By Rick
Van Arnam
On May 19 of this year I stood in the same spot as
I did in 1984 – in a living room of what was once a fraternity house and is now
home to the admission office for Norwich University. It was a perfect setting then and remains so now,
graced with dark wood paneling, a large fireplace, and oil paintings of the
campus in earlier days.
In 1984 I accepted my Regular Army commission as a
Second Lieutenant, becoming a naïve infantry officer totally incapable of
mapping out the career I was saying goodbye to thirty years later as a far less
naïve Colonel. Like many things in the
Army, this was a mandatory event. I was
told that I had to have a retirement ceremony.
Unlike many of those mandatory events, though, I looked forward to this
one. I planned it on my terms inviting close friends to join me as I shared final
words upon which I had thought for months.
After that, we would head to another dark paneled room locally known as
an Irish pub where we would tell some stories, close the bar, and close out my
career.
The Army has retirement ceremonies for many reasons,
all of which are good. People come to celebrate
a career and the retiring soldier has one final opportunity to thank those with
whom he or she has served. There is
usually food and beer involved so, let’s be honest, that will always attract a few
more stragglers to the event. The most
important reason, though, is that it is simply the right thing to do. But what I hate about the ceremony is the
obligatory end-of-service award.
There was a day when awards meant something to me,
but that day has long passed. I remember
as a Second Lieutenant being awarded the Army Achievement Medal for being on a
team that finished first in a 20k race. I
thought the trophy was recognition enough but someone believed it deserved an
award. Later as a Captain, I was given another
award for writing a daily newsletter for two weeks while deployed to
Honduras. Each day I watched CNN Headline
News several times in a row on the only television available on the
compound. I furiously took notes and
turned those into a one-page newsletter that was distributed to our Special
Forces Soldiers in who-knows-where locations not far from the
Honduran-Nicaraguan border. I guess they
liked getting the news. I thought I was simply
doing my job, but someone believed it deserved an award.
Throughout history soldiers have served with few
expectations for recognition. This was
true back even before our founding fathers wrote, “All men are created equal.”
On April 19, 1775, ordinary farmers, blacksmiths and merchants took up arms to
defend their belief that, “We had always been free, and were meant to always be
free.” [i]
Citizen-soldiery was born on this belief and that belief became a promise
fulfilled – a promise that their children and grandchildren would have more
opportunity than from where they had come.[ii] Taking up arms was never done on the
expectation of receiving an award.
Neither was that the expectation when a bit less
than a hundred years later this promise of freedom was put to the ultimate test
during the Civil War. Citizens-soldiers like
Joshua Chamberlain once again stood, not by plan or by desire, at history’s
pivotal hour. His simple, one-word command
of “Bayonets” on the afternoon of July 2, 1863 helped to forever secure our
States as United.
And less than one hundred years after Gettysburg soldiers
participated in battles ranging in size from the largest the world had ever
witnessed to the smallest – the latter of which Rick Atkinson, author of the Liberation Trilogy termed a “nameless
skirmish.” Soldiers died in both and
without the expectation, or care, of receiving an award. Their ultimate sacrifice is why the
end-of-service award is such an awkward moment to me.
Pinned in my mind and more important than any award
pinned to my uniform is one final unanswered question and that is this. Had I faced real danger, I don’t know if I
would have measured up. How does anyone
know, really?
When I was young and very naïve I boasted about
wanting to face that danger. I know I
felt that way the morning Rangers jumped into Grenada during the fall of my
senior year of college. The year was
1983 and I was twenty-one years old.
Truthfully, and despite a lot of training, I really
don’t know how I would have performed under similar circumstances. I don’t know if I would have reacted fast enough
had I been caught in a complex ambush in Afghanistan or come face-to-face with an
insurgent who had spent most of his life fighting. Any success I achieved in the Army wasn’t
because I was an elite fighter; it was because I simply worked hard. I probably spent the first few years of my
career wanting to know the answer to that question and the years since 9/11 growing
comfortable in leaving the question unanswered.
And through this processing is my real
end-of-service award – that simply having the opportunity to serve is award
enough.
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