Reflections from Bashir

I was still thinking a day after Waltz with Bashir, not just about the powerful scenes but some of the memories it evoked for me as well so I decided it might be worth blogging about.

I keep think back to the scene where the IDF soldiers are shooting flares over the refugee camp and the “modern” conversation that overlaps with that imagery. The friend describes to Folman that the guilt he feels is because he had been like a Nazi, supporting atrocities he knew were happening. I don't think it was clarified if that was due to his fear of speaking out, faith in his superiors or just an apathy brought on by so much conflict. Regardless, that conversion reminded me of a few moments in my own military service and brought back memories I had not called to mind in a little while. Several other scenes had some similarities as well.

The full details surrounding this time in my life would be far too long even for a blog. It would have to be a memoir of it's own. After editing this its still a long build up but I think important to the memory.

I joined the Military at 16, shipped out at 17 and had my 18^th birthday in Basic Training. This was while Desert Storm was wrapping up back in 1992. I remember when I was at the MEPPS station in Milwaukee they offered me a position as a Software Analyst on military programs. An easy 6 figure job when I got out and the cutting edge of training and experience. Personal Computers were about to take off in the civilian sector and the top stuff was definitely in the military. I turned it down anyways to go into the Artillery.

I felt that if I was going to serve I should go into a combat position. It reminded me of the one man in Bashir who said he wanted to prove he was not a weakling. I had never had a complex based around my size but at that young age I think I did feel a need to prove I was a “man” now not a boy.

Anyways with the conflict dying down in Iraq/Kuwait I was stationed stateside at first. I had a bright career, winning honors and medals and all that but where things come back into alignment with the movie was when I was sent for my final duty station in South Korea. Things were still pretty tense there back then. We were having a nuclear standoff again but this time about their nuclear reactors, a U.S. Helicopter was downed across the DMZ and other issues.

So the two Koreas were making a lot of shows of force, tank battalions rushing at the borders and stopping a few hundred meters short, mostly just to check the other sides reaction for instance. That means my unit was often on ready alert where we might hear sirens at 4 AM, rush to our vehicles and hold ready on initial targets for a few days. We would sometimes rotate limited sleep cycles etc until things were called off just so none was ever further then an arms length from the control panel and firing switches.

My unit was the deep strike brigade for MLRS. We used mobile, armored missile launchers that looked a bit like a tank but can each send out enough missiles to destroy a couple of square kilometers in about a minute's time, reload and be firing again in under 5 minutes with an elite crew.

Our purpose was to provide initial counter fire and then with tank support penetrate the border and destroy all the North Korean airfields and artillery units. After we would fall back to provide support, killing less valuable infantry targets. In tactical drills moving through the mountains it took around 3-4 days for the 36, three man crews to strike an entire country. We would operate independently each vehicle working out of a several mile zone for safety until we rejoined to move for deeper targets.

The firepower was amazing and slightly frightening and operated by such a small team. You felt personally responsible and in charge of so much. I digress but its like the man in the tank said, you feel invincible in a tank. Casually driving over a car or knocking down a building seems almost logical to people too used to using such power. When you train to kill tens of thousands in a day, how hard is it to remember the value of a single life?

So I loved Korea, met a lot of great people. I even fell in love with someone for the first time, a local woman. I saw the sights, got to be friends with local shop and club owners. I had started to learn the language and was teaching it to soldiers in my unit. I saw some relations between our base and the nearby village change as the soldiers I worked with started to appreciate more then just the bars, brothels and black market shops outside the gate and looked further at the culture.

I say all this to set the stage for the memory that bothered me so much from Waltzing with Bashir.

I didn't feel like a monster and did nice things most of the time. I used to buy food at a restaurant to give to a few stray dogs. I remember donating to a local orphanage and took hiking trips to see the burial rites of some of the locals. A friend of mine from a local bar was the daughter of the shaman from her village in the mountains and taught me many things. So I learned about people and myself and war all at the same time it seems.

There I was this happy, well adjusted young man with a very serious duty. I eventually was promoted to our Operations Sergeant which doubles as the Battery commanders driver. I no longer drove my own weapon system but was the primary aid to the man who led all of the teams in our part of the larger unit. I had found the hours long, the stress high and the rewards limited but I loved it anyways. It was the old work hard party hard mentality. I think in some ways it must be like an old time sailor coming back to port. If I wasn't out on Recon with our commander I was rushing to handle training exercises for the unit, clearing land use with the Korea government etc. I was partying or site seeing as long as I could get a pass to be beyond range or the alert sirens. It was a weird mix of two jobs shoved into one but we lacked the resources for full staffing of noncombat roles.

One evening at the end of winter I believe, we were conducting field exercises in a place known as Chor'won Valley and I was helping to patrol the perimeter of our headquarters camp. I saw this old man walking around with what seemed like his 3 grandsons. They were probably 6,9, and 11 years old if I had to guess. This man seemed rather “simple” he had a cane to walk with, his one eye just sat limply in the same spot and he ignored the soldiers yelling warnings to stay away. He just kept wandering aimlessly around the edge of the camp, throwing stones which the children would race to find. He just seemed a little confused or somehow unaware of the concertina wire and guard positions he wandered in a circle around. That part of the country near the Militarized border always has soldiers and equipment about and I think some people stopped seeing it after a while, just living their lives as if it didn't exist. Like the dancing in the clubs from the movie. Still when I yelled “Jong Jee!” or stop to him, his head snapped up and his good eye focused in a way that made me think he had been faking everything else. It stood out and made me take notice of his path in his apparent wandering. I warned our commander about my suspicions and that night guards scared off 2 kids trying to sneak into the camp.

It's too long to bother covering fully but there had been a lot of North Korean efforts to get a hold of US military equipment for infiltration. They wanted uniforms more than rifles and night vision equipment was a huge target as well. We were always on guard for such attempts and would be punished if they succeeded. I remember Charlie Battery effectively mowing the side of a mountain for a month to try to find a stolen pair of night vision goggles everyone knew was no longer there. Lessons in training were harsh so mistakes would not happen in combat.

I didn't think much of that event until a couple of months later when we were operating 20-30 miles away. It was this awful storming night and the hill top the various unit commanders were meeting on had the road to it all but washed away. We were far inland but it was during the Monsoon season now. I was desperate to grab some sleep while the officers held their meeting but a friend of mine came over to tell me about the kids they had caught sneaking into the Colonel's tent earlier that night.

I went over to where they were being held while he told me the story. Turns out the MP's had been called on the radio and were coming out to deliver the thieves to a ROK army training compound. It was a way to make sure thieves didn't come back. The US forces couldn't officially take action against a Korean citizen and the local police would usually just let them go as sympathy for the north ran strong in that area. So that made the local military the best ones to handle them. According to rumors, the base we gave thieves to ensured their soldiers were not squeamish by allowing them to practice hand to hand combat on thieves handed over.

It seemed to make sense, these were people who threatened our safety and worked for an enemy force that we spent so many days training to fight. Every time you suffered through pain, exhaustion or just missed home it was easy to think there was a reason we were there. To protect people against the enemy. The thieves certainly were the same as the North Korean soldiers since they helped them right?

So perhaps now you have guessed what I found when I saw the thieves who tried to steal a backpack and uniforms. The two older grandsons from Chor'won. I made sure to tell the people watching them that I remembered them from a previous encounter a valley away. These children were not just innocent kids on a dare or ones who tried something stupid, this was deliberate and someone had brought them out to the camp. I felt pleased I could help and didn't even think again about what that meant for those kids. I heading back to my vehicle to try to get some rest but our commander showed up shortly after, ready to head out.

I asked him if he heard about the infiltrators and he said the Colonel had mentioned it and how he had decided he was just going to let them go. They wanted to move out and the MP's had been delayed getting to our remote location. I was shocked and rushed to tell him what I remembered, how this was not their first time and how much of a mistake I thought it was to let them go. He said he understood but refused to talk to the Colonel or try to change his mind.

I had never fought or argued with Captain Kirby before that night but we had strong words and I remember for a while losing respect for him as a leader. I felt that he wasn't making a hard decision. He had received his commission out of college and didn't suffer the same hardships as the line troops. He had a hotel-like apartment not a simple billets for living quarters. He was always needed on base off and on during training exercises and didn't know what it was like to spend weeks without a shower or more then 2 hours sleep at a time. I felt like he hadn't sacrificed or didn't understand sacrificing for duty.

Later I looked back at it and realized he wasn't ignorant of the situation or soft. He had more humanity then I did I think. He remembered they were people, children even. They probably did not know the consequences of their actions or were given limited choice by their handler. Children have long been used in war to plant bombs and infiltrate for this reason. In the end they are children still, being used poorly by someone else and the crime is often not their own. I let the toll of a month long alert and field exercises push hatred and anger so deep inside me I no longer saw children going to a slaughter. I saw soldiers serving their duty and delivering the enemy to a place where they would be handled. So much like the soldiers sitting on top of the building following orders and not taking action to what they knew was happening. Lighting the flares for the evil going on in the camp. So easy when it is just distanced a step away and you don't have to confront the travesty, you just serve your duty. There were the Nazis who smashed children against the walls to save bullets and then there were those who didn't stop them.

I didn't block out that memory and have instead used it to strengthen myself I hope. I see the same thing happen in the everyday world still. When I worked for a Fortune 50 company in sales I watched people treat their customers as contacts and paydays, not as people and so they could justify any lie. I remember a manager saying it was okay because you worked a job for your family, that other person wasn't going to feed your kids, only you would with the money you earned etc. They Basically said it was okay to wrong someone else as long as you did something nice with the ill gotten gains. I quit that job and a few others for similar reasons. How many Americans do you know who sit back and say screw the wealthy or the poor or what ever group they are not a part of basically and justify it in a similiar manner? Empathy seems to be a rare quality some days.

Stressful situations and war bring out the most drastic examples of this conflict in human nature but I fear it is something we as a race must struggle to understand and resist about ourselves daily.

Sorry that was such a long story but it seemed appropriate.