to pore over mementos of familiarity are instead met with tales of missed payments, bad credit, resulting stress, or worse - lack of funds to buy essentials. ]