Veterans Day Reflections
“Compared to war all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God, I do love it so!"
General George S. Patton
Jack Mullen grew up in Medford, Oregon. Like me, he managed to avoid being drafted into the war in Vietnam. We considered that war wrong. We worked together thinning and picking pears while in high school in the late 1960's, then we each worked as field representatives for U.S. Representative Jim Weaver in the mid-1970s. He is retired and lives in Washington, D.C.
Guest Post by Jack Mullen
No federal holiday brings forth more introspective thought than Veterans Day. Peter twice published the photo of his father, in Germany, victorious, with fellow soldiers. I see their faces. I see a hand on another man's shoulder.
Tip O’Neil once said “all politics is local.” He might as well have added that “all war is local.” Last week, two guest posts, one by Robert Sage (November 12) and Larry Slessler (November 14), gave moving accounts of the war experiences of those two longtime Medford residents. They weren't celebrations of war. They each were stories of pain, danger, and risk of death. Mr. Sage served in the European theater in World War II, Mr. Slessler in Vietnam. After the war Robert Sage became an elementary school teacher and then principal. Larry Slessler worked helping veterans.
Robert Sage grew up as a farm boy near the foot of the two Table Rocks--the distinctive flat-topped escarpments that jut up suddenly above the floor of the Rogue Valley. They have the look of fortresses. Sage's family bought the farm in 1883 from a man who had acquired it under the Donation Land Claim Act of 1850. Under the law if a White or mixed-race American citizen lived on land and farmed it, he or she could claim up to 320 acres. The Oregon Territory became the possession of White Americans by conquest. Mr. Sage's farm was traditional Indian land. Arrowheads and worked stones are common on Table Rock-area farms. White settlers outnumbered and outgunned the Indians. The Rogue River Indian Wars ended after a decade of back-and-forth raids and settlement massacres when a treaty sent Indians survivors off to a reservation 250 miles to the north.
Neither Peter nor I were taught anything about this in our Medford schools. We learned about wagon trains and gold rushes, not the Rogue River Indian War or how the land came to be available for the Territorial government to distribute. Pioneers with plow and ax were the heroes as we learned it. We learned the state song, Oregon, My Oregon, which starts with the words:Land of the Empire Builders
Land of the Golden West.
Conquered and held by free men
Fairest and the best.
There was nothing in our school classes about one of the Rogue River Indian War's most famous participants, a young Army officer named Phil Sheridan. Sheridan’s military experience in Oregon made him a valuable asset during the Civil War. He became a war hero after his cavalry unit’s daring charge that turned the tide at the Battle of Chickamagua in 1863. Then his cavalry ran Robert E. Lee’s army out of the Shenandoah Valley leading Lee to surrender at Appomattox.
Phil Sheridan’s post-Civil War life is the subject of controversy. He was appointed the Military Governor of Louisiana and Texas during Reconstruction. While his efforts in securing and enforcing voting rights and representation for newly-freed slaves proved successful, many southerners thought he went too far too fast. His efforts saw a fierce backlash. Echoes of that continue today.
Sheridan’s effort on behalf of African Americans contrasts with his view of America’s Indigenous population. His post-Civil War military career consisted of overseeing the military effort in the Great Plains to eradicate "the Indian problem." He is often sourced for the quote, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” He was so successful that Sheridan was promoted to the rank of General of the Army, the highest possible rank. The two parts of his career leaves one with mixed feelings about Phil Sheridan.
Some soldiers go home from foreign wars and leave soldiering behind. Robert Sage and Larry Slessler did. Others never leave. it.
I find myself thinking about what possessed the 80 ex-military and law enforcement people to be among those who stormed the Capitol on January 6. They defended America then attacked it. One of the defendants at the Oath Keepers' trial gave me a clue when he said, for more than any other reason, he joined the Oath Keepers because it gave him a feeling that he had missed since his return from the War in Iraq. It was a feeling of camaraderie, the feeling of being part of a larger cause. He said he now realizes what a goof he was to fall for all the conspiracy theories. He was just excited to feel what he felt in Iraq, together with his buddies.
People find like-minded companions in the military, in religion or religious groups, on a sports team, even in the workplace. When they lose that companionship, or never have it, some people feel empty. In the post-Civil War days, soldiers from the North and South found camaraderie once again when they fought in the Indian Wars. Today, some find it in the Oath Keepers.