Your Experience With War

[ThomWV]

Please indulge me this question. Of the wars this nation has engaged in over the last 150 years which one is the earliest with which you feel any sort of personal connection? I don't mean that you fought in it but that it had a direct effect on your life through either family or friends. For instance your father may have fought in Viet Nam and that would be the one that first effected your life. For others it might be the war in Korea, or one of the World Wars.

Which was the earliest war that you feel effected you directly.

[ixion]

1. You forgot the Revolutionary War

that really affected us all. :+

[geardaddy]

13. That's what I was looking for.

:)

[mdmc]

2. My uncle is an artist

My grandparents attic was filled with portraits of his friends that died in Nam. I remember them well.

[TomInTib]

3. Civil War

As a kid growing up in rural Texas in a Southern Baptist environment, nearly every adult I knew was still fighting it.

Only no one was doing any shooting.

[ThomWV]

10. That was my South Carolina experience too

Seriously, people do not understand, the Civil War was still casting its shadow over this country well into the civil rights movement.

[TomInTib]

12. Did ya'll still call it The War Between the States?

We still do.

And we are still pissed off.

Tom

[mdmc]

17. i call it that

a yankee checkin in

[ThomWV]

19. "The War of Northern Agression" is what the old people called it when I was a kid.

[PsN2Wind]

4. The Korean War

The youngest of my older brothers was killed there by the Chinese February 7,1951.

[Mike03]

5. Iraq I.

But I read as much as I could about VietNam and have known a number of veterans of that war.

[gateley]

6. Viet Nam. nt

[Ichingcarpenter]

7. Civil War

You could still find lead balls imbedded in the trees of the
forests of Northern Virginia where I grew up around Manassas.

Met blacks whose grandparents had been slaves.

[Redstone]

8. WWII and Korea in my parents' generation, and Viet Nam in mine.

Intimately so in the last case.

Redstone

[Kitty Herder]

9. My dad was in Vietnam. I think in some ways, he never left that place.

He was an alcoholic with emotional problems. I think the war was responsible for a lot of that. He died due to medical problems caused by his drinking. In a way, he was a late casualty of the Vietnam war.

My dad had flashbacks and nightmares until the day he died. He had a heart problem towards the end of his life. When they monitored his heart rate in the hospital, they found that it would soar when he was asleep, presumably because of nightmares.

[MedleyMisty]

11. WWII - I was born over 30 years after it ended

But I've been researching it since I was nine - especially the rise of the Nazis and the Holocaust.

The winter that I was nine my mother and I checked out all the books on the Holocaust from the local library. I specifically remember reading Martin Gray's For Those I Loved and a big white textbook-like one about Treblinka. I may not have been the happiest nine year old in the world but I am forever grateful for knowing what evil humans are capable of and not having a blinkered view of reality.

All that reading about the Holocaust at nine and ten made me who I am today. It ingrained in me the need to look unflinchingly at reality, to be a witness to the evil that humans inflict on other humans - to know it for what it is and not deny it and devote my life to working against it.

It also prepared me to recognize the current incarnation of fascism for what it is.

[dysfunctional press]

14. ww2 for lack of a better answer...

my uncle on my father's side was in it...and so was my father-in-law. but i don't feel any "personal connection" to the war through either of them. i wasn't particularly close to either one- my uncle had an aneurism when i was very young- he lived, but was never the same person, requiring constant care til his death 35 years later, and we saw him rarely after it happened.
my father-in-law was already 70 by the time i met him...he barely had any time/affection for his own family, let alone the in-laws.

that's the extent of the military experience of my family as far as i know, until you go back to my great-great-great-great-grandfather, sam houston.

i don't feel any type of personal connection to any war in our history.

[hootinholler]

15. The French and Indian War

Seriously, that's how the ancestors came to America.

-Hoot

[AlertLurker]

16. Revolutionary War. Forced exodus from the US.

No one in my family has trusted a USAmerican since.

[tech3149]

18. As a young child I was drawn to the Civil War

I was appalled and perversely drawn to the death and destruction. As a subject of the psychological manipulations of the power structure, I didn't realize I was being conditioned to accept that as normal. The same mindset continued through WW2 and to some degree Korea. I was in Jr High (aka: Middle School these days)when I learned through a graphic novel that our "advisors" in SE Asia weren't doing anything for the protection of our nation. By the time I was looking at HS graduation, my BIL had booked from everything he knew and loved for Saskatchewan and I pulled #7 on the last year of the lottery.

My old man did his time in WW2 and was lucky enough to spend his time in England and Norway and didn't have to see the pain of war. His brothers and my other uncles were under fire but never saw the true horror of war.

The first time I really felt the effects of war was when my BIL headed for Canada. He was a great guy and I thought my sister made a great choice. After that, watching as they pulled my number in the lottery turned my brain to mush.

I consider war to be the ultimate failure, but understand that it may be necessary. I have no problem defending those I love, this nation, or myself, but I will not be drawn into a fight that can be avoided and won't ever be pre-emptive just to defend myself.